Moviment Graffiti went down to a St Julian's hotel to protest about climate change, taking a makeshift coffin with them. The coffin was designed to impress the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, who are gathered there to discuss whether we should all stop eating beef because the accumulated gases expelled by cows on US ranches are causing tsunamis in the Indian Ocean – and other such tosh.





So it turns out that Malta had the best chief justice that money could buy – and cheap at the price, too, unless, of course, he had been at it for so long that word had got out he was up for sale and so that man Grech Sant wasn't just chancing his luck.

Now the judge has pretty much called him a liar and a perjurer. When delivering judgement, he said that he did not believe Noel Arrigo, a former Chief Justice, but he believed Grech Sant, who went to jail for helping conduct this transaction. So that's what Arrigo's word is worth, and under oath, too: less than that of a convicted felon. So much for all that baloney about three confessors, a rosary ring, trips to Lourdes, finding God, theology courses and giving his bribe money to nuns, because what did he do then to prove what most of us could see anyway, that it's all rubbish? This Lourdes-going, rosary-ring-wearing student of theology with three confessors kissed that cross in court, took an oath to tell the truth, and then perjured himself.

I just can't believe the inanity of those priests who testified as to his good character, values and principles after the judge found him guilty of all charges. I can understand them doing it before, perhaps because they're poor judges of character, but afterwards? Telling us that a man who is about to go to prison for taking drug-bribes when he was Chief Justice has good values and that he is a man of principle? I don't think so, honey. Stick to the confessional, because it's a big, bad world out here. You might get eaten by wolves.

Moviment Graffiti went down to a St Julian’s hotel to protest about climate change, taking a makeshift coffin with them. The coffin was designed to impress the members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, who are gathered there to discuss whether we should all stop eating beef because the accumulated gases expelled by cows on US ranches are causing tsunamis in the Indian Ocean – and other such tosh.

Instead, the coffin impressed me. ‘Earth’, it said on the front, like a crate of drinks, and above that, the Christian cross was painted. Ah, so the earth is Christian and will require a decent Christian burial when it finally pops its clogs because of cows’ farts, long-haul holidays and bad people without solar heaters. Perhaps it’s a good thing that the delegates inside the hotel never got to see that coffin because the protestors were moved along by former police commissioner George Grech, who heads the hotel company's security department. Many of them are Muslim. You'd imagine the word ‘Mediterranean’ might have given the protestors a clue to this, but no. Maybe they think Muslims are buried in coffins (if they think about it at all) and what's more, coffins with crosses on.

Isn't it amazing? Even though Moviment Graffiti is supposed to be really radical – though let's be honest, nobody really radical would haul out that coffin cliché in 2009 – its members are betrayed by their nice-boy Maltese Catholic upbringing. They think all burials involve a coffin and that all coffins come with crosses on. I'm guessing they didn't even stop for a second to think about the significance of that cross when they painted it on, and that what they’re telling us, in effect, is that the earth buried inside was baptised into the Christian religion. All the funerals they've been to have involved coffins with crosses, so what do they know.

Somebody commented drily beneath the online news report of these shenanigans: “I was shocked and disappointed that they put a cross on the coffin, thereby excluding atheist environmentalists and those who may follow other religions. Are these NGOs theocratic organisations? Why did they opt for a Christian rather than a secular coffin? Perhaps they were trying to provoke delegates from Muslim countries and start a religious conflict in Malta.”

No, sir – they're just radicals in clothes laundered by their mothers, who have to be back home in time for lunch.



www.daphnecaruana galizia.com