The shameful decision by the FATF, for long purported to have been infiltrated, like many other international bodies, by hibernating masonic bugs, to greylist Malta should open many people’s minds. Where military imposition is no longer acceptable, there is, instead, the growing spectre of economic colonialism which, as one would expect, haunts only the feeble, the poor and the small. Those who traded with triggered guns to their hips, today barge in with methodical precision through networks upon networks of ideological brotherhoods, bloodlines and an innate distrust of successful people and nations who make it against all odds.

The Moneyval issue with Malta had long been manufactured into a political weapon here and in Europe regardless of the fact that what shortcomings had been forwarded as needing addressing were actually there for whole decades, including the period since Malta’s hotly-contested accession to the EU in 2004. Locals jabbering over the need for Malta to conform had never shown the same conscience when they formed part of the party machine in power.

But Malta responded splendidly. No Labour government has ever looked away when faced by a new challenge and it did the same this time round with the Council of Europe’s Moneyval episode that eventually ended with a merited golden seal of approval. Hooray and on with the future? Hardly. Then those very same hooded people traversing the corridors of international intrigue and navigating the vast swamps of the world economic jungle ran to the nearest abstract corner sending urgent signals elsewhere. The FATF, an organisation no decent citizen of any decent country really knows anything about (and that sits well with its members, hence the so-called confidentialities, secrecies and other just-don’t-interfere-with-us theatrics that certainly remind you of other secretive organisations around the world) came into the picture.

Now Malta has to regroup, reassess, redo its steps in the hope of doing pretty much the same process it did with Moneyval and address what “shortcomings” it is being told it has to. In the meantime, to hell with the thousands of jobs and families suddenly at risk.

Indeed, one would have expected the United States – and the whole of the EU, for that matter – to object to Malta’s greylisting given they still have noncompliances in contrast to Malta’s nil. Big thank you for welcoming anew US warships inside the supposedly neutral waters of Grand Harbour, I guess.

The same thank you goes to the leader of the Opposition for hinting in his letter to the FATF there was no problem, since “his government” will see to all that when elected, whenever the Maltese people decide to have it elected, anyway. His post-FATF decision to appeal for “national consensus” and unity between government and Opposition sounded horribly hollow after the negative reactions, even from close quarters in the media, to his infamous letter.

                                               

Tender moments

You will notice that the nearer we get to the general election the more smiles and pats on the back you get from politicians of both sides of the Maltese arena. These are tender moments when the mere donation of a few oranges is interpreted as some act of treason by the same vindictive group of spoilers who could not resist fowling a nice, little flower arrangement outside the Parliament edifice that is as beautiful as what was done to the old theatre ruins is ugly.

It is not, of course, a Maltese phenomenon but we must admit we somehow seem to get more of the ludicrous tender moments when it’s like the end of the world depends on whether this candidate or that other candidate is elected/re-elected. Social media has added to the ice-cold fizzle of the whole superficial scene, with politicians who should inspect the beams in their eyes before going berserk about the motes in others.

Nor is it a new phenomenon. As a journalist, I have been covering, in one way or another, general elections since 1971 and not once were we spared those tender, loving moments when suddenly everyone in politics knows you, wants to cuddle your new-born babes, ask about mama and papa, and how’s your problem with diarrhea these days? Democracy at work, the gurus will tell you. Free and fair elections, the orange haters will add. A new page, not necessarily with Bernard at the helm, the flowerpot kickers will point out to those who still bother to listen.

There is a time, however, when the circus has to stop. President Biden is trying to do exactly that in the US, but not with too much success. The Trump spectre is still haunting America and Americans. Watching CNN and Fox News has become a delight, not for extracting breaking news, but for seeing how two big, global cable networks have become political standard bearers that have nothing to teach One News and Net News on this side of the globe. When such stances grow into a national conundrum, the red light is flashing. Unity of thought and harmony of scope are major criteria for nationhood. It is how and why, for example, England, not the biggest of nations, managed to build the biggest of empires and why, paradoxically, it is struggling from within today to understand what the Scots, the Welsh and even the Northern Irish really want.

Polarisation cuts like a knife through a nation’s heart and we know all about it, thank you. It shows in everything else we do, from sporting allegiances and hunting to band clubs and festas, as the late Jeremy Boissevain, the Dutch anthropologist, had analysed so deeply in his “Malta” studies over several years, Saints and Fireworks: Religion and Politics in Rural Malta (1965, 1993) and Ħal Kirkop: A village in Malta (1969).

Then comes a spark, a focal moment, when suddenly everyone is speaking of unity and national pride. This FATF business will no doubt bring out the resilience of the Maltese nation, at least the majority of people of goodwill within it.

                                               

Troubled waters

Last Tuesday, a US Navy guided missile destroyer, the USS Curtis Wilbur, passed through the Taiwan Strait, creating an obvious risk in the region. The Chinese were rightly not jumping for joy.

Then on Wednesday, a British destroyer, HMS Defender, violated the Russian border in the Black Sea, enough for a Russian patrol ship and fighter jet to fire warning shots. In this case, it should be said that the Crimean peninsula is not recognised by the UK as Russian land and still believes it to be illegally occupied Ukrainian territory. Very much like the occupied Arab and Palestinian lands. But they wouldn’t bother Israel with that, would they?

All this pompous Western muscle-flexing is highly worrying at a time when they should be concentrating on the precipitously growing threat from world climate change.