Catholic sparks

The choice of the the new US ambassador to Malta is "sure to spark opposition in Catholic circles given Malta's strongly pro-life stance" writes Steven Ertelt, editor of lifenews.com:

President Barack Obama has named Douglas Kmiec, the Pepperdine University law professor who has become a key impediment to pro-life Catholics as the ambassador to Malta. The move is sure to spark opposition in Catholic circles given Malta's strongly pro-life stance.

Kmiec became the main Catholic cheerleader for the Obama campaign during the 2008 presidential election and his ringing endorsements of the aggressive abortion advocate drew scorn nationwide.

Kmiec has continued defending Obama despite his moves to force taxpayers to fund both abortions and embryonic stem cell research that destroys human life. And he has come to the defense of Office of Legal Counsel nominee Dawn Johnson, who has compared pregnancy to slavery and is a former lawyer for a pro-abortion group.

He was denied communion last year during a meeting of Catholic business leaders because of his endorsement and repeated campaigning for Obama. Obama will nominate Kmiec as the ambassador to the Catholic country that is a small Mediterranean island just south of Italy. The decision requires approval from the Senate, which is expected even though his defense of Obama's pro-abortion views may cost him some votes.

Kmiec has been rumored to be a potential choice for Obama as his ambassador to the Holy See, but Obama appointed Catholic college professor Miguel Diaz, who reportedly is pro-life but has compromised his views by backing Obama and others. Some say Kmiec exposed himself as not fully pro-life in an October 2008 article he wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

"Sometimes the law must simply leave space for the exercise of individual judgment, because our religious or scientific differences of opinion are for the moment too profound to be bridged collectively," Kmiec wrote about abortion.

Kmiec's stunning admission wasn't lost on National Review writer Ramesh Ponnuru. Ponnuru says the Kmiec piece is "pretty clearly an endorsement of the view that given the existence of moral conflict over abortion, the compromise position we should adopt is to be pro-choice."...

More from the American Catholic News Agency

Rocky and old

Fresh from playing at Gianpula fields, Moby calls Malta 'rocky and old':

Hi from malta. Wasn't napoleon exiled here? Its an amazing place. Very rocky and old.

And today (well, monday) is the day 'wait for me' is released (except for usa, where its released tuesday, I think). I hope you like it. Well, assuming you hear it. If you hear it I hope you like it.

I apologize for seeming/sounding self-serving, but I'm really happy with 'wait for me'. I don't expect it to be a huge selling pop smash, as its not really a record that big pop audiences will have much interest in. Its quieter and more emotional and more mournful and prettier than any other record I've made, and that's probably why I like it a lot...

Le Vrai Winston - Part 2

Winston Chesterfield takes a critical look at the Valletta dining experience:

Don't get me wrong, most of the restaurants we went to were lovely; Giannini, Malata (with live jazz), Il Horza etc had decent food and plenty of charm. But only one of them had anything like a view (Giannini's view is fantastic), and they felt half done. For a World Heritage Site, a stop off point for have-yacht supremos like Roman Abramovich, a place of beauty and of fame (the harbour has been used in countless blockbuster films), there is precious little in the way of evening dining.

Granted, the winters might be busier but in the summertime there is more opportunity to make money; my hotel was recommending that we go to St Julian's or Sliema once we had exhausted the decent rack of restaurants in the capital. We came to Valletta, I said, to be away from the tack and the glitz of piles like that and yet, should it have come to it we might have had to go.

Valletta is grand and important enough to tempt all around to make a diversion, a special trip for a restaurant...British, French, American and Italian tourists are vain and expect to get value for money - a great view, atmosphere or particular elegance means they will easily compromise on price. It's a shame to use a dull movie quote, particularly from something so prosaic and Hollywood like Field of Dreams but it is so, so relevant: IF YOU BUILD IT THEY WILL COME.

Le Vrai Winston - Part 1

Winston Chesterfield form Westminster, London writes about his recent visit to Malta:

I have just returned from a short break in Malta with Victoria. We stayed very near to Valletta - which is rather culture rich, cuisine poor - but the scenery more than made up for the lack of fine dining. It was very convenient to get from Valletta to other parts of Malta and we made many day trips - to Gozo and Comino, Naxxar, Mdina and Vittoriosa. The island being rather small, we managed to get rather a lot in and still thoroughly enjoy our relaxation time by the picturesque pool..

Valletta and Floriana are rather nice but the suburbs are nasty, unkempt and disappointing places that are in urgent need of a facelift. Peculiar trade shops (why are there so many car workshops?) that have been closed down for years, 19th century doorways filled in with breezeblocks and horrible businesses/buildings that came with the boom of mass tourism are an embarrassment to an otherwise rather grand part of the world..

The days of the grand tour really are over and Noel Coward was right - the wrong people do tend to travel. Terrible attitudes (incessant cackling, grunting, bravado), terrible clothes (clam diggers, flip flops, tank-tops) - terrible, terrible embarrassment. What I did notice was that the French and the Italian tourists grow out of such immaturity ('Look at 'im, in his ****ing bow tie) - the English, sun-burned, coarse, drinking, disgusting and depraved - do not. That we should be known as a land of gentlemen, on that evidence, is absurd and frankly laughable...

Getting friendly in Malta - Part 2

Sandra Martin says modern Malta is more urban than rural:

So after tromping around Valletta and making a day trip to Mdina, the old capital of Malta - a medieval town often called the Silent City because of its maze of interconnected alleyways and corridors - we needed a break and decided to take the ferry to Gozo, the second largest island in the Malta archipelago.

Gozo is countryside: fruitful but rugged with a stunningly beautiful seacoast. Legend has it that Gozo is the Isle of Calypso, the nymph who detained Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. He renounced the charms of the place after seven years, but a modern visitor could well have more trouble doing so. Even though there has been talk of building a link to the main island, most residents seem relieved that the plan has been shelved because of costs.

And so, having spent a night away, we kept, more or less, to our "fish rule" and returned to our friends recharged with fresh stories, an abundant supply of Maltese wines and an invitation to dine at an upscale restaurant. Before we climbed into the back seat of the taxi that was taking us to the airport, we gave our friends a copy of Margaret Atwood's Payback: Debt as Metaphor and the Shadow Side of Wealth, by way of a promissory note. And on the flight home, we decided to renovate our guest room. You never know when friends will want to visit.

Getting friendly in Malta - Part 1

Writing in Canada's Globe and Mail, Sandra Martin writes about her week's stay in Malta:

Good friends moved to Malta recently as refugees from supposedly idyllic southern France, where they had been reminded once too often that bureaucracy is a French word. Malta seemed an ideal address - still Mediterranean, undeniably beautiful, richly historic, with recognizably English laws and an amicable tax scheme for expatriates - but they longed to share their discovery and, more important, have their prescience applauded by others. Come and visit, they entreated.

Malta promised a respite from the depths of a Canadian winter and a global recession, so we arranged a week's stay...But how could we maintain our "good" guest regimen on a tiny island in the middle of the Mediterranean? Malta, an archipelago 90 kilometres south of Sicily, about 300 kilometres from North Africa, consists of three main islands - Malta, Gozo and minuscule Comino (an offshore underwater paradise for scuba divers and snorkellers) - with a total land area of just over 300 square kilometres, about half the area of Toronto.

And to complicate matters, our friends, kindly souls, insisted that they would chauffeur us around, as there were still plenty of sites that they had yet to explore. To demonstrate the seriousness of their stricture against rented cars, they picked us up at the airport.

The ideal times to visit Malta are spring and fall - perfect for any number of sports (golf is good) and particularly for swimming and snorkelling. But in the winter, Malta can be rainy and cool. The temperature didn't deter us, as we are not sun worshippers and can think of nothing worse than a Caribbean solar broil on the beach. We quickly learned to carry a pocket-sized umbrella and to wear jackets or heavy sweaters while walking and exploring...

European Council June 2009 - Day 2

The European Council has welcomed an initiative for the co-ordination of voluntary measures for the settlement of migrants starting with a pilot project for Malta:

..Speaking to journalists at the end of the two day gathering of 27 heads of Government of EU member states, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi expressed satisfaction at the direct reference made in the Presidency conclusions to a pilot intra-community voluntary relocation programme for Malta that is intended to ease the immigration burden.

When asked by MaltaMedia about the refusal of some member states to accept an obligatory re- settlement of migrants from Malta, the Prime Minister acknowledged the fact that some countries are unwilling to commit themselves and are only prepared to accept voluntary measures for the internal reallocation of beneficiaries of international protection.

The European Council, in its conclusions, also underlined the need for strengthened border control operations coordinated by FRONTEX and called for strong action to fight effectively against organized crime related to the trafficking of human beings...