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The Big Kahuna Commandment

And like Moses from Sinai J’accuse descends upon the flock of idolators and worshippers alike bearing the guidelines from the Temple of Reason and House of Mankind. Verily I say to you that no bigger commandment than this must be borne in mind at the moment of truth when you sit in the cabin and are about to mark your vote:

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Ok. I’ve cheated. I did not need to visit any temples or watch any burning bushes declaim the ultimate words – I just consulted one of the greatest philosophers to roam the earth. Beyond that there’s always the J’accuse Randomly Generated Codex for the Samurai Warrior of Urban Zen and it reads something like this:

1. Keep Calm and Carry On.

2. You are not a unique and beautiful snowflake.

3. The rules of society are for everybody and that includes many who do not think or believe the same way as you do.

4. Live and let live.

5. Smile. It never hurts.

6. Live according to your tenets. Let others live according to theirs. So long as you don’t step on each others’ toes it will ba AOK. Trust me on this one.

7. Jesus loves you. He loves your neighbour too.

8. Love conquers all.

9. Never, ever underestimate the power of Kinnie (& twistees).

10. Use sunscreen.

There’s more where those came from. Does the list sound superficial? J’accuse would apologise under normal circumstances but we thought we’d try out a post that conforms to the current norm in the divorce debate.

 

When the dust has settled (I)

I still have to watch Reno Bugeja’s program that aired yesterday and dealt with the aftermath of the referendum but I do think that we can begin to draw conclusions on the effect of the Great Divorce Debate on society as well as on the Maltese corner of the ether. As the referendum results are read out and Malta begins to come to terms with it’s latest snapshot for it’s collective ID card there may be carcades and hooting, there may be strings of Ave Marias and novenas of gratitude elsewhere but things will never be the same.

Beyond divorce

A divorce debate and law tends to be a landmark moment in a nations’ history as documented in this book review.

Of course we have been thinking, speaking and most of all joking about (more about that later) divorce but the first assessment of the aftermath has to be that this Debate was much larger than its original purported subject. Interestingly we managed to reaffirm a trait of our society – it’s inability to think beyond two. There’s black and there’s white, there’s Good and there’s Evil, there’s Us and there’s Them, there’s the Secular and there’s the Confessional. Then there are those with a “sense of humour” and those “without”.

As soon as it became clear that the issue is much wider than the right to remarry then it became time to dig the trenches… and dig them deep. There would have to be a victory of some kind: of good over evil, of one lifestyle over another – and a loss for the idea that somehow two ways of life can coincide. That is why voting YES or NO notwithstanding the apparent  inevitability of the shooting down of the bill by our spineless and unrepresentative parliament is still a matter of life or death. We have confirmed that this nation is destined to be bipartisan.

I hope God has a sense of humour

As the trenches formed the two sides emulated the tried and tested ways of doing politics – the billboards, the half-truths and the mediatic ploys and gimmicks. Nothing new there. We could be tricked into thinking that the individual was more “active” than before because of the flourishing of blogs, communities and pages mostly dedicated to asserting ones position for or against an idea. Then came humour. Again, the biggest effect has been the facility of the spreading of “jokes” and what in Malta passes as “satire”. Josanne Cassar described it as a Survival Kit a concept that unwittingly (or maybe purposefully) implied the need to survive (and be above or extraneous to) the discussion itsel.

Witness Josanne’s other creation: Moviment Tindahalx – a snowball effect of sorts led it to (currently) 3,513 members. Tindahalx (don’t interfere) is again less of an assertion of a position and more of a declaration of detachment – neither here nor there in the bipartisan sphere though ultimately  the ideal platform for roping in those whose first reaction to the ugly word “politics” is “Thanks but no thanks” – until they realise how it also can mean that others are determining your way of life.

I asked Josanne where she wanted to go with Tindahalx and the answer was quite emphatically “nowhere”. Which is unfortunate – because if there ever was a promising platform for gathering that snowball for the critical mass beyond the bipartisan fold then it was in this community. What might have diluted the original message “you take care of your soul and I’ll take care of mine” was the tsunami of humour that followed.

From Divorzistan to Mazzun to the rest the Maltese habit of “nervously dealing with the lighter side of life” spread to the net. I am the firs to click around and have a good laugh or two on these sites. There is also a political element in the humour itself this time round – and mocking the serious side is after all J’accuse’s unofficial motto (castigat ludendo mores). It’s not new though: the fact that it is more easily spread does not make it new. It began with the jokes at the grocer in the eighties (joking about Mintoff , Agatha et al was one way of coping with the sadness of daily life), moved on to email virals and youtube videos in the last two elections/referenda and is now settling in communities on facebook.

Critical Mass

It is easier to see how many followers a facebook page has than to count exactly how many people stepped out of the Zejtun parish church (unliked) last Sunday. Read the MaltaToday report and you’ll see what I mean: the heading mentions a “Mass Walkout” but the article starts with the word “several parishioners”… which will it be?

J’accuse continues to question whether the critical mass for change has been reached? Without intending in any way to minimise the importance of the newfound tools of engagement the question is what will happen when the dust subsides? Has the argument and discussion been provocative enough to provoke the necessary thousands into deciding to use their vote in order to bring about change and reform in the future? Or is this just a passing fad in which laughter has popped up as a temporary panacea for our argumentative colic?

James Debono gave us his interpretation as to why YES will prevail. His argument makes a lot of sense – particularly in the ability of a voting population to react positively in the face of quirky vs common sense. What that also means though is that we have done it before and we will do it again (choose common sense). 1987 and the EU are witness to that. Common sense has given us a confessional government, an opportunist opposition and a general set-up of actual or perceived laws that seem out of synch with the 21st century.

When the dust settles this time round will the critical mass still be there to fight the next battles for change to come about? We’ll just have to wait and see.

“In un paese pieno di coglioni, ci mancano le palle” – j’accuse 2011

There’s always a first time

Lady Chatterley started blogging on The Malta Chronicle. She’s got some points to set straight about marriage and blogging… not in that particular order.

I wonder whether the same rules apply here and whether I should wait till I’m married before I start blogging.  Well, that may never happen, which would be a real waste.  So here I am.  About to consummate my relationship with the blogosphere and press send.   I didn’t wait for marriage to have sex either.  If I had, I’d be a 37 year old virgin and that’s pretty sad, even Kate Gonzi would probably agree.  I mean, imagine the spots.  Imagine how angry I’d be all the time.

Instead I have a 12 year-old, and I’m only angry some of the time. Like now, because we’re doing Maltese homework and it’s that time of the year, when the horrible word ‘revision’ comes home to roost.

But I’m here to talk about divorce.  I was having a chat with a guy last night on facebook and he gave me the ‘between you and me, I’ll be voting against divorce’ spiel.  I replied with my best ‘each to his own, different strokes for different folks’ all embracing response and tried to sound like I meant it. And yet after I logged off, I couldn’t help but wonder, how someone so bright, so young, so cool and so with it I suppose, could miss the point so ferociously.

You see, what he effectively told me, was that his reservations stemmed from the fact that divorce offered people an exit, which would make people leave marriages with greater alacrity.  So then I gently pointed out that separation offered people a very real and valid exit too, which was also resorted to, with reckless abandon.  So no difference there, right.

Then he said that people would shack up with other people with greater ease, and once again, I came back with more or less the same argument –   that today people are free to leave their original spouses, shack up with new partners, have children outside of wedlock.   It happens all the time.

And if they really want to seal the deal, then they usually try and wrangle an annulment, unless they’re lucky enough to create a domicile in an estranged land.  And if and when that happens, they’re laughing.  Then they can even remarry, which until that point,  was the only thing that differentiated separation from divorce.

So all we are arguing about here is one thing – that  divorce will facilitate re-marriage. Facilitate NOT bring about. That is the only novelty it will bring about.  Divorce will not be the catalyst for marriage breakdown, for children suffering, for depression, mental breakdown. It will not be the cause of anything we don’t already know.  It will just facilitate a remedy which to-date is also available, admittedly from the back, not the front door.

That is basically it.  We’re essentially arguing about exit via a back or a front door, about semantics.  Annulment is divorce by any other name (oh not legally I know that, God forbid!); separation is as heart wrenching and traumatic as it’s twin brother divorce or twin sister annulment; annulment permits remarriage; re marriage is available to the people who want it badly enough via annulment or overseas divorce.  And on and on it goes.  And we’re still talking about it.

And I’m actually blogging about it.  Yes, there’s always a first time.

*****
Zolabytes is a rubrique on J’accuse – the name is a nod to the original J’accuser (Emile Zola) and a building block of the digital age (byte). Zolabytes is intended to be a collection of guest contributions in the spirit of discussion that has been promoted by J’accuse on the online Maltese political scene for 5 years.
Opinions expressed in zolabyte contributions are those of the author in question. Opinions appearing on zolabytes do not necessarily reflect the editorial line of J’accuse the blog.
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Flights Can Vote

I received an unsolicited email from the Malta Labour Party. Since I’m not sure whether I had subscribed to some form of Labour mailing list in order to keep up to date with the latest missives from that corner of the world I am not sure whether this is a typical PLPN invasion of privacy.

On the other hand the message does not carry a justification as to why I am receiving it: you know the type that goes “You are receiving this email because you are subscribed to [insert name here] mailing list. To unsubscribe please click here” – so whether I am sure or not isn’t really the issue.

Of course the PLPN have no real reason to bother with these courtesies, particularly when it comes to contact details of potential voters – another reason why the flight home business pays them is in order to stay in control. Then when they don’t get their way you get Alfred Sant waving lists of private details in Parliament. So. I will not know how Mr Louis Gatt of the “Ufficju Elettorali, Partit Laburista” got hold of my work email and sent me an unsolicited mail. What I do know is that if it was meant to inform me of anything it sure did a poor job.

Here’s the text in Maltese:

Ninfurmak li l-Airmalta issa qed toffri flights bil-Eur35 minn Luxemburg sabiex ikunu jistghu jivvotaw fir-Referendum tat 28 ta’ Mejju 2011, u anke fl-Advance Voting tas-Sibt 21 ta Mejju 2011.
Sabiex tibbukkja ghandek iccempel dirett lil Airmalta fuq linja apposta 00356 2364 5321
Grazzi
Louis Gatt
Ufficcju Elettorali
Partit Laburista

Interestingly, Louis Gatt is using his own private email to send this information in the name of the PL. But now down to basics. The email informs me that Airmalta is offering €35 flights from Luxembourg. The badly constructed Maltese implies that it is the flight that will vote (toffri flights bil-Eur35 minn Luxemburg sabiex ikunu jistghu jivvotaw)and not the person but hey… it’s the thought that counts.

Then there’s the additional bit of misinformation: “even the Advanced Voting on Saturday 21st May“. Oh No we can’t. There is only one return flight from Luxembourg (and that is one too many) and that leaves on Thursday 26th and returns on Saturday 28th. So no, Louis, there are no flights available for the advanced voting on Saturday 21 May. All we have is flights available for a backward/retrograde/neanderthal/antique system of voting that costs the State money, wastes the voters’ time and gives the PLPN a control mechanism of knowing who does and does not regularly exercise his vote from abroad.

There you have it — Labour & Nationalists….  holding you back from 21st century politics.

VOTES IN EMBASSIES NOW!

 

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Silence of the Nats

There’s an eerie, deafening silence coming from the PN HQ in Pietà. Yesterday night Joyce Cassar of the No to Divorce people did her flipping utmost to try to divorce her movement (tee-hee) from any association with the priests, the nuns, or the church (as she put it not so mildly). And she also did her damndest to underline the fact that she is not working in cognito for any political party. Damn right she isn’t. On the other hand the PN silence of the matter is as politically absurd as Joseph Muscat’s attempt to get his testicle-less Labour linked in some way to any possible achievement of the YES vote without doing anything.

JPO has introduced one of the greatest minefields that Gonzi’s PN ever had to face. The feeble, abstract party line opposing the introduction of divorce pales in comparison with the numerous activists and natural blue-voters who are all out in favour of the introduction of Liz Taylor’s second favourite right (up there with inheritance). Speculation is rife about whether a YES or a NO vote can benefit one or another party. Only in Malta. The PN has taken the best tactical position – it is slowly vanishing into nothingness. Notice. Vociferous party flag wavers and even party sympathisers have gone AWOL. The usual suspects have supposedly “had enough” of the divorce debate. Others, who are all noisy and cantankerously irritating when it comes to womens’ lib and the like have suddenly taken a sabbatical (apart from the random swipe at the levels of nothingness the NO camp can reach).

The PN cannot cope with the fact that the intelligent voter – in a civic sense – would have no qualms with voting YES any day. Not being in control of the critical swinger (who might be scared away from voting AD but is less easily bullied into voting on some misinterpreted principle that only the current batch of neo-catholicmullahs would understand) is very very scary for the PN crowd. They just don’t want to alienate him or her. Thankfully the intelligent voter will also not fall for Joseph Muscat’s false bravado and his empty no-progress brigade. Which means that the less the PN gets associated with any decision the better the chances to keep the status quo.

Hence the silence.

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Warning: Divorce can harm your religion

I am a non-smoker. I have been a non-smoker since November 2008 and it has been a long time since I last craved a cigarette (I almost wrote “craved a fag on my lips” we’d never have heard the end of it…).  Nowadays I find the strong stench of cigarettes repulsive and given the choice between a smoke-free environment and a room full of tobacco enthusiasts I will choose the latter.

My evening habits have changed since I very rarely venture into bars or clubs that oblige me to smoke passively as though my life depended on it. One of the things that has crept into the Top Ten Things I Hate List is using a lift after a bunch of smokers have just exited. Stomach-wrenching stuff. I will still happily puff on the end of a Fiorentino cigar any day though.

It’s all about choice really. Smoking is bad for your health. I was brought up in the eighties and nineties when the crusade on smoking was in full swing and am now living in the aftermath of the politically correct naughties were the final nails in the coffin are being hammered into the cigarette industry. Growing up in Malta I’d expect an institution such as the Department of Health to warn me about the dangers of smoking. I’d acknowledge the use of fiscal measures to disincentivise smokers from indulging in their habit. What I would never condone is the government banning cigarettes outright. It would just not make sense would it?

I mean health-wise it would be a bonus for our society in general and I do know that I am toeing a fine line when I say that the there is a line to be drawn when it comes to government interference in what is essentially a pleasant addiction for many (why not drugs? why not less rules on hunting?). The “harm” issue is also fluid here since the question of harm to the self can be counterbalanced by the harm to others issue when it comes to indulging in a puff or two outdoors or in public places.

Yet we accept the state of affairs. The DH warnings get more and more critical (this year the ugly photos of the effects of tobacco on humans will appear on your pack of 20). The government will tax and tax. But you still have the choice as to whether or not to smoke. It’s a matter of your will – and until the balance is definitively tilted about the social burden and harm of tobacco we will never see a ban on tobacco. The tilt is towards choice.

There. Now think in terms of divorce. Think of the Church as the Department of Health – issuing warnings to the health conscious about the recommended way of life for a longer and healthier living. Is it that hard to understand the difference between a fully informed citizen having the option and choice and one who has been totally deprived of choice by the nanny state that thinks it knows better?

Call me presumptuous but I think that someone who willingly quit smoking after realizing the dangers involved is in a much better position than someone who had the last cigarette pulled out of his mouth. From a purely Christian perspective the No to Divorce activists who kick start their reasoning from the “Alla U Gesu ma jridux id-divorzju” perspective should be asking themselves whether not choosing the option of  divorce is the same as not being able to divorce.

I have long gone on record that a christian-democrat politic can comfortably accept divorce legislation as a right in society. Which is why the new Catholic Pro-Divorce movement does not surprise me at all. What does surprise me is how the Nationalist Party has rejected this strand of christian-democracy in the most unqualified of manners.