Did Julia live with il-Botom and her mother, or not? I'm a bit concerned about saying 'her father' because apparently that's libel.
Wait till I tell you the one about Julia Farrugia's father - sorry, he's not her father - and the PN club
I’m so glad that Julia Farrugia made a point of saying that she was nine years old when her father is supposed to have shot at a PN club in Tarxien (something he denies – his word against Ganni Psaila’s, and they knew each other well).
You know why? Because I was nine years old when Mintoff organised a run on the National Bank of Malta and seized the shares from the rightful owners, through violence and intimidation, leading to almost four decades of boasting by the Labour Party that it had created the Bank of Valletta – when all it had done was steal somebody else’s bank and give it another name.
And I registered and remembered everything. EVERYTHING. My grandfather was president of the bank when it happened (his family were minor shareholders) and I didn’t only know that something bad was happening. I knew what was happening because I could understand what my parents were talking about and what all those people who came and went were talking about too.
So I’m assuming that unless Julia Farrugia’s family set-up was even stranger than it seems, and unless she is slower on the uptake than she comes across, then she would have heard her parents talking in the kitchen, bedroom and living-room too back in those days when her father was Karmenu Vella’s driver and people and party clubs were being shot at.
But here’s the thing: if she heard anything, if she knows anything, she’s not going to tell us. She’s going to keep it to herself. Because, thanks to her father, she is compromised.
Faced with a choice between doing her job and protecting her father’s interests, if she knows something that might make things difficult for him, she is going to choose her father. It would be horrible of her to do anything other than that.
Julia Farrugia was nine years old when her father is supposed to have shot at that club. But she was 19 when Ganni Psaila named him under oath. She was 19 when her father denied his accusations and said in turn that Psaila had gone to his house to tell him that he had lied about him (because he would do that, wouldn’t he – it makes a lot of sense).
At 19 you can no longer claim to be unable to understand your parents’ conversations – assuming that her parents had conversations. I very much doubt they would have said ‘Shhhhhh! Not in front of little Julia” when she was 19. She wasn’t even a reporter yet, so they couldn’t even be afraid that she would betray them to – who, Super One?
I’m sorry, Julia, but it’s a little difficult to believe that your father went through all that with Ganni Psaila and police investigations in 1997 and that you never heard it discussed by your parents. If you were living at home with them at the time, you were involved by default.
You know things that your readers don’t, and you’re not telling them because you can’t.
Your father gave the impression when counteracting Psaila’s declaration under oath that Psaila was in the habit of dropping by at your family home for chats. So let me get this straight: you’re saying that you grew up in a house where Zejtun thugs dropped in and you don’t remember?
I remember the people who dropped by our house when I was nine. I even remember who they were, though their faces have faded to nothing. Of course, Julia, you wouldn’t have known if they were people who played with bombs and firearms for fun, but surely you logged their names, when those names were so very odd?
And if Il-Pupa didn’t drop by your house to talk to your father, then why don’t you just tell us? That’s right – because you can’t. Because it would blow your father’s ‘alibi’ out of the water. So you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. You can’t say that Il-Pupa didn’t know your father well enough to drop by. And you can’t say that he did know your father well enough to drop by because you don’t want people to think that seeing your father consorting with thugs was normal for you.
You know, I was just thinking how annoyed a lot of people are going to be with Julia Farrugia’s decision to sue, and especially with her demand (what a nerve) that the cases be heard with urgency. People like Karmenu Vella, for instance. People like Joseph Muscat.
Probably even people like Police Commissioner Rizzo.
These cases are going to reopen the files and the archives on the Ganni Psaila, Karmenu Farrugia, Karmenu Vella, Raymond Caruana, Nicholas Ellul messy business. We’re going to have a reprisal of the whole thing twice over – once in the criminal suit and again in the civil suit – including the bomb in Psaila’s car, his fall down a shaft, and Nicholas Ellul’s protracted ‘trial’ which never was (10 years of waiting until he died).
And because what is said in court is privileged information, meaning that reporters can get it to their readers intact without being sued for libel by assorted crazies, the newspapers will be lining up to take notes. Because by now they must have realised that yes, people are rather interested in what happened then.
They weren’t interested before, but they sure are interested now that Karmenu Vella has been made top man in Muscat’s shadow cabinet and author of the Labour Party’s electoral programme. If Muscat hadn’t made that damn-fool mistake, all of this would have stayed buried.
It’s going to be fascinating for all those who couldn’t put the pieces together over time and distance the first time round. And it’s going to be absolutely embarrassing for Karmenu Vella and Joseph Muscat and their ‘new’ Labour Party.
It couldn’t have happened more smoothly if I had laid a deliberate trap into which Ms Farrugia walked when her father’s ex boss had the good sense not to do so.
But I didn’t set a deliberate trap. I promise. Cross my heart. Really. I mean it.
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You’re a star.
A comet, I would say – or a galaxy
perfect timing
I’ve just checked the Labour Party’s news site, Maltastar, and sure enough there’s no mention of Julia Farrugia’s double law suits.
You’d have thought that given how much they love the Bidnija Witch, it would be the top story. But not a word.
They can’t tell their readers that Julia Farrugia sued The Person Without A Name without telling them what The Person Without A Name said about Julia Farrugia.
And they don’t want to do that, do they.
Halli this blog has a higher readership than Maltastar and they probably read it here anyway.
They still need to play that game of let’s pretend it isn’t happening and maybe it will go away.
IT doesn’t pay PL to mention Julia’s family background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f0K6glgQJw
Julia Farrugia should watch this. The Labour Party and Karmenu Vella know it already.
Julia’s father, a former driver of Labour Minister Karmenu Vella, should explain to her the meaning of this sign.
http://www.google.com.mt/imgres?imgurl=http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_YHubNjdqtIE/SMCP13nqlbI/AAAAAAAACds/gspOZKKJnLM/s400/can%2Bof%2Bworms%2Bahead.jpg&imgrefurl=http://worthlesssayings.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html&h=295&w=400&sz=26&tbnid=vjnRqyeVJOdt4M:&tbnh=91&tbnw=124&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dcan%2Bof%2Bworms%2Bpic&zoom=1&q=can+of+worms+pic&usg=__GlEpSvvPFdGpMbrZ88_GPYcHJP0=&sa=X&ei=52RcTb7DCsWVOoP2kakL&ved=0CCIQ9QEwBg
Apropos of “Il-Botom” and Maltese politics, here’s The Man himself:
“Take care to get what you like, or you will be forced to like what you get.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP1r91UHobk
Jeez, Daphne, here we go again! Last year you wiped the floor with the ‘back of the bus’. Now you are about to derail a whole trainful of idiotic yahoos, Good shit! Love it.
http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2003/12/21/l4.html
My god, no wonder you’re waiting to spit on his grave.
“Naf li din hija kontra l-Kostituzzjoni, jiena nitnejjek mill-Kostituzzjoni, mhux jien ghamiltha, nitnejjek mill-Imhallfin u minn kullhadd.” – Dom Mintoff
..unbelievable
[Daphne – Not to me, because he said it to my grandfather, and I’ve known it since I was a child. It was the first time I heard the word ‘nitnejjek’, when I overheard my parents quoting in disbelief what the prime minister had said.]
That story leaves out the bit where Mintoff told my grandfather and his fellow National Bank of Malta directors “Issa halluni ha’ mmur inbul”, while standing and unzipping his fly.
It is often said that the brain shuts off any unpleasant events from our past and amnesia sets in to protect us from any psychological trauma.
Poor girl, maybe this is what happened to her…
To those Labour readers of this blog, who may take things literally -this is called sarcasm.
Maybe they exchanged in code- typical coversation would be
Il-Botom – Kif inti Barbie
Il-Pupa – Mhux hazin
Il-Botom – Illeja immorru niehdu zewg “rounds”
Il-Pupa – Ideja tajba, fejn tghid
Il-Botom – Tajjeb illi inzuru il-kap u nighdu kelma lill-ohrajn
Mintoff got his bank.
Malta lost its reputation as a safe place for foreign investment for the next fifteen years. The resulting tragedy is history. We were considered a pariah state by the early eighties by all the countries that mattered.
X’jitnejjek.
If my memory is correct, he gave a good number of BOV shares to one (maybe even more) Labour Party Clubs.
Mintoff’s version of a bonus share issue.
The old Labour under Mintoff and his regime committed so many atrocities in the name and for the sake of the ‘socialist generation’ he wanted to create.
The nationalisation of the air and sea ports activities, finance and media enterprises and later on with the control of importation through bulk buying schemes etc., was his agenda from day one when he was first elected an 1971.
The National Bank of Malta case in 1973 involved the coercion of shareholders and was tantamount to daylight robbery of private investment.
Mintoff’s regime massacred emotionally so many Maltese families in the process of converting Malta into a socialist gulag.
Julia and Daphne are children of that damned era in the history of this island. Oh, but there are so many others who like them suffered immense and probably worse hardship.
Mintoff’ has left an indelible legacy which has cursed the fate of the Labour Party. He definitely does not deserve to be elevated and his socialist party, be it in the form of old or new Labour, does not merit to be trusted.
He contaminated a good chunk of this society with his class-hatred agenda.
Say NO to Labour. Never again. Not with those people.
Is Julia going to deny that il-Botom is her father in court? How is she going to justify the libel suits?
[Daphne – Perhaps by telling us that Karmenu Vella is her real father? Who knows. Life is full of mysteries.]
I wouldn’t be surprised with all the fawning she does over him.
I Mean Business – Julia Farrugia
Why Julia? What do you normally mean?
Or is this some quotation you learned in your childhood days?
[Daphne – Well, thank heavens for small mercies. At least she’s not going to use a submachine gun on me (I hope).]
Next time she sees a small fire, do you think she will pour petrol on at again? Really, Daphne, isn’t it boring shooting fish in a barrel!
Actually I do hope that the court upholds the request for hearing with urgency.
[Daphne – So do I. It will be so interesting seeing that whole can of worms opened twice over in the midst of the Labour Party’s electoral campaign, which is well underway already.]
Imma x’inkompetenza meta ssir xi haga minn naha tal-Labour. Il-veru kaz, kif xi hadd darba qal, jirnexxilhom jahraw ghax jinzel wahdu.
Ifthu ghajnejkom l-ahwa – dawn huma n-nies li qed jahdmu biex jiehdu l-gvern fidejhom.
Lanqas biss jafu kif imexxu l-affarijiet taghhom, ahseb u ara kemm ser jittekkiljaw sewwa l-problemi li jista’ jiltaqa’ maghhom il-pajjiz – jew biex wiehed ikun aktar ezatt, kif jistghu johorgu mil-problemi li joholqu huma stess
If there is a fund going, for court expenses, I am more thanwilling to contribute – just a sign of solidarity.
[Daphne – I’m fine, thanks. I don’t go out begging for money from others like Saviour and Roger, when Roger’s rolling and can well afford to finance his own newspaper’s libel suits and fines off the income from Ta’ Gianpula. Kif ma jisthux..]
The spirit of solidarity made me express the fund thing
I’m sure that if Daphne sounded offhand, it wasn’t aimed at you…
What a Catch – 22 situation. As the French put it “Impayable” !
Articles like this, and a myriad of others, about your eternal personal beefs with the Labour party, its supporters, employees and PN opponents in general, do not really help in the already difficult process one finds himself in when trying to take your articles seriously, never mind objectively. Daphne, for the sake of quality reading, please focus on more important matters.
[Daphne – Personal beefs? As opposed to what, exactly – ideological ones? That would be possible if the Labour Party had an ideology, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t even have policies – yet. It’s waiting for Mintoff’s cabinet minister from 1976 to write them. Pathetic. As for taking my articles seriously, thousands of people have been doing just that for 21 years. If you don’t believe me, ask your Labour Party. A significant percentage of its resources and energy is taken up by seeing what it can do to shut me up or undermine me. Difficult, given that I’ve seen out two of their leaders already. As for more important matters, you might live in a different world to the rest of us, but from where I’m standing, it looks like a very important matter indeed that a so-called politically independent newspaper is edited by il-Botom’s daughter who tries to hide the fact, and it’s a far, far more important matter that the government plan for the years 2013 to 2018 is being written by a ghastly fossil of highly dubious integrity from the 1976 cabinet of Dom Mintoff. If you want your sort of quality reading, Saviour Balzan is but a click away. And you also get to watch him splutter. Lovely.]
Why some of them think that your writing has to do with anything personal is beyond me to comprehand. You touch on a subject that stinks all the way up to heaven and the next thing that comes along is slander. When are these people going to learn?
Are you for real? This blog is just about the only place you can get some serious journalism these days. I cannot think of anything more serious than highlighting the fact that in less than 24 months our country may very likely be run by that bunch from the 1980s.
Daphne, please can you do a blog on the bank saga? How long has the case been in trial. Doesn’t Europe have some kind of right to a fair trial within a reasonable period? Is Malta the proud record holder for the longest trial?
[Daphne – My writing about the National Bank saga would be like Julia Farrugia investigating the death of Raymond Caruana, with one difference being that I always say that my grandfather was the bank’s president and that his family were minor shareholders, which some fools take to be ‘boasting’ when what it is is the obligatory declaration of interest. I have only ever written about the takeover of the bank as a personal anecdote – for example, how pleased many people were and how they gloated because the bank was taken away from the rightful owners and now those rightful owners were like them, without a bank. I remember that distinctly, even at the age of nine – the vile gloating. It really taught me some lessons in human nature at an early age.
The experience was terrible for all involved, and I think it is safe to say that none of them – us, I should say, because even now I can barely bring myself to talk about it – ever recovered from it or ever will. It is not the money I am talking about, though a great deal of suffering – unimaginable suffering – was caused to many who found themselves completely impoverished overnight. There were old people who lived on the income from those shares, and who were then thrown onto the charity of others. But money comes and goes. It is the shattered lives that stay. There can never be any compensation for that.
The assumption that ‘posh people’ are somehow subhuman and can be treated like trash because they ‘deserve it’ is one of the grossest evils of socialism, certainly of Mintoff’s brand of it. That sentiment is still right there – look at the way they react to me, for example. It is quite obvious that their beef with me is not that I think the Labour Party is rubbish, but that I’m from a certain kind of family AND think the Labour Party is rubbish. Posh people are acceptable only if they slum it with all that trash in the Labour Party. The reaction wouldn’t have been half as visceral if I’d been working-class or the daughter of a clerk. I’d still have been ‘one of them’, even if I rubbished Labour.
You can also see their perplexity because I don’t fit with their idea of what a ‘posh person’ is (blingy and armed with status symbols, which is how they try to be ‘posh’ themselves when they want to try going up in the world, a la Ronnie Pellegrini and Consuelo Herrera), so they insult me because I’m NOT like that. I’m not interested in status symbols or buying the right thing to be accepted by social-climbing chavs, because harsh as it may sound, I don’t need to be accepted by social-climbing chavs. I’m not Ronnie Pellegrini or Jason Micallef or Consuelo Herrera or Michelle Muscat.
They’ve always reminded me of the crowd of peasants beneath the guillotine – not that I was there, but I imagine that this was the thinking and the behaviour and even the motivation. See, we are powerful now. We can cut off your head. That will teach you a lesson for thinking you are better than us and living in your palace with your servants and speaking with a posh voice.
Our contemporary peasants with pitchforks are now congregating on sites like Malta Today and Taste Your Own Medicine. The ignorance, jealousy, hatred and resentment for the perceived ‘haves’ is of late-18th-century proportions. The strange thing is that I know for a fact that a few of them are ‘haves’ themselves, but still they are jealous of the other perceived ‘haves’ and hate them.]
That kind of hatred of those they perceive as “tal-pepe” is ingrained in them from a young age. The hatred only gets worse as they get older.
Bajd u Laham should know better than to try to ridicule Daphne. Be careful because you might end up with part of your name cut off. Laham bla bajd ma tantx tkun helu.
A very big thank you Daphne. Your articles and your blog are balsam to us who lived through ‘the golden years”.
May the libel suit filed by Julia be heard with urgency. It will be an eyeopener to those who know nothing about them and serve as a warning to those who are thinking of not voting or worse, voting Labour just for change. .
“I mean business”, she said – an unfortunate choice of words, given the accusations against her father.
GHALhekk din l hdura kollha li ghandek ghax miskina matri hux jahasra bil-pulizija ghassa 24hrs ghaqx inkellha taf li jisploduk min din id- dinja ghandek lanzid u hdura.Kont naghmlek mil tal- puliti imma hamalla mill- kbar bhal dawk li tara nferjuri ghalikom.
ghalekk taghmel l arja ghax kieku ma ghadekx tezizti
Mela l-pupa ma kienx waqa fix-xaft fl-1997? Almenu hekk kienet qalet il-pulizija tal-Gvern ta’ Alfred Sant.
What is it with these people that as soon as they see a bit of crap they want to throw it at the fan for a good old splash.
Now look what you’ve done, Julia. You’ve opened up a few old wounds that many of us had blanked out because they hurt and they hurt a lot. Her dad il-Botom, il-Qahbu, ic-Caqwes, il-Pupa, il-Fusellu and the other scum, all of them well known to Karmenu Vella, and Lorry Sant directing helicopters and operations to shoot on us as we were at Tal-Barrani.
Do you know what we were there for Julia? Just for the small matter of exercising our right to hear Dr Fenech Adami speak for an hour or so. We would then have gone back to our cars and buses and left in peace, as we had done on countless other similar occasions. But the scum were not having it, were they?
Did you ever, Julia, perhaps hear your dad gloat with his friend il-Pupa how they they hung on to the Republic of Zejtun by shooting at supporters of the Nationalist Party? Do please let us know, whether it’s a no or a yes.
Bring it on, Julia, so that thousands more will know what really happened in those dark days under Labour. We shall never let you forget the misery the Labour Party and its scum wreaked on this island.
Thank you, Daphne, for your write-ups. Karmenu Vella’s boat was the only one that went in and out at all hours of the night, at least once a week, during curfew in those terrible years.
I know because we lived there and saw it happen time and time again.
What came off his yacht I can’t say, but the size of the boxes sure as hell meant it wasn’t sweets.
Please keep the good work up.
Caroline, perhaps he swanned in and then told Port Control that he forgot – again.
Now I’m really confused. What was he doing landing boxes at the Tunny Net on a regular basis and then claiming he sailed in during curfew in error, and that he only did it once?
Perhaps those boxes contained nothing. He needed them as furniture because Mintoff didn’t pay him a living wage.
The 70s and 80s were truly the horrible years. From the looks of it they are coming back with vengance.
So many people were not proud of being Maltese back then. Labour ruled the country with fear and intimidation. In the last election we saw the children of Labour-supporting parents voting for the PN. I just hope the trend continues.
From the looks of it are coming back with vengeance
Yet another Labourite begging Daphne to write about “more important matters”. In truth, they don’t want her to shut up – they want her to be on their side.
In its own way, it’s a form of unintended praise.
Boy, you’re good. You must be a mind reader. Do you see dead people too?
Being critical of Daphne inevitably makes you a Labourite these days. Otherwordly stuff if you ask me.
“Naf li din hija kontra l-Kostituzzjoni, jiena nitnejjek mill-Kostituzzjoni, mhux jien ghamiltha, nitnejjek mill-Imhallfin u minn kullhadd.” – Dom Mintoff
Mhux anke Joseph Muscat qal hekk fil-kaz tal-VAT fuq il-karrozzi l-godda. Imma dan anzi jghid li hu modern u progressiv.
What did Julia do exactly? Sue Daphne for libel or report Daphne to the police?
Because if she reported Daphne to the police, I don’t believe there is a case because they know exactly what Pupa said under oath. The police are also the ones who know more than anyone else that they investigated and questioned her father.
So on what grounds are they going to investgate Daphne? What they can investgate in this case is whether Julia is really il-Botom’s daughter. But I don’t believe they can without her consent to a swab.
What Il-Pupa said under oath is now filed in the records of the courts, unless the file has grown little legs and walked off.
What do Saviour Balzan and Julia Farrugia have in common?
Besides Illum of course.
Neither is able to mention Daphne’s name in their video shows. My god, they do have a serious problem. I suggest a 12-step programme. Repeat after me: DAPHNE CARUANA GALIZIA.
Is that Kurt Farrugia taking notes?
[Daphne – What, d’you mean that titchy one down below? My, he’s just the right height to kiss ass.]
I remember my father mentioning the saga of The National Bank Of Malta but I forgot what happened. Please write more about it.
While you are it can you write about the transfer of Barclay’s Bank to the Mid-Med Bank.
[Daphne – You’ve pretty much got the story here (Malta Today when Julian Manduca worked there and it had some truly investigative pieces) http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2003/12/21/l4.html. That report misses out the bit where Mintoff stood up during one of those ‘tense meetings’ with the bank’s directors, unzipped his fly, and said “Issa halluni, halli mmur inbul.” Ma kienx ikun jiena, ha nghidlek. I know nothing about Barclay’s.]
X’kont ser taghmillu? Mintoff was another thing entirely, Daph.
[Daphne – So am I, should you have failed to notice. I think I’m the only person he ever sued for libel. Apparently, what I said about him mattered, even though kien jigi jitnejjek mil-konstituzzjoni u minn kullhadd. What’s happening there, anyway? Is God giving him three chances to repent, or what? ]
Since Vatican II and universal redemption management policy, they’ve had to accept all sorts of trash at Heaven Inc.. But they’ve drawn the line at Mintoff. Now the board of directors is considering a temporary alliance with Hell Corporation.
Maybe he’s just a pussy after all, seeing that it looks like he’s got nine lives.
Le Daphne, ma tieghek kellu libel lil Saviour Balzan ukoll.
Read this: http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2003/bical.html
I really feel for this family and what they were put through. These are the sort of things that happened in the glory days.
Re The National Bank of Malta
The PN government is an accomplice to those horrendous events that took place in 1973 as it has not, by any stretch of imagination, appeased the shareholders in any way.
No compensation has been paid to date at all, and the never-ending law suit must be a world record. Come on PN government – take the last opportunity to save face and make amends by proposing to compensate National Bank of Malta shareholders from Bank of Valletta’s annual profits before the PL are elected in 2013.
[Daphne – That would be a Mintoffian tactic and totally unacceptable.]
You agree at least that all PN governments since 1987 have taken advantage of the robbery. Justice has been delayed too long and the original shareholders have probably all died by now.
[Daphne – Yes, I do and yes, they have. One of my grandfather’s sisters is still alive, but she’s in her 90s. Certainly, all the directors of the time have died, except for one – but he wasn’t a shareholder anyway, because he was on the board thanks to his wife, who was. But they were estranged shortly afterwards.]
What would be totally unacceptable? Compensation?
[Daphne – No, of course not. Not compensation. What is totally unacceptable and Mintoffian is for the government to order a company to pay money to somebody. It was the government that committed the crime, and so the government must pay, out of the state coffers. The involvement of Bank of Valletta can happen only if separate action is taken against the bank.]
riya
U veru jigi jitnejjek mill kostituzzjoni, u issa tnejjek wahda sew u ahna nigu nitnejku minnu ghax ma ninsewx kemm ghaddejna iljieli fit-tensjoni.