Keith Chircop, Gżira
Promotion of civil rights and popular dissent
Two years ago Unifaun was forbidden by the authorities to perform a controversial theatre play. Last year, a couple of students were put on trial for writing and publishing a short story about a sexist individual. Last week, some classics by D.H. Lawrence and Voltaire were banned from secondary school libraries and TV programme VIP Xow (by comedy troupe Zoo) was axed from TVM for its satirical nature. Artists are not allowed to exhibit paintings that contain nudity and wearing carnival costumes that make fun of politicians will land you in jail.
One has to ask: What’s next?
Telling us what to think has now evolved into telling us what to say and do. This catastrophe can only stop when ultra-conservatives will cease to be afraid of people who are different from themselves. These bigots perceive such people as unpredictable and fight their fears by imposing their beliefs and rules upon everyone.
Force this equality to take away freedom from thy fellow neighbour and you have weaker antagonists for generations to come. Hence, the reason why we are an object of ridicule all around the world for not having introduced divorce yet. We should be in the streets shouting “I’m mad as hell and I won’t take this anymore!” but, instead, we allow anyone and everyone to stomp on our civil rights as the country falls deeper into disgrace. What will it take?
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L Borissova
Jan 21st 2011, 01:58
Keith, spot on! The thing is, there has been a [purposeful] centuries-old brain-washing process of the masses which will take a few centuries to recover from until a good enough amount of people realise that life is relative and that absolutism especially in religion is in essence fundamentalism, and fundamentalism is fanaticism! Meaning we're no better than the next bomber, kamikaze, terrorist and the like! As a non-Maltese, it's astonishing for me to see so tangibly the capsule in which a certain institution has shoved the brains of this country, the human spirit, the variety of ideas, the innovation. Even though I studied him and wrote about him, I never really thought anything of Nietzsche before I discovered Malta! Now I think he is a darn genius!
@ Joe Zammit The Crusader
Like Pierre Bugeja, I think this [absurd] argument is wearing off. You really need to change the tune is you expect to be taken seriously!
@ Joseph Abela
Brilliant insight! Leaves nothing to add. As long as there are people like you e out there, there is hope!
Andrew Farrugia
Jan 22nd 2011, 21:22
Excuse me, dear lady (from the little i know surnames ending in -EVA, -OVA, are typically female), but are you in the habit of dispensing judgement on various commenters right, left and centre? And with what authority? Excuse my ignorance, but you only acquired a better appreciation of Nietzsche when you came to Malta? Why? Is the one who pronounced that "God is dead" so confined and restricted that he can make sense in the context of a few square kilometers? Besides, you mention the centuries-old stranglehold, brainwashing, indoctrination etc., of the masses: whatever the case it never stopped the great writers, artists, philosophers, musicians etc., from creating great works and masterpieces, unlike the utter bilge of post-modern artists. Take music, for example, can any of today's wannabe artists ever measure up to the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Credence Clearwater Revival? What passes for music today is just crude raw sexually-explicit gibberish buried under the most atrocious cacophony of jarring squeals and screams. I apologise for the trivial example presented, but you will of course understand that i am not intellectually ready to take it up with someone who has studied and written about Nietzsche.
L Borissova
Jan 25th 2011, 14:38
Mr. Farrugia,
First of all, I couldn't care less about your taste in music, as I couldn't care less about anybody else's music in fact. Simply because I believe it's non of my business and that everybody has the right to have their own taste (in anything, that is!). Second of all, excuse me but so long as Mr. Zammit is allowed to be out there crusading, I will just pretend I never read your comment about my right to express my opinion in any way I deem fit and allowed by law. Thirdly, I just love the irony of this: Mr. Who-are-you-to-judge just passed his own judgement and proclaimed that the post-modernists' work is gibberish! Excellent! About Nietzsche, seriously, you wouldn't understand.
What was it that stung you that deeply: Nietzsche's philosophy or my fragile female (Eastern European) persona, I guess both severely demonic in your readily judgemental mind?! In either case, the air around you is so thick with prejudice that I could cut it with a kitchen knife.
Andrew Farrugia
Jan 25th 2011, 15:14
@ Ms L Borissova
Thanks for devoting so much time and space to reply to some of my queries; regretfully, i must confess that i am none the wiser. I would go easy with that metaphorical knife if i were you; you see, knives appear to have the capacity of cutting both ways. BTW do you happen to have ESP in order to be so definitive about the "air around me"?
Keith Chircop
Jan 20th 2011, 18:17
It's harder for the powers that be to control open-minded individuals if they grow in number, so they have brainwashed the masses into fearing them.
I'm afraid the people in the streets shouting “I’m mad as hell and I'm not gonna take this anymore!” would be very, very few.
Joe Zammit
Jan 20th 2011, 10:06
Rights are positive. Divorce is negative, so it is no right. Rights entail duties. Divorce entails no duty (not even to remarry), so it is no right.
The European Convention on Human Rights is reticent on divorce, so divorce is no right.
The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is mum on divorce, so divorce is no right.
Therefore, any argument depicting divorce as a right in view of introducing it in our legislation is flawed right at the start.
Pierre Bugeja
Jan 20th 2011, 13:39
You keep pasting the same statement on every single article, yet your statement is inherently flawed - rights are not only positive. Negative rights also exist.
One example of a negative right would be the right to read the news without being subjected to bigoted nonsense at every opportunity.
Joseph Abela
Jan 20th 2011, 09:55
There are many reasons for this:
- as a country, as an insular society, we are a very double-faced people.
- we do not have real thinkers in this country, and those whose task it is to write columns in newspapers have political agendas that they have to see through - they are not thinkers.
- we do not have real politicians in Parliament, we do not know what real politik is, and we are loaded with crap in Parliament and in the local councils.
- we have a political party in government which has run out of steam and we have an equally-ignorant political party in opposition, without an inkling as to what to do next, to start dreaming about governing the country. If and when it is given a mandate to govern, it will do so because there is no other alternative, and not because people really want to vote for them.
- Since we have idiots in Parliament, certain archaic laws remain in effect. What can you do?
We do not have a proper Rector at the University - we have a good administrator, perhaps, but not a real Rector.