From an IQ research conducted by scientists Richard Lynn and David Becker, it can be concluded that Malta places 24th out of the 27 EU Member States. Only Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania fare worse than us. But this hasn’t deterred Bulgaria from registering a 20% increase in industrial production last May, when compared to May 2021. Eurostat data shows that Malta registered the largest drop in industrial production in the EU last May: a 4.8% decrease. So, our national average IQ is higher than Bulgaria’s, but whereas Bulgaria registers an increase, we register a decrease in industrial production! Brilliant!
In the meantime, a new survey, called The Expat Insider 2022, has ranked Malta as one of the worst place for expats to live and work in: 43rd out of 52 countries surveyed. To spice up matters, a delegation of MEPs that travelled to Malta in May on a fact-finding mission found that we have a huge impunity problem: everything seems to indicate that the Government will let Joseph Muscat and his two cronies Schembri and Mizzi off the hook.
That’s not all. Malta might very well be a sunny resort, but MEPs consider it a shady jurisdiction. The same MEP delegation stressed that the Maltese Citizenship by Investment programme remains a source of major concern and called for the programme’s immediate termination. The Government seems unperturbed.
Just so that we don’t run away with the idea that these are the only problems the country’s facing, our Government has failed to negotiate with Brussels to avoid higher jet fuel prices for air travel to and from Malta. The effects of this on tourism will be far-reaching, as well as on the psychological wellbeing of those Maltese who need breaks to recharge their batteries. Unlike other countries, we can’t get away by driving along highways. One could argue that we can always travel by sea. But we then realise – as I’ve highlighted in my last two articles – that we mismanage in an unforgivable way the Schengen Agreement: Maltese Customs hassles travellers as if they were crossing an external border whereas the Malta-Italy border is in actual fact a Schengen (and therefore internal) EU border. This goes on despite the highest court in the country having clearly declared that it’s illegal – more than a year ago, if you please. These are serious issues requiring public discussion and Government action. Instead we witness inaction and a false sense of security as if everything were plain-sailing.
Two Mayors have been trying to impose some order in their anarchic localities, apparently without much success. Gżira Mayor Conrad Borg Manche has been trying to get the police and local wardens to help him keep the Gżira Health Centre accessible to the public after what have been termed as “illegal road closures” have made it impossible to reach it. “God forbid,” said the Mayor, “there’s an emergency heading for the clinic because the only way to access it is by driving up a one-way road.” It seems to me the Gżira Mayor has a valid point.
Another Mayor – Valletta’s – is trying to take the bull by the horns and end the disregard for the law that seems to clutter the Capital. News outlets have reported that Mayor Alfred Zammit warned lawbreakers that he’s ready to personally show up on their doorsteps along with the police. Whereas this is truly commendable, I find it strange that the Valletta Local Council has still not reacted to what I wrote a few weeks back about the cowboy-like way in which a restaurant owner and/or his landlord first occupied a pavement with tables and chairs (obstructing the way for disabled people) and then applied to the planning authority to have the illegality sanctioned.
That’s not all. We’re also assailed by long-term problems and our lives made difficult by constant changes brought about by technology imposed on us in the most undemocratic fashion imaginable. Whereas liberals want referenda on breaking up families through divorce, and killing your parents through euthanasia and your unborn children through abortion, I’ve never heard them spend a word on technology’s onslaught on our privacy.
With every day that passes, we have less and less privacy, as we find ourselves increasingly under surveillance by more intelligent technology. Our mobile phones, free email services, social media and other gismos all intrude into our lives to create more accurate profiles and keep our log-books (not for us, but for God knows whom). No referenda are organised to ask us whether we’re happy with all this intrusion – and the younger generations, drunk as they are on liberal fantasies, fail to see how the freedoms once enjoyed by older generations are being eaten away. There are more and more CCTV cameras wherever you look – in public spaces and restaurants, say. We are even asked for our fingerprints to renew our ID cards and passports, as if we’re all criminals.
Enslaved to their narcissistic quest for civil liberties, liberals couldn’t care less about the erosion of our political and economic liberties.
In the past, we could buy our copy of software, and Operating System updates rarely interfered with the operability of that copy. Now, new OS versions make it impossible to use “old” software, forcing us to upgrade the software we use... but at a premium. We now have to rent software, driving some people to think twice whether they can continue with part-time jobs that depend on such software.
Purchase has been replaced with lease; the seller has now become a service provider. A one-off transaction has now been transformed into a relationship of continued dependence. Instead of the freedom of software-users, there’s now the owner-lessee relationship imposed by the big corporations that own and lease (instead of selling) the software.
If your hardware needs to be upgraded (because of a malfunction, say), you have no choice but willy-nilly to have your Operating System updated and this new OS ignores most of your old software and even hardware (even if both are still functioning), forcing you to spend more money to acquire user rights and new hardware.
And to top it all, our well-being is constantly threatened by the food industry that keeps adding sugars in all of our food, causing obesity, type-2 diabetes, and fatty liver disease. Even in children!
We are never asked if we want sugar in the food we buy at the supermarket. Never! It’s a decision somebody else has taken for us. “My body, my choice” has no currency in the supermarket. It’s your body but the food industry’s choice! And you even pay for it!
Just to put things in their proper perspective, scientists say that sugar is even more addictive than cocaine!
And what’s the Government doing? Very little effort, if any, is spent on educating people, even though the best medicine is to teach people not to need medicine.
For instance, very few resources, if any at all, are devoted to teach the public to recognise sugar under its 56 (some sources even say 61) different names. Yes, sugar appears under 56 to 61 different names in our food, and we have no clue, so we end up addicted to sugar... when sugar is a major, if not even the major cause of so many diseases that not only cut our lives short but also cost the State coffers (or private medical insurance) millions in health-related expenses.
The Health Minister was so fast to order a review of the abortion ban because of the alleged need of an imprudent American couple for an abortion, but I can see no similar readiness to deal with the sugar crisis.
And then, the cherry on the cake. A sociologist has linked the nation’s low birth rate to increasingly higher costs in making ends meet. Under a Labour Government, people are finding it difficult to make ends meet and consequently decide to have fewer children. Whereas between 2012 and 2021, despite the population increase fuelled by the inflow of (temporary) foreign workers, the birth rate has plummeted. Malta has now the lowest birth rate in the EU, with an average of 1.14 births per woman.
And with all this going on, for the brain-washed scatter-brained the number-one problem in the country is abortion!
It seems that the Government is either ignoring all these problems or too incompetent to tackle them properly – and what do we get? Abortion! Abortion! Abortion!
Is abortion really what the country needs in this messed-up situation?
Sorry to say, but not even a weasel could be more stupid.
Perhaps that’s why they found that our national IQ is so low.
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Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) is considered by well-meaning Christians as a blasphemous movie. I tend to disagree. I think that given its historical context, it’s a Christian movie, albeit in a convoluted way.
The last temptation is this: Jesus is dying on the cross and Satan appears to Him as a young, blonde girl who tells Him that God has sent His messenger because God thinks that now it’s okay, Jesus can descend from the cross, there’s no need for Him to die. So Jesus – who’s in the throes of death – believes the “angel”, climbs down from the cross and ends up marrying. I’ll skip the more blasphemous parts, as they’re really not useful to the point I want to make.
But then, Jesus suddenly realises that it was but a hoax. He finds Himself back on the cross, accepts His fate as Saviour, and expires, thereby saving Humanity.
Yes, the actions ascribed to Jesus are blasphemous. But the movie has one redeeming aspect (excuse the pun).
In a highly secular world, Scorsese brought to the fore the symbolic potency of the crucifixion. In a world in which a Finnish mother fought a long-drawn-out legal battle against Italy to have crucifixes removed from classrooms (ultimately suffering defeat at the European Court of Human Rights), Scorsese reminded one and all that humanity is saved only through sacrifice.
It’s not important whether one is Christian or not – what’s important is the immediacy and potency of the symbolism of the crucifixion. Jesus went through the ultimate sacrifice – He gave His life to save humanity. It’s a crude but effective reminder that we only save ourselves through sacrifice, through the postponement of gratification, through dogged dedication to a higher goal.
No wonder the liberals are so viciously anti-Christian. In their quest for egotistical fulfilment, liberals seek to sacrifice everybody else but themselves. This is fundamentally incompatible with Christian thinking.
This is why Scorsese’s movie is worth watching. (Apart from the fantastic scene when the Baptist recognises the Christ – but here the reasons are aesthetic not philosophical.)