It was announced that approvals have been issued for the building of a hotel and new residential blocs in the area labelled Smart City. Now, this was going to become the biggest ever future-oriented project established in Malta. All around, it was to have assembled the finest minds in digital research and entrepreneuriship who would then make Malta their leading global hub.
For many years, the political hype promoting Smart City continued to brainwash people. The ways by which the projects were being run (and information about who was involved) stayed opaque till the very end. The funds being spent or the monies that were changing hands... the names of whoever was involved... were smudged out of the picture or simply left unpublished. No promise made was kept.
In the end, the Smart City bubble just folded. But the land that was staked out for the “project” was kept frozen and is slowly being parcelled into “residential” lots, as at Tigne.
It is most strange that no appeals were ever made by the people who today have become well trained in launching such exercises, for a public inquiry into the imbroglio that Smart City always was and is still. The reason why this has happened is hardly opaque: the Smart City project was not launched by the Muscat administration – far from it!
***
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
We are told that cases of domestic violence are not increasing at the rate with which they are getting reported. Still this does not seem yet to be a hard and fast rule. True, probably incidents are getting reported more than used to be done quite recently; but it could also happen, as I suspect might be the case, that indeed violent incidents have become more common.
If so, this would need for research to determine why this could be happening – whether for instance, the wideranging social changes characterising our times could be a contributory factor. Indeed, the roots of this kind of abusive behaviour have clearly long been deep in all societies, including those which believe they are the most developed. One has only to recall how the most popular item in the operatic repertoire is “Carmen”.
***
AFRICAN TURMOIL
The troubles in Niger cannot be simply pegged to Russian “interference”. It is becoming quite clear how dismal have been the outcomes of the presence of Western powers in the real life situations that prevail across the Sahel countries and further north. Poverty has continued to spread. There was failure in ensuring the security of populations. Institutions are not functioning as they were meant to – not least the military structures.
Western powers insist that this happened for reasons that lie outside their control. They gave all the aid they could, by way of funds, preferential trade agreements, military back up for security programmes.
Nevertheless, a substantial portion of the peoples concerned seem unconvinced. Actually, their views go in the opposite direction to what the “West” declares. The Russian presence does not seem to disturb everybody.
When considering the role that the “West” plays in this region, which has often been kept out of the public limelight in Europe, we should not simply consider the state presence but equally and as much, the activities of Western companies (as in mining) which have had a long history of involvement in the Sahel.