Some people still don’t get it. They expect me not to write about exclusive-male groups that cosplay history and build covert networks to extend their political and economic power because Simon Cusens is a very nice guy.
I’m not in the business of making friends and pleasing people, and if I were, I would be running a bar or a sex business. I’m not in the sex business and I don’t have a bar. I’m sorry if I disappointed you.
Freemasonry is a cover for an extension of political and economic power, mostly done covertly, illicitly and illegally.
Here’s an obvious and evident case of how totally inappropriate these groups are. Aleks Farrugia, is a government director within the Ministry of Education and also a member of Simon Cusens’ freemasonry club. Aleks is supported by his fellow freemasons with donations and funds for his books, art and theatre, but what does Aleks give them in return? Aleks is also a member of the National Book Council and he has successfully been able to obtain a column in the Times of Malta while presenting himself as an author without even disclosing that he is a government director, let alone disclosing that he is a freemason.
Mr Camilleri, I’m not sure this is all valid, fair or worth your trouble. Perhaps its worse as it misdirects attention. I seriously doubt individuals who want to team up to curry favour or advantage wait to become freemasons. For example from what we have seen the exclusive PL executive committee is better at doing this then any lodge. If I was into trying to get something out of Malta’s by far biggest customer which is government I have a better chance working my way up from my local kazin all the way to mile-end. Same goes for PN once they get a chance for government.
Indeed I think personally that exclusive “secret” clubs which after all are not really that secret appear to become sort after post middle age and after becoming successful. Perhaps you can argue quite correctly that this is the point when more mature, business savvy and experienced individuals start to hog the cream at the top. Yet I dont see how especially on such a small island these few hundred millionaires (perhaps) need an actual club to get together in the first place. I’m quite positive and I stand to be corrected that none of them need a club to know what the rest are up to at any point in time. And if their interests overlap its as easy as a phone call to get in touch. Am I making sense?
What really worries me is that when we start to hound certain groups we alienate the public from where the real problems are which currently is government itself. Its like we give the public something to blame for their own stupidity in how they vote. After all no club is forcing their hand.
I’m saying this because its the same argument that I find so fallacious when faced with ultra feminists that insist banning prostitution which does nothing but drive sex workers underground and make them more vulnerable. Their excuse is its human trafficking when in reality the biggest problem by far of human traffic is enslaving children and immigrants working 24/7 for pennies. Please feel free to tear into me if I’m saying anything out of place here. I do appreciate your meticulous dissection and clarity of thought on social matters.
You are right. Something tells me it is all very convenient to dump all of this country’s ills unto the freemasons. They are a kind of convenient scapegoat. As if the likes of keith Schembri and Joseph Muscat along with their counterparts in the opposition meet in formal lodges! this is distraction A1 – a convenient smokescreen to divert attention on who’s really behind the mafia state.
It must also be pointed out that Aleks Farrugia is a very bad thinker.
I personally knew nothing about the man before his column started appearing in the Times of Malta. His first article immediately struck me as odd because it had such an obvious misunderstanding of history and economics. I thought the man is just a flash-in-the-pan reader who sent in an article for the newspaper to print when it is a slow day. Imagine my horror when it emerged that, not only will he have a regular column to spew his nonsense, but he is actually an academic working at the University of Malta teaching, of all things, a course in ‘Critical Perspectives’.
In a column published on the 21st of February, 2023, he argued, I kid you not, that “there is no automatic right to an opinion – that right has to be earned”. Earn it from whom? Him? The Labour Party? According to Mr Farrugia, only the “right to stupidity” is “automatic, inalienable and uncontested”.
What dangerous, shocking and muddled thinking (that would make Xi Jinping so proud). I cannot believe the University of Malta is giving the man a platform to authoritatively spout this rubbish to minds which are supposed to be improving their thinking process.
https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/critical-thinking-university-aleks-farrugia.1014798
You are right of course. Nobody has exclusive right to say who should or should not hold an opinion. An opinion is just that after all and it is distinct from substantiated and deductive reasoning. One thing I did get from reading his opinion anyway. That he has not earned my respect. Its clearly written by a conceited self-referential individual.
Evidently you know nothing of freemasonry and prefer to insult something you do not know rather than learn about it. Aleks like many other freemasons is a very talented artist who i had the pleasure to know and any appointment he has is simply because of his talent and not of any connections he made with freemasonry. Freemasons is NOT about taking advantage of contacts and while evidently people in it talk and make friendships, this is the same like any other club group of friends, or association. Are there criminals in freemasonry? maybe so.. but no freemason is a criminal BECAUSE he is a freemason or is interested in freemasonry for criminality. This is totally the opposite. freemasonry is about being integral and seeking to be better versions of oneself. Check your facts Mark, as lately you have been more interested in throwing mud then practicing your “journalism”
Delusional and also categorically false. But my reply deserves a post on its own, so will write it later.
You may know Aleks from the freemasonry club, but I have known him for longer. As soon as Labour entered office Aleks decided he wanted to get rich and did everything he could to do so, especially getting high paying jobs he would have never chosen to apply for hadn’t he was greedy. And in fact, he joined the freemasons when Labour entered office, just like many other Labour opportunists did.
Is this THE Aleks Farrugia, of those Sunday-morning editorials whose train of thought made following a bat in a blackout a dead cinch by comparison?
Where, in their baresst-of-bones simplicity, sentences unfailingly had an acre of flowery verbiage separating subject from predicate.