I see that the self-declared Maltese patriots have expressed disappointment at the low turn-out for their Valletta activity a weekend ago, during which some of them (how many more than “some” were there?) sadly and unfairly turned on a member of the media who was simply gathering material for his television programme. They based their calculations on the number of people – 10,000 – they claim to have joined their anti-immigrant movement in recent years.

I honestly cannot reconcile the idea of a patriot with someone whose sole intention seems to be resisting the integration of free-thinking men and women from different backgrounds and cultures desperately seeking a better future for them and their families. Pretty much what the Maltese, Italians, Slavs, Greeks, Portuguese, and so on, were allowed to do in places like Australia, the US and other melting pot nations.

I am as much a patriot as I am an internationalist. The idea of a jingoistic society trying to bite its own tail no longer makes any sense in a globalised world, which is why the dilemma facing the European Union over the current refugee and immigrant crisis has turned into a staggering melodrama threatening its very existence. Like it or not, this conglomeration of European nations is the answer to globalisation with all its advantages and disadvantages, as it acts as a buttress against the horrific events of merely 70 years ago.

It is with this in mind that Europe of both the West and the East needs to tackle, rationally and effectively, the conundrum it has found itself in for its sins of the past – colonialism and imperialism – and the recent past – military interventions in places like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc by way of appeasing ludicrous American projections.

This business of patriotism and patriots, mostly in Eastern Europe, this idea of electric fences and armies securing their frontiers, only show that their EU membership was not only premature but also ill-conceived. Thank goodness Brussels has been dragging its feet on the issue of Turkish membership! I say so not on the basis of religion, but on the issue of what a European mentality is all about.

In tiny Malta we have this even tinier group of people making immigration a national predicament, in stark contrast to the present government’s undoubted success in convincing the EU bigwigs to take into consideration the size of territory, population and economy in their estimates of how many refugees and immigrants each member state takes, as their mandatory share, from the thousands of forsaken human beings daily flooding the borders as they flee from war, death, hunger and destruction. It is an argument that Malta has been using for several years and it is good to now finally see it being applied as a rule.

Incidentally, poor Jeremy Corbyn, the new Labour leader in the UK, was lambasted and almost accused of treason in the past few days simply for having preferred to remember the war dead by standing in silent tribute rather than singing God Save the Queen. He was treated the same way as several footballers in Europe who are not shown singing their national anthem before a harmless international game, not the Battle of Waterloo.

Does it mean Corbyn and the tight-lipped footballers are not patriots? Of course not! For different reasons, many of us are not given to singing in public, be it in church or a soccer stadium. I did try, once, West Ham’s “Bubbles” at Upton Park, but got so many horrified Cockney looks from all around me that I gave up immediately.

On a more serious note, I have never sung our Innu Malti in public, which I consider to be a misnomer in this day and age, but I still respect it because it is, after all, what we have. To sing it does not make you a patriot, not to sing it still entitles you to being a patriot, but not of the anti-immigration ilk.

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Compare if you like

Perhaps the most negative side of globalisation is that which concerns people’s health everywhere. The world, before the process of globalisation, already had its multi-nationals limiting or flooding, depending on their assessment of the market, supplies of highly-successful medicines and drugs to make sure the profits keep growing. I distinctly remember the case, many years ago, of a major Swiss pharmaceutical company which ended up sacking one of its top executives, a brave Maltese as chance would have it, for blowing the whistle on its illicit methods.

With globalisation, such occurrences have been on the increase, even if its advocates had claimed the process would help companies from developing nations to gain a foothold in the world-wide business. In Maltese we say “il-ħuta ż-żgħira qatt ma kielet il-ħuta l-kbira” (crudely translated: the small fish never ate the big fish), and the maxim has been well and truly proved correct.

At a time when Malta has finally been able to eradicate its perennial “out of stock” list of state-funded prescribed medicines and drugs while simultaneously expanding the choice on that very list, the world medical community has been outraged by a 5,500 per cent price hike for Daraprim, after a big New York-based pharmaceutical company purchased the patent for it. The drug has been on the market for over 60 years, and can be essential to certain AIDS and cancer treatments.

Turing Pharmaceuticals raised the price of the drug from $13.50 to $750 per pill in just over a month after buying the rights for the drug from Impax Laboratories. The drug is used to treat toxoplasmosis, the second most common food-borne disease that affects patients suffering from AIDS and cancer. It has been produced since 1953 and is on the WHO List of Essential Medicines... but who cares, global companies need to make bigger profits still.

Several organisations and institutions such as the Disease Society of America and HIV Medicine Association have publicly demanded, unsuccessfully so far, that the company reconsiders the new price on the basis that “this cost is unjustifiable for the medically vulnerable patient population in need of this medication and unsustainable for the health care system”. Needless to say, patients in Africa, South America and Asia can wait.

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Fundamentalist approach to reality

Still in the US, there seems to be no end to the growing list of social and religious anomalies and discrepancies. The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan recently demanded that a Catholic hospital carry out a sterilization request from a pregnant woman with a brain tumour. Incredibly, the hospital denied the request on religious grounds.

The fight began when Jessica Mann, who expects to deliver her third child next month, was told by her doctor to make sure that she did not get pregnant again because of her pre-existing brain tumour. Mann decided that while she was under anaesthesia for a Caesarean section, she would have a tubal ligation, a procedure that prevents further pregnancies.

Surprised and understandably upset, the pregnant mother sent a letter to the hospital through the American Civil Liberties Union threatening legal action, expressing anger at the fact that they can disregard medical issues for their religious beliefs.

In 2009, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a set of ethical and religious directives for Catholic hospitals that bar the institutions from promoting contraceptives, providing abortions or doing procedures with no other intention but to sterilize the patient, such as a vasectomy.

There is only one way to describe this – it is a fundamentalist approach to the reality of things human. On the other hand, I still cannot understand why Mrs Mann didn’t simply switch to another hospital where such religious codswallop is ignored.