News Analysis

What does losing culture mean to you? I personally think it is a mix of different things coming together and either changing something old into something new or this something old completely dying out. There are probably many different interpretations to essentially the same thing, and I have most likely not thought of or forgotten something that others would find important to define loss of culture. Whatever your definition for this phenomenon is we can all agree that it is happening and it is happening at an alarming rate. Just for clarification change is not inherently bad and keeping traditions alive is not always good. Recently a friend of mine sent me a link to an article written a while back about the loss of traditional songs sung by people living in different villages on Lantau Island, Hong Kong. The article mainly focuses on one village in particular called Shui Hau, where a lot of the elderly people have lived their entire lives and are among the last people alive who sti...

There seems to be a distinct rise in fake passports around the world, with the United Kingdom (UK), the European Union (EU), the United States (US), and many more countries reporting increased use of fake passports to try to cross their borders. Simply googling the phrase ‘Fake Passport Statistics’ will bring up several pages of results, which go back as far as the early 2000’. Here in Malta it seems relatively common for someone to be caught with a fake passport; every year there are a couple of people who get caught with them either trying to sell them to others or trying to use them while either entering or leaving the country. It has become a very serious problem, and it seemingly is impossible to stop those committing the crime. “There is a global racket of passport selling and we’re a part of it,” presiding magistrate Joe Mifsud said. “I don’t exclude the financing of terrorism with this scheme.” My question is what is being done to curb the making, selling, and use...