Mela x'kienu, dawk il-Golden Years?
Joseph Muscat starts change with a living fossil from a bygone political age
Even in the stream of absurdities pouring from all quarters, this quotable quote from shadow foreign minister George Vella really takes my star award of the day.
Quizzed by Mark Micallef of The Sunday Times about the Labour Party’s relationship with Libya, George ‘Allahares Nidhlu Fl-Ewropa’ Vella replied:
“The fact that you have close relations with a country like Libya doesn’t mean you approve of the regime’s system. If we did we would have tried to adopt it.”
Can you believe it? I mean, can you?
What else does George Vella think Dom Mintoff and KMB were doing between 1971 and 1987, if not trying their damnedest to adopt Gaddafi’s system?
They went a long way towards achieving their ends, and the only reason they found it so difficult was because, unlike Gaddafi, they found themselves in control not of a tribal desert autocracy with urban life centred in two main cities, but a parliamentary democracy with a nominally free press and an organised opposition.
The Golden Years were all about turning Malta over to the Gaddafi system, and George Vella is a raving lunatic if he hasn’t worked that out.
It’s interesting that he refused to answer Mark Micallef’s question about whether he thought Gaddafi should stay or go. “I won’t commit to that,” this Labour brontosaurus said. “Who are we to decide? The Libyan people are expressing what they want and hopefully what they want will come to fruition.”
But still he can’t say it.
And where is AST? Worrying about being made redundant as Labour’s international secretary, no doubt, given that his only contacts are with totalitarian despots and especially with his blood brother Muammar.
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At last The Times appeared to have found a little courage to ask some tough questions that really needed to be asked.
The answers, even if evasive, are very revealing of how these people really think.
Even if for many of us they don’t reveal anything new, they do confirm that what we feared was unfortunately true. I’m looking forward to The Times asking that question to some other people, especially Joseph Muscat (unless they already have and I missed it).
Gaddafi got power through a coup d’état and kept governing for 42 years using the same strengths his coup d’état gave him in the first place.
I know of no Maltese government, neither Nationalist or Labourite which did anything similar.
All governments were elected through democratic elections, elected by the population of Malta. No one ever instructed the army to bombard any previous governments to renounce power, in Gaddafi’s style.
I am expecting another reply where you’ll call me ignorant, stupid, silly, too-young-to-understand etc…. once again (and I feel sad that you categorise us young people as such); but please can you explain why you insist that in the 1970’s the then government was using Gaddafi’s style? At least help an ‘ignoramii’ like us to gain some knowledge, please. If no one ever enlightens us young people in our teens and twenties we’ll still remain stupid and silly. I’m a regular reader and really respect your views. Don’t let me beg you:)
[Daphne – I would need days and a book to explain to you why the governments of Dom Mintoff and KMB sought to emulate Gaddafi, and quite frankly, though I would love to help I am not here to make up for the failures of the education system, parents and personal initiative. I’ll just sum it up by saying that for those 16 years, government control was increased, power was personalised in the prime minister, his ministers and their henchmen, the rule of law was deliberately undermined, the police acted with impunity to shore up the rulers and systematically violate human rights, people were tortured by the police for the crime of being an enemy of the state, there were systematic and violent attacks on the free press and the opposition, free enterprise was restricted, private strategic businesses were either nationalised or suppressed, unless you entered into partnership with a government henchman or paid a henchman commissions or protection money your business was shackled and hamstrung, corruption was institutionalised at all levels, children in state schools were lined up to sing praises of Gaddafi and Mintoff, our passports were changed to Gaddafi green, Arabic was made compulsory in schools, access to goods and services was reduced dramatically so that we ended up almost at the level of an eastern bloc country or Tripoli in this respect, while people lived in fear the henchmen did what they pleased, Gaddafi forced Mintoff to keep both the US and Soviet superpowers away from Grand Harbour and so we rewrote part of our Constitution (the neutrality clause) to accommodate him, he loaned Mintoff money on the never-never to pay for children’s allowances and the rest (and he who pays the piper calls the tune)…look, I’m getting exhausted and depressed just writing these things because you know what, I lived through them and like so many thousands of others have permanent post-traumatic stress disorder as a result. This means a visceral aversion towards anything to do with the cause of the trauma. The Labour Party understands this, which is why it has banned the use of its emblem and produced a new one: the sight of that emblem is the trigger to a major PTSD incident in a significant number of people.
As for young people, lack of perception, insight and knowledge has nothing to do with age. You only have to visit the comments-boards of timesofmalta.com and now, maltatoday.com.mt to know that there is a surfeit of daft and cretinous middle-aged people and senior citizens (you tell roughly what sort of age they are by the way they write). I have three sons in their 20s and they are far more well-informed than I am about pretty much everything and so are many of their friends. I am not prejudiced against young people but I really can’t stand daftness and out-to-lunch detachment from reality, whatever the age group. Young people can be forgiven and have plenty of opportunity to brush up and move on, but people like that in my own age group are just intolerable and are beyond hope of change, so for the sake of my own peace of mind I just avoid contact now.
It is impossible for somebody who is now 20 or thereabouts to even begin to understand how we felt at your age in 1984, because that level of oppression just cannot be understood by those who have complete freedom. Seeing it happen in Libya, you understand it because it’s a different country, but you won’t be able to understand the same things happening in your country to your parents’ generation. ]
I think that you ought to (as in morally obliged) have this reply sent automatically to every email address you receive. A sort of Conditions of Use. You’ll have to remove the PTSD and visceral and sons bits, though. They weaken it.
I am no fan of either political gang, but what happened in the 70s and 80s was bad. It was bad for the country and for the people – irrespective of which set of slogans they chanted at meetings every Sunday afternoon.
[Daphne – This person will be doing nothing of the sort, I imagine, Reuben, because it turns it he’s not genuine, but one of those mentally challenged people here, posting as ‘Pantera’ and complaining about long I have taken to upload this comment: http://www.tasteyourownmedicine.com/index.php/component/content/article/2-main-blog/270-nidhqu-wahda#comments Weird and fixated like the rest of my stalkers, he has even taken the trouble of taking screen shots and uploading them here for his friends to check out – http://img.techpowerup.org/110227/Untitled330.png – evidence of how long I have taken to upload his comment because I am afraid to do so. Perhaps they think that when I sit down to upload comments and find 70 waiting, I am necessarily obliged to moderate them in order rather than in the most efficient way (short ones which need no moderation first, followed by those which need moderation, followed by those which require a reply).
The thing about these people is that they will not now have the decency to say that I took time to reply. Oh no. Now I wish I was properly rude to this chap instead of restraining myself. And yes, the fact of my sons is entirely relevant.It should be obvious to utter twats like this that they should not say “I’m only 26 so I only know about what happened yesterday” to somebody whose son is already in the LSE doctoral programme at 21 (and I won’t even mention the other two because the truth will give them indigestion with jealousy and lanzit. They prefer to console themselves by decribing them (and you really have to be mad and cut off from reality to do it) as drug dealers and rapists. Idiots. And cracked with it.]
Before one attempts to educate you about the 70s and 80s, you must answer two questions:
1. Are you a Labour supporter by choice? or
2. Are you a Labour supporter because mummy and daddy brought you up in that kind of environment?
Anyway it amounts to either being misinformed, naive, unable to see the difference between the NP and the LP. or you have been brainwashed into believing that the 70s and 80s were Malta’s ‘Golden Years’!
Labour has no clear foreign policy. Its foreign policy can be summed up in one word: opportunism.
Better still, for Labour, clear policy is foreign.
Go piss up a rope…. Yes, I am referring to you, George Vella.
This is a link to an interesting blog written by an American lady married to a Libyan man and resident Tripoli for 21 years. It is a blog written from the human perspective of a normal person living in Tripoli, rather than a journalist or someone on the front line.
http://khadijateri.blogspot.com
I also had a blog about Libya, discontinued since I left Tripoli in 2006. I wrote it in the hope that it would give some fresh perspective into life in Libya as seen through the eyes of an expat. It is a bit dated I suppose but it may still serve that purpose to some degree.
http://tabarramodiehoriehor.blogspot.com
It would be nice if you could give Khadijateri’s blog some more exposure by posting the link.
See this by AST:
http://plinternationalsecretary.blogspot.com/2009/09/highlights-of-40-years-of-malta-libya.html
This “GOLDEN AGE” in our bilateral relations is no more. There is no doubt about this. There is no special relationship between us anymore. Many contributed to construct that Golden Age in roughly the first 20 of the last 40 years. Many more contributed to destroy that Golden Age in roughly the last 20 years.
Green passports and all.
Is there any truth behind the rumours that Al Qaeda is behind the Libyan uprising?
[Daphne – No, of course not. Al Qaeda is not interested in democracy. Al Qaeda is for theocracy. Libyan culture is very distant in every respect from Al Qaeda.]
On another note, observing KMB’s reaction to the situation in Libya should make us all realise afresh that the MLP harbours weird, cold people who put no value on human life, and who see nothing wrong in ruling through terror. No wonder he called those Dockyard thugs l-Aristokrazija tal-Haddiema. The man’s insane.
Why not keep Gaddafi in place so Malta can benefit? – from timesofmalta.com
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110227/local/kmb-malta-should-mediate-in-libya-crisis
“Gerard Cassar
Suppose Gaddafi and his family were killed by the USA bombing what advantage would it have given us. Gaddafi would have been declared a hero victim of USA terrorism bombing, that’s all.And why not consider it positive that Gaddafi was warned in due time.”
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/lse
How about a petition (a real one, not online) to President George Abela to have Gaddafi stripped of his Maltese orders? It would send a cast-iron message with knobs on to our politicians that we despise the foreign policy path taken these last 40 years.
How about starting it?
How? I’m not even in Malta, and I can’t go back.
Why not?
What fascinates me is the fact that people like KMB, AST, George Vella and the rest actually embrace(d) Gaddafi’s way of governance.
It wasn’t pragmatic REALPOLITIK but actual conviction that Gaddafi was in the right. Their contempt for anything European was a natural consequence of this belief.
This is for George Vella:
Re- Erdogan’s prize given to him by Gaddafi:
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-236293-pm-refuses-to-return-gaddafi-award-in-face-of-calls-from-civil-society.html
The group (The Young Civilians, a civil society group known for its creative demonstrations in support of democracy) made a reference to a saying of the Prophet Muhammad in their call to the prime minister to speak against Gaddafi’s cruelty. The saying is: “When you see an evil act you have to stop it with your hand. If you can’t, then at least speak out against it with your tongue. If you can’t, then at least you have to hate it with all your heart. And this is the weakest of faith.”
About this Human Rights prize given to Erdogan by….KMB, of all people………..
quoting from your favourite daily:
“The establishment of the award is the result of the Libyan leader’s “appreciation and indebtedness of his role in consolidating direct democracy and the issuance of the Great Charter for Human Rights in the era of the masses that sacrifices freedom and human dignity. It calls for the emancipation of man from the shackles of fear.”
How can you associated a brontosaurus with that biped lizard. We are suing for libel.
That was my line. I am suing for plagiarism.
C Galea – Read this for a slight glimpse of what life was like for people of your parents’ generation when they were roughly your age:
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2010/10/08/one-photograph-anglu-farrugia-wont-be-uploading-on-his-websajt/
‘…..If we did we would have tried to adopt it.’
Is this guy for real? What does he think then about having Arabic as a language subject forced down our throat in our teens at the time? For info, Arabic was a pre-requisite to acceed to government sixth form at the time.
Then on hindsight, I wonder the real reason of school trips organised to the Mosque in Rahal Gdid at the time. The Islamisation of Malta perhaps? Makes one wonder.
[Daphne – The tragedy is that his attempts had the reverse effect to that intended: he put us off Arabic when it should have been a natural third language for us, given that the structure and much of the vocabulary (though not the accent) are identical to our own. Now we refuse to learn it on principle, because it reminds us of those attempts to ram it down our throat.]
KMB said that Malta’s role is “mediation”. Mediation is (I think) between two. Who are the trwo sides which Malta is supposed to mediate between? KMB’s friend, the tyrant Gaddafi is the unwanted leader of Libya, the people are in revolt against this tyrant. There is no leader of the revolt.
So, please, KMB if you have any bright suggestions for your friend Gaddafi, advise him to go to his tent and wait there until they come for him to take him to the Courts in the Hague for his trial for violation of human rights, murder and much more.
KMB can also oblige by being his defence lawyer because I am sure he will not find one to do the job in Libya.
Iva, il-fantasija ta’ Malta f’nofs is-Sicilian Channel = Malta f’nofs il-Mediterran = f’nofs id-dinja = il-fulcrum ta’ kollox + pajjiz zghir = natural bridge between peoples and cultures = medjatur.
Wahda mill-fantasiji ta’ Peter Serracino Inglott u Guido de Marco din.
If the type of mediation KMB has in mind is that employed by him in the Egyptair disaster, then God help us all.
Perhaps they take “mediation” as “being in the middle”. As in sitting on a fence.
No, seriously. Mediation needs carrots and sticks. We have neither. Whipping out a measuring tape and declaring smugly that we are halfway between Europe and Africa won’t cut much ice.
@ c galea If you are interested in what we went through during labour’s 16yrs of governing Malta you have only to go through the newspapers of that period. That will certainly open your mind. Perhaps.