Nuit Blanche 05
Tfakkarkom f'xi haga dit-triq nies?  ¶ 2:30 AM 4 comments

  The Spanish Enclave of Melilla I predict that this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back and that it will be Europe's Tipping Point...

SEGUNDA ACCIÓN DE ESTE TIPO EN 24 HORAS

Otros 500 inmigrantes protagonizan un nuevo asalto a la valla de Melilla
Decenas de inmigrantes, tras la avalancha de esta noche en Melilla.

MELILLA.- Alrededor de 500 inmigrantes de origen subsahariano protagonizaron la pasada noche un nuevo asalto a la valla fronteriza que separa Marruecos de Melilla, según fuentes policiales. Entre 120 y 200 han logrado su objetivo y han entrado en suelo español.  ¶ 9:42 AM 0 comments

  Just Chill (in Brussels), 2 Brussels

Diehla l-moda, l-aktar fost in-Nazzjonalisti li biex tkun ‘trendy’ trid taghmel zjara qaddisa fi Brussels. Qabel, il-moda kienet Sqallija u imbaghad saret Ruma. Issa Brussels. Uhud minn dawk li marru jahdmu hemm digà ddejqu. Iddejqu minhabba t-temp ikrah li hemm u minhabba l-fatt li Malta kellhom hajja ahjar. Il-pagi li qeghdin joffru lil hafna minnhom m’humiex impressjonanti. Hemm dawk iz-zghazagh li ghandhom professjoni. Jekk ma jidhlux sew fil-professjoni fil-bidu tal-karriera taghhom, l-aktar parti iebsa, jibqghu ma jaqbdu qatt fil-professjoni.

l-Avukat Reno Borg
l-orizzont, 28 ta' Settembru 2005  ¶ 4:37 AM 5 comments

  Let's Get Political, Political The Maltese blogging scene gets very political from time to time and its fave topic appears to be how to rid poor old Malta of its MLPN Scylla and Charybdis. This is sometimes presented as doing Politics Differently or doing New Politics. As I see it, its real value lies in the fact that a bunch of young, well-read geezers are showing that political discourse can be engaging, analytical and free of tifoseria-style knee-jerk reactions and allegiances based on expected personal gain . Whether Jacques and Mark and Immanuel and Antonio agree on the way forward is not really the point. What I enjoy about this development is that an interesting exchange of ideas (and ,why not, ideals) is gaining ground in the open, challenging the status quo and more importantly, not allowing the usual suspects to entirely hog the scene. This last observation may be a bit of an illusion but I'd like to think it's not.

I may also be deluded into leading myself to believe that if this exchange of ideas gathers momentum, we may end up with a richer form of discourse than is presently the case. Maybe not a political revolution but certainly a welcome evolution.

Compulsory reading for anyone interested in this Modern Politics Course is Rohan Candappa's The Curious Incident of the WMD in Iraq. Here are two passage from it to whet your appetite:

1)This is an Analogy that Alistair thought of:

Elections are a bit like The World Cup. But a World Cup in which the England team gets picked by someone who in the years between World Cup tournaments isn't actually interested in football, and doesn't go to matches, or even watch it on TV, but just because they know the music for Match Of The Day they think they know what they're talking about.


2)But changing the name of an Institution Steeped in As Much History as the Labour Party was not a Decision We Took Lightly. Here are some of the names we thought about:

Improved Labour
Labour Plus
Laboure
Labour Moderne
Labour!
Totally Labour
Everything You Wanted From Labour But Were Afraid to Ask
We're Labour, Are You?
The People's Labour
Your Labour
Your Labour Because You're Labour
Labour And You
It's a Labour Thing
Labour, Labour, Labour!
Consignia
I Can't Believe We're Not Tories

But in the end we chose New Labour.   ¶ 4:42 AM 0 comments

  A Woman's World After J'accuse exclusively covered Miss Italia 2005, some semi-sordid facts have surfaced about the winner of this year's contest. Edelfa Chiara Masciotta, described by J'accuse as Miss Normality, appears to be a tad more saucy than that. Photos have been unearthed which show Miss Masciotta sporting black fish-net tights, incredibly short skirts and posing in a way "incompatible with the standards one would normally expect of a national beauty contest". The facts date back to 2002 when Miss Masciotta took part in, and actually, won Miss Grand Prix 2002. (source La Repubblica)

An Italian blog also relativises the whole affair (we must point out at this stage that J'accuse sung the praises of another contestant - a certain Anna Munafo' - describing her as a Penelope Cruz lookalike. Miss Munafo' also attracted the curiosity of a certain Twanny Maqluba who came out of his intellectual hide-out in Qrendi to pronounce the immortal words "Mmmmmm boooooona!", much to the chagrin of the international feminist movement. We must also point out that J'accuse is a fervent Juventus fan)

Le news sono che la n.2 Anna Munafò è stata scelta da Giletti per Domenica In e che a febbraio inizierà a girare un film con Stefano Reali, insomma mi sa che alla poverina non è andata poi tanto male... invece a Edelfa toccherà la pubblicità con Del Piero nel migliore dei casi...   ¶ 9:52 AM 4 comments

  Real Man's Cooking It's the only type of cooking a real man will do. When a man volunteers to do the BBQ the following chain of events are put into motion:(1) The woman buys the food.(2) The woman makes the salad, vegetables, and dessert.(3) The woman prepares the meat for cooking, places it on a tray along with the necessary cooking utensils and sauces, and takes it to the man who is lounging beside the grill - beer in hand.Here comes the important part:(4) THE MAN PLACES THE MEAT ON THE GRILL.More routine....(5) The woman goes inside to organize the plates and cutlery.(6) The woman comes out to tell the man that the meat is burning. He thanks her and asks if she will bring another beer while he deals with the situation. Important again: (7) THE MAN TAKES THE MEAT OFF THE GRILL AND HANDS IT TO THE WOMAN. More routine.....(8) The woman prepares the plates, salad, bread, utensils, napkins, sauces, and brings them to the table.(9) After eating, the woman clears the table and does the dishes. And most important of all:(10) Everyone PRAISES the MAN and THANKS HIM for his cooking efforts.(11) The man asks the woman how she enjoyed "her night off." And, upon seeing her annoyed reaction, concludes that there's just no pleasing some women....

Happy INDIPENDENZA to all the Maltesers. Living so far away from the action (and having had to slog through a day's work) I almost forgot!   ¶ 9:13 AM 4 comments

  Burden sharing and other buzz words He thanked the Dutch government for their offer to take and accommodate some of the immigrants and also applauded the Czech and British governments for their offer of burden sharing.

The PN leader referred to the recent completion of 16 kilometres of arterial roads, which demonstrated the quality of life under a Nationalist administration.

Can someone please explain why we keep on calling this one-way affair "burden sharing" and whether the pompously - named "Sixth Financial Protocol" (splayed out over all the billboards) which made these roadworks possible is more than a cash hand-out from the Italians?  ¶ 2:00 AM 0 comments

  Just Chill (in Brussels) Il-Maltin fi Brussels jinhassu sew issa. Ma tmur imkien li ma tiltaqax ma’ xi hadd jitkellem il-lingwa taghna. Id-differenza hi li meta jigri hekk tiehu gost u tieqaf titkellem. Ezempju pjuttost gustuz: meta f’Malta tkun f’xi restorant u fuq il-mejda ta’ ma’ genbek ikun hemm xi ministru, issellimlu. Jekk jigri l-istess fi Brussels, tqum u tmur tkellmu, jekk ma jaghmilx hekk qablek.

Michael Parnis, Deputat Segretarju Generali tal-GWU
l-orrizzont, 16 ta' Settembru 2005  ¶ 6:39 AM 6 comments

  "Qbilna ma' Fredu!" (ghal darba)... Weekly Poll fuq il-website tal-PN (statistika 14/09/2005, 18h30)
Taqbel ma' l-Alfred Sant li l-interess nazzjonali jigi qabel id-drittijiet tal-bniedem?
Iva
91%
Le
8%
Ma nafx
1%
Total Votes: 512

NB: no doubt, this might have been hijacked (by Lowell supporters?). But you can't exclude that it wasn't. The plot thickens.  ¶ 9:26 AM 5 comments

  Nothing new? F' artiklu f' le monde diplomatique ta' Awwissu li ghadda, l-awtur mill-Urugwaj Eduardo Galeano, jaghmel "kontribut umli lill-glieda bejn it-Tajjeb u l-Hazin". Jelenka tmien "idetikits" tal-Princep tad-Dlam, (dak ta' denbu twil, dak li m'ghandux halib u jrid jaghmel il-gbejniet), li ilhom maghna sekli shah. Ix-xitan bhala musulman, lhudi, mara, omosesswali, indjan, iswed, barrani u fqir.

M'hemm xejn gdid fid-diskors Lowelljan.

L-element gdid hu biss dak ta' poplu li, fl-izolament tieghu, kellu l-impressjoni li Malta kienet tezisti ghal rasha, u li l-Maltin huma speci ta' "chosen people" nisrani f'nofs il-Mediterran, li f'temp ta' sentejn infaqghatlu l-buzzieqa.  ¶ 4:21 AM 1 comments

  Planet Iceland



  ¶ 1:01 PM 0 comments

  (H)Rajna f'Idejna - the mind boggles While the United States make the unprecedented move of asking for EU aid (reported in l-orizzont today as L-aktar pajjiz sinjur fid-dinja jitlob l-ghajnuna tal-Maltin), Sant can still go it alone. Or can he? It's not entirely clear.

MLP government will tackle irregular immigration problem – Alfred Sant
A new Malta Labour Party government will endeavour to tackle the problems surrounding irregular immigration without needing to depend on others to do it for us, including other European Union countries and Libya, Labour leader Alfred Sant said yesterday. Speaking during an interview on Super One Radio with head of news Miriam Dalli, Dr Sant said that if a new Labour government saw that not enough was being done by Libya and EU member states to assist Malta in its plight, it would do all it could to tackle the problem on its own, without having to depend on others to solve it. Although he did not mention how the MLP planned to solve this problem on its own, Dr Sant said he expected other EU member states and Libya to understand the problems that irregular immigration was causing in Malta, including a great deal of social tension which could possibly lead to racism.  ¶ 6:37 AM 2 comments

  La Possibilite d'une ile Ghadu kemm hareg il-ktieb il-gdid ta' Michel Houellebecq La Possibilite d'une ile.

L-osservatur pastaz u brillanti rega' tfacca.




  ¶ 5:19 AM 1 comments