Unless you've been living under a rock, or are terminally blind to the realities of our country, you will know that I am referring to the racists and bigots who believe that violence and intolerance are the solution to a problem that they are not even able to define, such is the abysmal level of intellect to which they can aspire.

And I'm calling them filthy cowards because they slink about in the dead of night to do their cowardly deeds, no doubt with chests swelling in pride at their valour.

To the apologists and to the smug, to the ones who, with a smirk on their face, point out that Saviour Balzan and Daphne Caruana Galizia have been annoying so many people for so many years, and ask why fingers should now be pointed at the racists and bigots, all I can say is "grow up". If you really believe this, then you'll believe anything. Saviour, Daphne and, for that matter, I, have been annoying people for years, true, but it's only since the racists and bigots crawled out from under their stone that the threats have started and started being carried out.

So, my friends, you're either naïve or, in your hearts, you have some sympathy for the snivelling filthy cowards.

Who dunnit?

Let's be clear on a few things, shall we? I'm not saying - and nor are Saviour Balzan and Daphne Caruana Galizia saying - that Mr Norman Lowell and his henchmen are directly responsible for the arson attacks.

Of course, I can't say that they're not the people who set the fires, since I don't spend any time at all with them, but I am morally convinced that Mr Lowell and his side-kicks are not the people who set the fires.

When the actual criminals are caught, and caught they will be, with any luck, they will probably turn out to be a bunch of malcontents, who take their militaristic inspiration from the redneck thugs who infest the States and who think that their cowardly slinking about is heroism of the finest kind, designed to impress their hero, Sir Norman. Some of them might even have delusions of mediaeval glory or be students of some obscure form of martial art.

But this is not to say that Norman Lowell and his ilk bear no responsibility for the current climate.

Norman Lowell has made violent threat upon violent threat against anyone and everyone by whom he feels threatened. He has threatened to string up columnists, bemoaning the fact that there are not enough lampposts. He has suggested that immigrants are shot at sea or left to drown. He has called anyone who works with immigrants all manner of names and made all manner of threats against them.

A plague on both your houses

Mercutio, I believe it was (and no doubt some anorak or other will write in to correct me if it wasn't) had intoned the famous line, the line that anyone who follows the sort of bi-partisan politics with which we are blessed uses from time to time, unless he or she is completely subjugated to one or the other of the poles.

This week, I direct it to Net TV and to It-Torca, both of whom failed to give satisfactory coverage to the journalists' protest and the reason for it last Sunday. It took the Church a couple of days to get off the pot but at least it did, and issued some sort of condemnation, but the party media were abysmal in their failure to point up the events of last weekend in the appropriate way. And just to add insult to injury, on Monday's l-orizzont, facing the coverage, such as it was, of the journalists' protest, on the more favourable (right hand) side of the spread, we were regaled with the face of none other than Norman Lowell, accompanying a couple of columns' worth of his denials and self-aggrandisements.

When confronted with their actions, with the fact that by giving uncritical coverage to Lowell and his ilk they are giving his contemptible views credence, the journalists who write this stuff generally cite freedom of expression and their obligation to report the facts.

What they ignore, either because it is convenient for them to do so or because they know no better (I hope it is the latter even if that would be bad enough) is the fact that Lowell and his like do not have any right to freedom of expression, because they have denied themselves that right by preaching doctrines that deny rights to others that are as if not more fundamental. Saying that columnists should be strung up and immigrants shot at sea renders the person saying it beyond the pale, as I've already pointed out, and it would be well for all to learn this basic truth. And while there is an obligation to report the facts, there is an equal, and more compelling, obligation incumbent on journalists to report the facts in context and without giving the subject of their reporting unjustified and unjustifiable sympathy.

These journalists want to shape opinion, rather than report news, then they should become columnists and leave reporting to those who know how to do it.

While on the subject of shaping opinion, would the ANR, who have just confirmed their delusions of grandeur by announcing their National Campaign Against Illegal Immigration, kindly tell us what it is that they expect done?

Lobbying the EU to take responsibility might be a good idea, but in the meantime, given that the EU mills grind exceedingly slow, what do the ANR want done? Shooting them at sea? Flaming necklaces? Barbed wire on the beaches, while people drown on the other side?

Just as I thought, a deafening silence.

Code words

In the mood I'm in (you don't go to a friend and colleague's house at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning to see the results of fascist viciousness and become full of the milk of human kindness, frankly) tolerance and charity are not going to be among the parameters governing my writing.

I noticed a headline in It-Torca last Sunday morning about how the President and the Prime Minister had washed their hands of The Da Vinci Code. The piece went on to ooze sanctimony and mealy-mouthedness to a degree that almost caused me to lose my breakfast.

The tone of the piece was designed, from what I could see, to use the controversy that a few have stirred up about the movie and the book, both of which anyone with half a brain knows are fictional and therefore not worth more than a passing glance, to try to beat the government about the ears.

Obviously, the paper sees its audience as undiscerning stalwarts of the great unwashed, with the intellect of a particularly stupid stone. The author's agenda, I surmise, encompassed the equation that follows: priests condemn The Da Vinci Code, therefore The Da Vinci Code bad, the corollary to which is that President and Prime Minister do not condemn The Da Vinci Code, therefore President and Prime Minister bad, therefore government bad, therefore Nationalist Party bad: QED.

How predictable

Within 24 hours of the announcement that the government had sold its share in Maltacom for the not inconsiderable price of 95 million quid, all the usual suspects started chiming in with their carping and nit-picking.

I'm not a financial wizard or seer of sooths or reader of tea-leaves, so I won't hazard my tuppence worth on the question. That having been said, from my complete amateur's point of view, it's pretty obvious that shifting a shed-load of shares is a bit different from the dribs and drabs that get traded on our stock exchange. It wouldn't surprise me, then, if a real financial analyst, as opposed to some of the other complete amateurs who have started whining, were to think that the deal wasn't bad at all.

But that isn't really the point, I suppose. As soon as the government does something (which is what it is supposed to do) along come all the Monday morning quarter-backs who, because they have a platform from which to do it, start banging their big drums, drowning out any sensible debate with their cacophony.

Which probably is the point, when you think of it.

And now

And now, as M. Python Esq. had memorably intoned, for something completely different. A reader bumped into me on Tuesday and posed a question: how do you pronounce Newfoundland? He wondered whether it shouldn't be said "New Finland".

A few stabs at Google produced the definitive reply. It's pronounced "Nooufin(d)land", that is to say with a soft, barely stated "d" in the middle and a long "new" up front, terminating in a rather snatched "d".

Don't you feel duly edified?

Sorry to disappoint, incidentally, but we didn't nosh out this weekend, so you'll have to find your own way to the trough. I did threaten to shut down a place because its owner kept scoring against me in five-a-side footy, but it's too good a place, so I won't.

Blow me if my memory isn't failing - we did nosh out, we went to Peppino's in St Julians. The reason I didn't recall straight away was that it was exactly the same as always - excellent food and service - so I wasn't struck dumb or anything.

bocca@waldonet.net.mt