Tag: law

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

By Appointment

appointment_akkuzaI was asked recently to give my two cents’ worth for an article being prepared by a MaltaToday journalist. He was looking into the recent history of KSU and more particularly the trend of ex-KSU council members becoming politicians (even more particularly Nationalist politicians). Was the university student council simply a machine geared to churn out potential nationalist MPs? Why only nationalist? Was (is) the university a nationalist party enclave? Is there a reason SDM still win a majority of votes at the elections? And of course… what is wrong with the “first past the post” system?

I will not delve into the answers that I gave here but what intrigues me is the perspective that is taken on the question of what we can call political careerism. Let me just say (I admit rather idealistically) that the whole KSU structure as conceived in the mid-90s only becomes counterproductive when allegiance to representing political party interests takes precedence over the aim of student representation. Back to careerism. The question is, is it only the nationalist side of our great divide that operates a school of aspiring careerists? A place in SDM, eventually a seat on the KSU council, a bit of coverage, maybe a spot of Local Council sparring and then a place in the party mechanism only to be nominated on a board or two once your party is in government. Who knows?

Would it take an anthropologist to really uncover the liens that intertwine in our very local and islandish form of networking that uses certain DNA traits such as “better the devil you know”? Take one step back. Look at the Aaron Farrugia’s of the Labour constellation. Sure they may not have made it to the coveted KSU executive post (though, had they done their representation homework properly they would have discovered that they had quite a role to play in the Social Policy Commission through Pulse). Still, you will find that the current administration is peppered with young, green, inexperienced hopefuls that are projected (many would add undeservedly) onto various committees, boards, and whatnot. All By TaghnaLkoll Appointment you would say. And you would be right.

It’s two sides of the same coin though. 25 years of nationalist administration, plus a petri dish of cliches as is the university population might have meant that SDM had the upper hand and were more prone to scrutiny when it came to careerism in the public eye (particularly after the idealist non-affiliated SDM petered out following its three year stint battling the impossible). This does not mean that what was true for the nationalist greasy pole is not true of the labourite one. People are so obsessed with this idea that there is some kind of nationalist infiltration of the university that they tend to forget that the two “schools” of partisan interference have sown (and reaped) their seeds in the university campus.Whether it is intentional or just an adaptation of the campus to the realities of political careerism is anyone’s guess.

It’s not just university you know. The ivory tower is only one field of recruitment. The networking system upon which our political parties have relied means that in every sector – from business to health to entertainment – there are massive interests that very often verge on the economic. We have seen how in the last few months the Labour government has scarcely been able to hide the web of interests that lie behind every supposed “policy” move. The brazen approach of discovery taken by Caruana Galizia’s Running Commentary is expediting the discovery of a web of interests that is being accommodated. From advertising brochures to insurance contracts to appointments on public boards. As Benigni would say “Qui è un mangia mangia generale”.

Surprised? Surely not. Also today former PN activist Frank Psaila “blogs” on MaltaToday about “The untouchables“. His is a particular slant about “people of trust” being necessarily appointed in particular strategic posts. Strategic to the government of course. Psaila can say a thing or two about what happened during the time of the PN administration because he was part of it. Caruana Galizia will have multiple willing “leakers” eager to disclose the secret entanglings of labour.

The real question is whether had there been an equally popular system of discovery during the previous administrations – one that lends itself to subtle contributions by “international networks” – whether it would have also uncovered a similar web of intertwined interests and favours. We had a former PN secretary general refer to a system of barter to explain how the party works. Combined with the aforementioned “better the devil you know” approach, you get the nagging feeling that just as a series of not too serendipitous connections would link the PM to a newly formed advertising agency or insurance company nowadays,  you could have done very much the same exercise a while back.

True. The Labour system is much more outrageous and ostentatious with its careerist appointments. Competence and relevance (of qualification) are thrown out of the window. Within 21 months we have been able to witness arrogant dog-headedness and a multitude of forms of brazen nepotism. A dark shadow looms on most government tenders and nowadays when you hear the prime minister say that “he respects the court decision” (as in the case of the prohibitory injunction on the transport issue) you get the feeling that the tone is more “I will tolerate for now” than “I will humbly prostrate myself before the decision of the courts of law”.

In essence Labour are much more expert at exposing the ugly warts of the way our democratic system functions. What is sure is that 25 years of nationalist administration failed to strengthen the appropriate watchdogs that would be barking madly at this point. “Authorities” of all sorts are feebler and weaker. Labour fast-forwarded this weakness in the system by exploiting it further and further. The decline and fall of the police and army system under the able (not for good reasons) hands of Minister who has long lost the plot is the most obvious example. Weakened institutions – the ombudsman, the attorney general’s office, MEPA come to mind – abound. Elsewhere ministers disband independent committees with a simple phone call, MPs are suspected of toying around with tender documents… need I go on?

So the tune has not changed. The need for new politics remains greater than ever. The tragedy is that the system is ever so desperately ingrained in its methods that it becomes harder to see a way out. In such a small democracy as ours it it difficult (or impossible) to imagine the ultimate watchdog turning out to be the catalyst for such a change. Who is the ultimate watchdog? Oh that would be “the average voter”. But he might be too busy trying to expectantly get his foot into the gravy train (by appointment) to bother with the complicated nuances of the absolute reform that is ever so urgent and necessary for this country.

That is the sad truth of it all. A truth that Joseph Muscat turned into the secret underpinning of his strategy: That within the vast majority of the electorate lies an illusion of a legitimate expectation to get a piece of the pie by appointment and for free. So long as that illusion lasts the nation will continue to resemble a suicide of lemmings running towards a cliff’s edge*.

 

* Actually this is an urban myth. Lemmings do not really commit suicide** by collectively jumping off cliffs (see here for example). Voters on the other hand….

 

** The collective term for lemmings, though, is actually a “suicide” of lemmings. As we say in Maltese … Ħu il-fama…

Categories
Mediawatch Values

Getting selfies right

DogSelfie_akkuzaIn an article entitled “Sharing explicit selfies without consent may be made illegal“, the Times reports that Social Dialogue Minister Helena Dalli has reacted to the current furore on selfies. Minister Dalli is quoted as saying that “the sharing of explicit material without a person’s consent is a clear breach of data protection”.

It is important to be clear about two aspects here. First of all “selfie” has snapped its way into the dictionary and has a very specific meaning. A “selfie” as the name implies (btw… it’s a “stessu” in Maltese – and that’s semi-official) is a snapshot taken of oneself by oneself. The crucial element in all this is the “self” – it is not a selfie if the person pressing the button of the camera is not the same as the person depicted in the picture. Why is that important? Well, simple really, it stops being a selfie if someone other than the person who took it (and is depicted in it) publishes it. It may sound like pedantic playing with words but in actual fact the point is that you don’t need consent to publish a selfie because technically the only person who publishes a selfie is the same person who took it.

When someone other than the selfie-taker publishes what was originally a selfie then what they are doing is publishing a photo – this falls under a wider category and not necessarily a selfie – of someone else. Who cares? The law might. You see if you are in possession of lewd photos of another person and publish them without his or her consent then chances are high (let’s say close to 100%) that what you are doing is illegal on a number of counts. It is ALREADY illegal.

Which brings me to the second point. I am sure that Minister Dalli’s intention is legitimate and I am also convinced that there might be lacunae that may need to be filled insofar as the Data Protection Commissioner is concerned. There is definitely a need for an educational campaign with regards to the use of private date and publishing thereof. Magistrate Depasquale was reported in the Independent to have referred to the fact that anyone uploading images of oneself that will be available publicly is exposing himself to “fair comment”.

“Magistrate Francesco Depasquale said in his judgement, the accusations were with regard to posts and photos which were openly accessible online. While it is a person’s right to make photos and material public, they should be conscious that this can be subject to people’s comments and ridicule.”

That is a positive development in the sense that our jurisprudence goes on record to remind the citizen the dos and donts at law. Back to selfies though. What the law does not need is complication. It must also be kept simple – Occam’s razor and all. There is already sufficient protection against other people uploading pictures of yourself without consent. It would be crazy to include/add a trend-driven definition such as “selfie” into the equation: it just does not add any value.

Categories
Mediawatch

Doktor! Doktor!

The law students are apparently throwing some hissy fit and demanding guarantees that the reform of their degree will not entail the dropping of the “Dr” nomenclature for the law course graduates. Such big deal this “Call me a Dr” business. Or is it? It is quite indicative that the law students were much less vociferous whenever the requirements for entry into the law course were diluted over the last decade or so. The law faculty seems to have unfortunately become some kind of petri dish to test the GIGO principle: first we dilute entry requirements until even the illiterate can get in, then we apply that sad unwritten rule that the vast majority of students present on the first opening day will eventually graduate (by hook or by crook).

Sure they will “suffer”. Sure there will be moments when the whole Civil Code will appear to them in nightmares and beat them around the head with worse effects than an Actio De in Rem Verso. Without the need to generalise too much though it was already obvious in the early noughties that the levels of aspirant lawyers were spiralling dismally downwards. The most evident flaws were a failure to grasp basic logic and language (and of course the logic of language). Bereft of these two most basic of tools that should arm the interpreter of laws we get an army of players of the system who will take advantage of a weakened faculty, live out six years with an Erasmus or two in between and graduate with the final “bonus” of getting to be called Dott.

The Robert Musumecis (he did tell me personally that he did not bother going to lectures for his law degree… “kemm nistudja in-notes) of this world are not to blame though. The system developed as it did independently of their aspirations for a doctoral title. Frankly I find the whole Dott thing mildly embarrassing. First of all Malta’s LL.D. award is rather unique. In the anglo-saxon system LL.D.’s are awarded for lifetime achievements in the field or as Wikipedia puts it:

In the UK, the degree of Doctor of Laws is a higher doctorate, ranking above the Ph.D., awarded upon submission of a portfolio of advanced research. It is also often awarded honoris causa to public figures (typically those associated with politics or the law) whom the university wishes to honour. In most British universities, the degree is styled “Doctor of Laws” and abbreviated LL. D., however some universities award instead the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, abbreviated DCL.

So already you are being bestowed with a title that ill describes your academic achievements until graduation. Add to that that the actual use of the “Dr.” title is universally acknowledged as being reserved for Ph.D. graduates. The Maltese graduate gets to be called doctor without ever having pursued the studies of a real doctorate. I recall pleading with the Chef de Mission of a Maltese government delegation for EU Accession negotiations not to introduce me – a newly graduate junior lawyer – as Doctor Zammit to the foreign colleagues at a conference. It was less humility than the fear of giving the impression of being the legal equivalent of Mozart – drafting doctoral thesis while eating egg soldiers at the age of 4.

I am still surprised to this day when the HSBC call center (fully informed clerks with your dossier at hand) still calls me Doctor Zammit (followed by “kif nista’ nghinek hi”). It does feel ridiculous. It’s not that I don’t have a sense of pride in the profession that I chose to pursue for the earning of my daily bread. It’s actually because I am proud in what being a law graduate should really mean that I get irked by these ridiculous obsessions with such ill-conceived nomenclature.

The legal profession naturally carries a reputation of sorts. Such a reputation is, objectively speaking, very unfortunate and imprecise. The role of the law and its interpreters is very important in civil society and for a very long time purveyors of the profession were among the most respected, well-read and upstanding individuals of the community. Being a lawyer meant as I mentioned earlier that you carried a love of knowledge, of society and its organisation and of the classical foundations of education. The last thing on your mind should be what people are calling you. You should be much more concerned as to earning your respect through your work.

People. Yes. The denigration of the lawyer’s profession has peaked over the past few years. Even in the hallowed halls of popular representation the natural predisposition of lawyers to political service (in Cicero style) has given way to other professional representations – including the johnny come lately economists. The media will not miss a beat in beating on the lawyers. Truth be told some colleagues might not have been the best advertisement to the profession of St. Yves’ protected but one rotten apple does not make the whole basket rot. At least not immediately.

People and “dott”. I’m not impressed when I hear people address colleagues of mine as “Dott” these days. Most times there is a sense of mockery almost built into the word as it is pronounced. Yes, the Dott business too has become a strong symbol of the dilution of the respect quotas of the profession. There was a time when we would jokingly sing during graduation ceremonies the ditty “Lil tal-Ligi tghidlu Dott, lil tal-B.Comm tghidlu Mr.”. At the time I thought it was more the kind of sfottò that befits the camaraderie of graduation ceremonies. Apparently the buscading graduates of tomorrow find the Dott appendage indispensable.

Time would be much better spent working on improving the quality of the profession than on worrying what people call them, and in any case I guess that the latter would mean a list that is never ending and quite colourful.

As for the rest…. suum cuique.

Categories
Campaign 2013 Values

This honourable judge

Life on the island past the electoral truce has been anything but boring. There are times when the concept of boredom can begin to seem to be an unattainable desirable bereft of the negative connotations that normalcy and monotony might normally carry. These are the kind of times best described as “interesting” in the Chinese curse sort of way. Just as the political parties seemed to be settling into a faux festive period “truce” from the campaign that had never begun we get a wave of news items that keep tongues wagging, the media reporting and above all the parties a-busying.

Top of the list of interesting news items – beyond the extensions of Dalligate and the mafia style executions – is reserved for the judiciary and in particular for two of the members of our judicial bench who are in the eye of the storm. Judge Farrugia Sacco is in the throes of a renewed battle for his seat having had a new attack from the IOC – determined to take steps against those of its members who exposed their institution to the risk of disrepute. Another Judge, Ray Pace, is now in prison awaiting trial with the serious accusation of bribery pending above his head.

It is an ugly period for the legal branch of our separated powers and the two stories have thrust another dagger into the already weak levels of faith that the judiciary enjoyed with the general population. Trust and faith in the law is fundamental within a democracy and this kind of weakness seriously endangers the workings of our constitutional mechanisms. That is also the basic reason why the constitutional checks and balances that should come into play must work with clockwork perfection in order to ensure that the very foundations of the legal system are still intact. Public trust is the one and only priority.

Farrugia Sacco

Which brings me to the role of our political parties. We first had the Farrugia Sacco debate. In this respect the “Ceasar’s Wife” argument that I had touched upon in the Dalligate saga comes back with full force when considering how to proceed with a member of the bench who has become embroiled in such an issue. The key concept in the “Ceasar’s wife” principle is the idea of “having to be above suspicion”. This is not a question of actually being guilty but of having to appear beyond the mere suspicion. In this light, and without even making any further considerations on what actually went down in that hotel room where the Olympic tickets were held, Judge Farrugia Sacco should have long tendered his resignation in order to deal with the ghosts and suspicions peacefully and individually without carrying this baggage around in his role as a judge.

Is it so straightforward? Yes. Did we need the Ombudsman writing to the President? Not really. Even before the Commission for the Administration of Justice was involved Judge Farrugia Sacco should have done the right thing of his own accord. By refusing to do so he should have forced the hand of our politicians in parliament who are the guardians of an important constitutional mechanism with which they have been entrusted: the process of impeachment. Which is where my first beef with Joseph Muscat arises. His position on the Farrugia Sacco issue is that we must wait for the Commission for the Administration of Justice to do its work before actually impeaching the judge. Like hell we do.

Joseph Muscat’s attempt to distinguish between politics and the judiciary is an amateur approach to our constitutional politics and a dangerous situation whereby the leader of the opposition is openly reneging on his DUTY towards citizens to act as ultimate guardian of our constitutional rights. A judge in Farrugia Sacco’s situation loses his legitimacy to sit in open judgement of others in no matter what area of law. If he cannot see that of his own accord then it is up to the politicians to act as guardians of our prerogatives as citizens. Once again Muscat is doing what he does best – acting as Pilate and washing his hands of a decision that he is duty bound constitutionally to guarantee. Weak.

Pace

The Ray Pace matter seems to have brought Muscat to his senses. Suddenly the judiciary is no longer a matter for the Commission for the Administration of Justice. Admittedly the case seems to be more open and shut given the context though there is no reason to distinguish between the two when it comes to the Ceasar’s Wife test. In this case the issue of whether Ray Pace is above suspicion is more glaringly obvious – the arraignment and arrest make a decision in this respect all the more straightforward.

What did impress me was the attempts – as of early morning – by Evarist Bartolo to turn the issue into a political battlefield. He posted a link to a report of the arrest on facebook with the words “Ara f’hiex gabuh pajjiz” (Look what they have brought the country to). Incredible. To begin with it is obvious to any free thinking individual that when appointing a judge you can never foresee his turning to the dark side (to use Star Wars terms). How Ray Pace’s alleged actions are imputable to the current government and its policies beggars belief. Sure enough Evarist deleted any comments I made on the particular status – no worries I have snapshots on my iPad (once bitten, twice shy – right Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando?).

Thankfully the Labour party could not do otherwise than agree to an eventual impeachment of Ray Pace. Muscat did add that a new Labour government would review the methods of appointment of judges. No harm there right? Definitely not. Given that a rebel MP recently made it part of his personal agenda to point out inconsistencies in the field of the judiciary it should not come as too much of a surprise to any of us that sooner or later Labour would jump on that particular part of the wagon. A knee-jerk reaction it remains though and I very much suspect that we are in for a bit of patchwork and tweaks that would still accomodate the PLPN manner of appointments.

And here is another crux. I posted a status on facebook pointing out that given their record Labour would best reform the system by staying out of the appointments system. Of course the world is full of literal minded partisans who would be eager to point out that the same system that gave us Farrugia Sacco (Labour) and Pace (Labour) also gave us Arrigo (Nationalist). Which makes it allright then does it not? My point was meant to be sarcastic – Muscat’s party does not have much of a record to go on when it comes to appointments and the fact that the nationalist party too has had its fair share of nutty appointments is neither here nor there.

Judiciary

Do you remember how recently a government proposal to increase salaries for the judiciary was shot down by a labour party? The Labourites had had a sudden attack of “consistency” by arguing that if the MPs (political) could not get a raise (will we ever forget the 500€ raise?) then neither could the judges and magistrates (judiciary). Because obviously the Muscat idea that politics and judiciary should not be mixed did not apply at the time.

There seems to be a general consensus, even within the practitioners in the field, that our judicial system is due a major overhaul. The criteria for judges and magistrates appointment remain the number of years in practice. When a non-court practitioner was once proposed for the bench, court practitioners were up in arms claiming that his years of practice did not count – an odd reason if there was one. From what I can gather the conventional way to become a magistrate/judge until now has been to manifest your intention in the right circles and hopefully… if you were insistent enough and of the right hue… you would get your turn eventually.

The system has produced many a good magistrate or judge but it has flaws. It is haphazard and based on the wrong criteria. I am also told that in some cases what was needed to get onto the bench was a track record of an attempt at running of parliament. Once you got your brownie points in that field then you would have proven loyalty and a position on the bench would follow. Again. It is not the rule and is not across the board. The problem lies in the lack of clarity and in the lack of modern, clear criteria as to why a person should make it to the bench.

In other nations, like Germany, you actually study to get to the bench – not to become a lawyer first. Interpreting and applying the law requires a different set of skills than pleading before the court. Academic knowledge, logical and linguistic skills as well as good analytical methodology and organisation form part of what could be a key set of indicators in the future. A place on the bench should not be a prize for time served – let alone loyalty.

The kind of reform that is required is the real area where politics and the judiciary should definitely not merge. The legal world in Malta is not in a nice state. The kind of reform that is required is a big learning curve across the board from the courts, to the faculty of law and its product, to the support services to the long arm of the law that are the police. Education is a key factor – education to start with and education in the continuing sense.

Unfortunately I have to end this long post with the usual pinpointing of the heart of the problem. Our legal system has also been affected by the rot that is the PLPN method. Appointments and laws through the years are made with the parties and their survival in mind. It is incredible that in this day and age we can think in terms of “their” or “our” judge. It is mind boggling that judicial appointments have to be thought of in this manner and the legal community has much to feel at fault about in this respect. I am not unaware of the irony that our parliament has a heavy representation of lawyers within it and that this being the case it will be even more difficult to find people prepared to think out of the box.

When Muscat wakes up to the reality of the matter and stops thinking in populist terms, when Gonzi’s PN quit the faffing around and decide to grasp the bull by the horns I should hope that a huge debate will ensue and that within an appropriate forum, with the appropriate experts, the much needed reform of our Judicial & Legal systems is embarked upon with earnest.

Remember. We are all servants of the law, that we may be free.

Categories
Arts

Fu*king Censorship

They’re at it again. There’s a sector of our so-called “artistic community” who insist on operating strictly on terms that equate their freedom of expression to some school project approved by teacher and headmaster. Already when the Stitching case first came to light we had many a protest about “the death of expression” and mock funerals. J’accuse had taken a very clear position back then – this was a case of the law’s transient provisions needing a re-application and updating in accordance with the mores of society. What we also found obnoxious was the niggling need of our “artists” to obtain a “nihil obstat” from every authority before staging “provocative” pieces. In my not too humble opinion they missed the point completely. Provocative pieces HAVE to be staged without authority’s acquiescence. Take to the streets if necessary – under pouring rain in the midst of Valletta commuters declaim all the “fucks” you like and picture as many “vaginas and penises” as your might require to provoke.

Instead our artists will sit and weep in a corner and when they are not bemoaning the lack of funding for their social projects they will be telling us how all that they have to say and do is being suffocated by that behemoth called CENSORSHIP.

Enough I say. The Stitching appeal was based and framed within the context of the old laws. Why are we surprised that the court was consistent in upholding the ban? Isn’t that why the laws were changed in the end? Have things really remained the same? Is our artistic community suffering the pains of further censorship? Like hell they are.

Go ahead and stage the bloody piece.

 

Howl. Allen Ginsberg.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by 
madness, starving hysterical naked, 
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn 
looking for an angry fix, 
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly 
connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat 
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of 
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities 
contemplating jazz, 
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and 
saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 
who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes 
hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy 
among the scholars of war, 
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & 
publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, 
burning their money in wastebaskets and listening 
to the Terror through the wall, 
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through 
Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, 
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in 
Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their 
torsos night after night 
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares,
alcohol and cock and endless balls, 
incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and 
lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson,
illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, 
Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery 
dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, 
storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon 
blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree 
vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn,
ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, 
who chained themselves to subways for the endless 
ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine 
until the noise of wheels and children brought 
them down shuddering mouth-wracked and 
battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance 
in the drear light of Zoo,
who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's 
floated out and sat through the stale beer after
noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack 
of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 
who talked continuously seventy hours from park to 
pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, 
lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping 
down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills 
off Empire State out of the moon, 
yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts 
and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks 
and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, 
whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days 
and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the 
Synagogue cast on the pavement, 
who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a 
trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, 
suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-ings and 
migraines of China under junk-with-drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room, 
who wandered around and around at midnight in the 
railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, 
leaving no broken hearts, 
who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing 
through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-father night, 
who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy 
and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively 
vibrated at their feet in Kansas, 
who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary 
indian angels who were visionary indian angels, 
who thought they were only mad when Baltimore 
gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, 
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street
light smalltown rain, 
who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston 
seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the 
brilliant Spaniard to converse about America 
and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, 
who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving 
behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees 
and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, 
who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the 
F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist 
eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, 
who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting 
the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, 
who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union 
Square weeping and undressing while the sirens 
of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed 
down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, 
who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked 
and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, 
who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight 
in policecars for committing no crime but their 
own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 
who howled on their knees in the subway and were 
dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, 
who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly 
motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, 
who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, 
the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, 
who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
gardens and the grass of public parks and 
cemeteries scattering their semen freely to 
whomever come who may, 
who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up 
with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath 
when the blond & naked angel came to pierce 
them with a sword, 
who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate 
the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar 
the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb 
and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but 
sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden 
threads of the craftsman's loom, 
who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of 
beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along 
the floor and down the hall and ended fainting 
on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and 
come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, 
who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling 
in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning 
but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, 
who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad 
stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these 
poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy 
to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls 
in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' 
 rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with 
gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station 
solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, 
who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in 
dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and 
picked themselves up out of basements hung
over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third 
Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, 
who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on 
the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the 
East River to open to a room full of steamheat and opium, 
who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment 
cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime 
blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall 
be crowned with laurel in oblivion, 
who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested 
the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, 
who wept at the romance of the streets with their 
pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 
who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the 
bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, 
who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned 
with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded 
by orange crates of theology, 
who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty 
incantations which in the yellow morning were 
stanzas of gibberish, 
who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht 
& tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, 
who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, 
who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot 
for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks 
fell on their heads every day for the next decade, 
who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique 
stores where they thought they were growing 
old and cried,
who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits 
on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse 
& the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments 
of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the 
fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the 
drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, 
who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten 
into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 
who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of 
the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, 
cried all over the street, 
danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed 
phonograph records of nostalgic European 
1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and 
threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans 
in their ears and the blast of colossal steam whistles, 
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying 
to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude 
watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, 
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out 
if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had 
a vision to find out Eternity, 
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who 
came back to Denver & waited in vain, who 
watched over Denver & brooded & loned in 
Denver and finally went away to find out the 
Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying 
for each other's salvation and light and breasts, 
until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, 
who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for 
impossible criminals with golden heads and the 
charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet 
blues to Alcatraz, 
who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky 
Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys 
or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or 
Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the 
daisychain or grave, 
who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
notism & were left with their insanity & their 
hands & a hung jury, 
who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism 
and subsequently presented themselves on the 
granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads 
and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, 
and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin 
Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational 
therapy pingpong & amnesia, 
who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic 
pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
returning years later truly bald except for a wig of 
blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, 
Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid 
halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, 
rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench 
dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, 
bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, 
with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book 
flung out of the tenement window, and the last 
door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone 
slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room 
emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, 
a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, 
and even that imaginary, 
nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination
ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and 
now you're really in the total animal soup of time
and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed 
with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use 
of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,
who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space 
through images juxtaposed, and trapped the 
archangel of the soul between 2 visual images 
and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun 
and dash of consciousness together jumping 
with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus 
to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human 
prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent 
and shaking with shame, 
rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm 
of thought in his naked and endless head, 
the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, 
yet putting down here what might be left to say 
in time come after death, 
and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in 
the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the 
suffering of America's naked mind for love into 
an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone 
cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio 
with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered 
out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.
What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open 
their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? 
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unob
tainable dollars! Children screaming under the 
stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men 
weeping in the parks! 
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the 
loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy 
judger of men! 
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the 
crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of 
sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! 
Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! 
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose 
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers 
are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! 
Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! 
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! 
Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long 
streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories 
dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose 
smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch 
whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch 
whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch 
whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! 
Moloch whose name is the Mind! 
Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream 
Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in 
Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch! 
Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom 
I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch 
who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! 
Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! 
Light streaming out of the sky! 
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! 
skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic 
industries! spectral nations! invincible mad 
houses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! 
They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pave-
ments, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to 
Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! 
Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! 
gone down the American river! 
Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole 
boatload of sensitive bullshit!
Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! 
gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! 
Ten years' animal screams and suicides! 
Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on 
the rocks of Time!
Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the 
wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! 
They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! 
carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!
Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland 
where you're madder than I am 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you must feel very strange 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you imitate the shade of my mother 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you've murdered your twelve secretaries 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you laugh at this invisible humor 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where your condition has become serious and 
is reported on the radio 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where the faculties of the skull no longer admit 
the worms of the senses 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you drink the tea of the breasts of the 
spinsters of Utica 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the 
harpies of the Bronx 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you scream in a straightjacket that you're 
losing the game of the actual pingpong of the abyss 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul 
is innocent and immortal it should never die 
ungodly in an armed madhouse 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where fifty more shocks will never return your 
soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a 
cross in the void 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you accuse your doctors of insanity and 
plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the 
fascist national Golgotha 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where you will split the heavens of Long Island 
and resurrect your living human Jesus from the 
superhuman tomb 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where there are twenty-five-thousand mad com-
rades all together singing the final stanzas of 
the Internationale 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where we hug and kiss the United States under 
our bedsheets the United States that coughs all 
night and won't let us sleep 
I'm with you in Rockland 
where we wake up electrified out of the coma 
by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the 
roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the 
hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse 
O skinny legions run outside O starry
spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is 
here O victory forget your underwear we're free 
I'm with you in Rockland 
in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-
journey on the highway across America in tears 
to the door of my cottage in the Western night

 

Categories
Politics Values

I.M. Jack – Sunday’s Legal

The law has become a dominant part of the news over the past year or so and not only because of the supposed reforms that are being carried out (thanks to/in spite of/to comfort/with or without) Franco Debono. Ubi societas, ibi ius or so the latins teach us – wherever there is society there is the law. A legal system is at the core and backbone of our society and it allows us to survive each other and our naked ambition and instinct. Respect for the law and its principles are probably much more crucial for the survival (and creation and promotion) of a just society than economic prosperity. We are witnessing however a complete dilution and dumbing down of our legal framework.

What we have is a combination of a full frontal assault and denigration of all things legal. We have seen columnists who assume that their appreciation of the law with all its underpinnings and implications is superior to that of any legal practitioner. We have witnessed  lawyer politicians who opt to prostitute their profession in favour of political mileage. We have seen the gradual erosion of public confidence on the law and the legal system based on urban appreciation of legal events, shoddy and sensational law reporting and opportunist political mileage. The law faculty continues to gaze at its toes as its graduates increasingly seem to be unable to engage in logic and analysis due to serious shortcomings in the linguistic department.

The judicial branch is still under fire from many quarters and is still reeling from the reputation-killer events of recent memory. The Chamber of Advocates seems to be more intent on either playing second fiddle to political interests or in getting a piece of the power cake by pushing for more control over warranted lawyers – a push that smells of control of competition as much as anything else in this country of fishpondism.

Court Detectors: The Gozo law courts now have new detectors following the appalling stabbing attack that involved among others my childhood friend Kevin Mompalao. It is ridiculous that this kind of event has to happen before the obvious – such as the installation of a metal detector is put into place. Having said that, once the detectors WERE put into place it is rather useless to complain that they were formerly used at the courts in Malta as though this makes them bad metal detectors. It seems they were only removed since they could not cope with the flow of persons at the courts in Malta. Unless I am mistaken the courts in Gozo do not exactly deal with the same number of “clients” daily. Also, much of the agitation by the lawyers in Gozo stank of political manipulation. Justyne Caruana would do better to call for better ethical screening of some lawyers who practice regularly in Gozo and run on the Labour ticket. Who knows maybe she should start asking questions how a lawyer ends up owning property that used to belong to clients he “represented” or for example how he might decide to ignore the legal institute of curatorship. They are legitimate questions – based on the respect of the law that we are all trumpeting about. Go ahead Justyne… start that kind of campaign and I’ll back you on that one.

Reforms: I was asked to take a look at the Draft Administrative Code that is presently before out committee for legal reform in Parliament chaired by the Hon. Franco Debono. This Draft symbolises all that is wrong with the current wave of ambitious reforms. This is not the forum to even begin to discuss what is wrong with the “code”. The weakness of the legal drafting is only the tip of the iceberg. The administrative code nibbles away at crucial principles of our legal system while purporting to replace them. Are we really contemplating this kind of shoddy legislation simply because one MP decided to make much noise? While we can understand how the man in the street can be appeased with talk about efficient legislation right after a bitching session about the state of the courts, length of court cases and cost of lawyers bills surely the legal minds of this nation have not been flummoxed into submission to accept anything that has been thrown into the playground of toys for ambitious reformists?

That Constitutional: I followed with interest the tennis match between Giovanni Bonello and Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici with regards to the issue of declarations of unconstitutionality by the courts of Malta. In a very small nutshell this is what they were saying: Judge Bonello implies that whenever a court decides that applying a law to the facts before it would be unconstitutional then that law should automatically be null and void. He adds that such a law should not require a parliamentary intervention for it to be rendered void thenceforth – the law would become null and void erga omnes. Judge Mifsud Bonnici on the other hand has argued that the nullity is only with regards to the facts before the court and that the law is not automatically rendered void. For what it matters J’accuse is in full agreement with the GMB version – particularly because the wording of our constitution is quite clear using the terms “to the extent of the inconsistency”.

Having said that what is truly worrying is that this kind of debate is played out on a newspaper. We do not have any serious fora for non-partisan discussion on legal developments. It is definitely a shortcoming of the faculty of laws. It is also the result of the lack of continuing education among us lawyers who prefer to concentrate on the more profitable sides of the profession. A direct consequence of this is that the biggest “academic” interests in the laws are usually intrinsically linked to professional interests. Drafting of laws – even special (especially special) laws – will inevitably end up in the hands of those lawyers who have a direct interest in the outcome. Do not confuse specialist with direct interest. The reason that the rules relating to parliamentary representation, interpretation of parliamentary procedure and the issues of separation of powers have taken on a downward spiral is because the “lawyers” busy dabbling with these laws are those who have a direct interest in the results: polticians.

Discussing this kind of legal issues and reforms on the Times and Xarabank is not exactly encouraging for the future. Kudos, by the way, to Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri for his clear unconditional explanation to the Times as to why he will not abet their efforts at sensationalising the courts and their work by replying to their queries.

 

That’s all for legal sunday.