Kristallnacht
17thJune2005, 14:21
Today I read this interesting letter in the Times.Mr.Superstar knows it all,does it all.He tries to portray himself as some sort of new Jesus whereas he is only acting for his own personal hidden agenda that his.....personal wealth and complete influence over maltese society....hence I called him in some previous posting a neo-zionist.
The code of silence
Joseph Bonnici, Rhode Island, US.
Peppi Azzopardi (June 8) has found a scapegoat for the Xewkija murder case centred around a father who isolated his family from society and verbally and physically abused his wife, her sister and his children.
Mr Azzopardi's scapegoat is a Gozitan priest who over 30 years ago, bound by secrecy, was told during confession by the poor wife that her husband was abusive and who allegedly pondered in his reply whether the husband would change once the couple had a child.
How could a priest "act as a counsellor or a psychologist", fumed Mr Azzopardi. "If somebody were to pose as a doctor, criminal action would be taken against him... It is a shame the Curia has remained silent on this issue."
With trepidation, let me take Mr Azzopardi by the hand to the Gozo of my childhood years so that he can understand the context of all this, decades ago.
Way back then, we had no psychologists or trained counsellors in Gozo. So there was no one to go to. In psychiatry, the first psychiatrist who opened the doors to the public was a Maltese professional who would visit Trionfi House in Victoria on Sunday mornings. The early years of psychiatry in Gozo met stiff resistance from the locals. Psychiatry is still a taboo in certain Gozitan quarters.
Back then, psychiatry was squarely associated with Valium due to a lack of less addictive substitutes. The patient would sit in the psychiatrist's office, explain the hell she was going through, and more often than not Valium would be the prescribed solution. Talk to the pharmacies in Gozo and they will tell you how Gozitan housewives, especially those who are now in their 60s and 70s, are Valium junkies, addicted to the prescriptions of way back then.
The courts in Gozo had no teeth. The laws emanating from the Maltese Parliament did not fit when it came to the protection of women from abusive husbands.
TVM was still in its infancy. It hosted no collective educational programmes. There was no opportunity for the depressed and oppressed to go on national television and confess publicly their pain and suffering for the cathartic entertainment of the masses.
Emancipated female role models were also virtually non-existent on the national scene. We had a Barbara from Zabbar who had to put up with a lot of vicious men. But none of them was her husband and she always got a good night's sleep at the end of the day. We also had Gloria Mizzi who would host a nightly television programme entitled Shopping Basket. She would hold out toiletries and groceries, from shampoo to Tal-Bandiera pasteurised milk, as the means for caring housewives to please and placate their husbands. It was all paid advertisements and each and every item held the key to the kingdom of heaven on earth as long as the consumers would buy the advertised products.
It wasn't just psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and emancipated female role models who were in short supply. Dentists too were non-existent. The ambulances were leftovers from the hospital facilities in Malta. What St Luke's rejected, Gozo's hospital accepted.
Mr Azzopardi told us that as soon as he read in the newspaper what the priest had told the poor woman during her confession, "I threw the paper out of my sight in anger". An investigative journalist worth his salt would instead have read on. If he had he would have discovered that the woman was never subjected to cross examination for the evidence she gave in her motherly attempt to extricate her poor son from potential incarceration. The only person on trial was the murdered father, silenced by a gun.
Mr Azzopardi would also have discovered that the most helpful witness for the defence was a priest, Fr Emanuel Camilleri, who was academically and clinically trained in the United States and has been counselling the Xewkija family ever since their plight surfaced to the authorities' attention. On top of all this, he would have discovered that the brothers had informed an attorney about their mounting concern at home but the wheels of justice grind so slowly in Gozo that nothing happened until it was too late.
It is not easy for many families in Gozo to branch out beyond the four walls of their own house and seek professional help for their family problems. The Gozitan culture militates against openness. The culture of omertà suppresses personal feelings. Maltese journalists have been known to make fun at this from these columns, distant as they are from the heart and soul of Gozo. From afar it looks incredible how the Xewkija housewife wouldn't press charges against her husband, how the children wouldn't confide to the school authorities about what they were going through at home. But from inside the same families, it looks incredible how some Maltese counterparts would go on TV and make an entertainment stock of their own family problems, weeping in front of investigative journalists whose worth is measured by TV ratings. From what I understand, the TV hosts seek no professional license for posing as psychologists, social workers or counsellors in front of a gullible swath of society.
Mr Azzopardi blasted the practice of poor housewives "offering pain to Baby Jesus". Suffering is universal. Even the Son of God was subjected to it, butchered beyond comprehension and nailed to two pieces of wood. But Mr Azzopardi has better ideas.
He is a model husband and father who can make the lights shine for those who publicly bear their hearts to him and 400,000 viewers. He is the man the Maltese psyche craves for. Not Jesus and His teachings of love and forgiveness.
The code of silence
Joseph Bonnici, Rhode Island, US.
Peppi Azzopardi (June 8) has found a scapegoat for the Xewkija murder case centred around a father who isolated his family from society and verbally and physically abused his wife, her sister and his children.
Mr Azzopardi's scapegoat is a Gozitan priest who over 30 years ago, bound by secrecy, was told during confession by the poor wife that her husband was abusive and who allegedly pondered in his reply whether the husband would change once the couple had a child.
How could a priest "act as a counsellor or a psychologist", fumed Mr Azzopardi. "If somebody were to pose as a doctor, criminal action would be taken against him... It is a shame the Curia has remained silent on this issue."
With trepidation, let me take Mr Azzopardi by the hand to the Gozo of my childhood years so that he can understand the context of all this, decades ago.
Way back then, we had no psychologists or trained counsellors in Gozo. So there was no one to go to. In psychiatry, the first psychiatrist who opened the doors to the public was a Maltese professional who would visit Trionfi House in Victoria on Sunday mornings. The early years of psychiatry in Gozo met stiff resistance from the locals. Psychiatry is still a taboo in certain Gozitan quarters.
Back then, psychiatry was squarely associated with Valium due to a lack of less addictive substitutes. The patient would sit in the psychiatrist's office, explain the hell she was going through, and more often than not Valium would be the prescribed solution. Talk to the pharmacies in Gozo and they will tell you how Gozitan housewives, especially those who are now in their 60s and 70s, are Valium junkies, addicted to the prescriptions of way back then.
The courts in Gozo had no teeth. The laws emanating from the Maltese Parliament did not fit when it came to the protection of women from abusive husbands.
TVM was still in its infancy. It hosted no collective educational programmes. There was no opportunity for the depressed and oppressed to go on national television and confess publicly their pain and suffering for the cathartic entertainment of the masses.
Emancipated female role models were also virtually non-existent on the national scene. We had a Barbara from Zabbar who had to put up with a lot of vicious men. But none of them was her husband and she always got a good night's sleep at the end of the day. We also had Gloria Mizzi who would host a nightly television programme entitled Shopping Basket. She would hold out toiletries and groceries, from shampoo to Tal-Bandiera pasteurised milk, as the means for caring housewives to please and placate their husbands. It was all paid advertisements and each and every item held the key to the kingdom of heaven on earth as long as the consumers would buy the advertised products.
It wasn't just psychologists, psychiatrists, counsellors and emancipated female role models who were in short supply. Dentists too were non-existent. The ambulances were leftovers from the hospital facilities in Malta. What St Luke's rejected, Gozo's hospital accepted.
Mr Azzopardi told us that as soon as he read in the newspaper what the priest had told the poor woman during her confession, "I threw the paper out of my sight in anger". An investigative journalist worth his salt would instead have read on. If he had he would have discovered that the woman was never subjected to cross examination for the evidence she gave in her motherly attempt to extricate her poor son from potential incarceration. The only person on trial was the murdered father, silenced by a gun.
Mr Azzopardi would also have discovered that the most helpful witness for the defence was a priest, Fr Emanuel Camilleri, who was academically and clinically trained in the United States and has been counselling the Xewkija family ever since their plight surfaced to the authorities' attention. On top of all this, he would have discovered that the brothers had informed an attorney about their mounting concern at home but the wheels of justice grind so slowly in Gozo that nothing happened until it was too late.
It is not easy for many families in Gozo to branch out beyond the four walls of their own house and seek professional help for their family problems. The Gozitan culture militates against openness. The culture of omertà suppresses personal feelings. Maltese journalists have been known to make fun at this from these columns, distant as they are from the heart and soul of Gozo. From afar it looks incredible how the Xewkija housewife wouldn't press charges against her husband, how the children wouldn't confide to the school authorities about what they were going through at home. But from inside the same families, it looks incredible how some Maltese counterparts would go on TV and make an entertainment stock of their own family problems, weeping in front of investigative journalists whose worth is measured by TV ratings. From what I understand, the TV hosts seek no professional license for posing as psychologists, social workers or counsellors in front of a gullible swath of society.
Mr Azzopardi blasted the practice of poor housewives "offering pain to Baby Jesus". Suffering is universal. Even the Son of God was subjected to it, butchered beyond comprehension and nailed to two pieces of wood. But Mr Azzopardi has better ideas.
He is a model husband and father who can make the lights shine for those who publicly bear their hearts to him and 400,000 viewers. He is the man the Maltese psyche craves for. Not Jesus and His teachings of love and forgiveness.