Last week, with minimal coverage in the media, including Malta’s, the European Parliament passed a resolution which advocates controls on the traffic in rare minerals exported from zones in Africa where conflicts and war prevail.
Such minerals are used in sensitive industrial processes and can be very expensive. Contraband in them is helping to finance armed militias specializing in murder and rapine. The intention is to halt the importation into Europe of minerals procured via contraband channels and so deprive militias of the funds that serve to finance their operations.
Some observers claimed that new controls on trade in minerals could trigger a scarcity of supplies as well as increases in the production price of materials that are vital to the defence and communications industries of the West. However, the wars and violent upheavals in Africa are provoking huge problems, among which a surge in irregular migration.
The risks of provoking scarcities and a rise in production costs are well worth taking.
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Mega projects
For as long as one way or another, I’ve been following Maltese politics, mega public or private projects often featured in discussions. About them many promises would be made and they would give rise to spectacular controversies. Some projects were implemented, others not. Here are some.
During the sixties of the previous century: the Valletta entrance; the Rambler project to assemble cars; the development of Santa Maria valley in Mellieħa; the construction of a new University at Tal-Qroqq.
In the seventies: a runway for jumbo jets; the setting up of a shipbuilding yard; Air Malta.
During the eighties: the construction of a transhipment port at Marsaxlokk, and later of a power station in the same area.
In the nineties and the following decade: projects to build luxury ”villages” at Chambrai, Gozo, at Portomaso and at Tigne; a terminal for cruise liners; a new hospital at Tal-Qroqq; again, the entrance to Valletta; Smart City.
One would have expected that on the basis of these experiences our society would have developed a method by which to consider and evaluate mega projects in a rational and objective manner.
This does not seem to be the case.
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Welcoming ways
In Asia too the problem of immigration has again become acute – risking their lives, boat people have been leaving their homes for other lands.
This time it wasn’t Indonesians journeying to Australia but Islamic Burmese fleeing to Indonesia. And as far as I can gather, Indonesians reacted to this development in a way that was hardly different from how the Australians had dealt with the immigrants approaching their shores.
Both preferred not to let the immigrants come in and did their best to shove them back, despite the humanitarian crisis this would cause.
No population finds it easy to accept and welcome the arrival in its midst of a crowd of foreigners. It never was easy.
In past centuries, such movement of populations would happen as the result of an invasion which would generally then conclude with the genocide of the losers. That’s what happened to the American ”Red” Indians and to the aborigines in Australia.