Shall we tell the watching world that Malta, La Valletta di Gaddafi decorated this man TWICE, under both Labour and Nationalist governments?
Published:
February 23, 2011 at 9:34am
The Dear Leader arrives at Bole International Airport, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2007 wearing a white Dr. Evil jacket, the ubiquitous clip-on military ribbons, and the very height in traveling chic, a sheer peach bisht. The ribbons are interesting because for years after the coup in which he took power Qaddafi was only ever seen with a few rows of decoration. Today, there are eight—indicating a score or more of awards. Who has conferred these medals to Qaddafi, and what for? By Andrew Heavens/Reuters/Corbis.
– Vanity Fair, September 2009
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We Maltese can also tell the world that nobody asked us whether we wanted those honours to be conferred on this ghastly non-human, that it was done against our will and without our consent.
Why do I get the feeling that Malta’s sh*t is about to hit the fan?
[Daphne – Me too. I was up until 4am last night worrying about different scenarios.]
The PM had better come up with some good answers to some very difficult questions.
Suddenly the whole world is going to turn around and find out that one of their allies has been decorating dictators and won’t take it all back.
And how dim are some people? Places like Libya, China and North Korea don’t get along with us because they care about us and value our relations. They get along with us because we are the EU’s weakest link, being the only country stupid enough not to stand up against them.
We have always run the risk of being the puppets of these people because so many times we just never thought anyone else in the world would care, because no one knows about Malta.
I can’t help but think that all of Europe, and in fact the West, is going to think Malta is some sort of underhanded traitor, making sweet noises to both sides, as some sort of master plan to never get in anyone’s bad books and avoid problems, whichever way the wind blows so to speak. They really aren’t going to like that, are they?
My thoughts exactly. Oh how I hate dictators of any kind. They are almost all narcissistic, megalomaniacs and psychopaths – if given the chance always ready to kill great numbers of people to save themselves.
I have been trying to list the different scenarios.
Gaddafi takes upper hand and massacres opponents.
Civil war between pro and anti Gaddafi factions. What about tribal factions?
If push comes to shove, he may blow up oil installations as the retreating Iraqis did in Kuwait.
Libya is split into two countries, roughly east and west.
An exodos of hundreds of thousands of refugees across the borders into Egypt and Tunisia, and via Malta into Europe.
Unstable oil prices.
What about EU, NATO positions?
USA where Hilary Clinton seems to be doing all the running.
The geo-economic-political stance of the Central Mediterranean is going to change irrevocably.
Where does Malta stand in all this? All the Maltese powers that be, economists, would-be journalists, think-tanks (do we have them in Malta ?) seem to be fence-sitting, which must be quite uncomfortable.
You are quite right in saying that it’s more than enough to give one sleepless nights.
@ “USA where Hilary Clinton seems to be doing all the running”.
Indeed, does anyone know where Obama is? Well, I always believed his profile was more than ‘inflated’.
I have been watching Aljazeera, RAI, CNN, BBC and all had ‘experts’ on the situation in which Libya finds itself in and most agreed that Obama (the USA) had few to no options but to just watch at least for the time being.
Does Malta have options which the USA and Britain have not?
[Daphne – It has exactly the same options, so it should use the one they have used: TO SPEAK OUT FORCEFULLY. Obama may be sitting and watching but Hillary Clinton hasn’t stopped speaking out, nor have Hague and Cameron.]
With regards to decorations given Gaddafi under Labour and Nationalist administrations and not withdrawn, like it or not – so far Gaddafi is still el-supremo in Libya and until toppled, commits suicide, or shot, withdrawing a medal or a piece of paper will not stop the shooting of innocent civilians.
Symbolism is almost always overestimated and at this point we’d rather worry about economic consequences as a result of the upheavals taking place in the Middle East particularly in North Africa than worry about rescinding any symbolic pieces of paper and a medal or two.
[Daphne – I’m sorry, but I don’t share your attitude. Symbolism and ceremonies are key parts of human society. They mean a great deal and are taken very seriously by all except arch-pragmatists and the ignorant.]
By the same token, will Mintoff return the $250,000 and the medal he received from Gaddafi through KMB, lest he be forever identified with a disgraced dictator who he once called his ‘brother’?
[Daphne – You miss the point: he should never have accepted them.]
Seems like Plan Z is in the making. Truly dreadful. As somebody said ‘I miss Reagan’. I miss Reagan too. Compare Reagan to the past or current appeasers on the world scene and we can easily conclude.
If leaders with balls were on the world scene, the likes of Gaddafi would not last long.
With firm opposition even the once mighty Soviet Union succumbed to a change from a totalitarian system into a (not yet perfect) path to democracy. Compare Churchill to Chamberlain for example.
Could Al Qaida be behind this civil unrest throughout the geographical belt of African countries separating the EU from Africa. These same countries gave very little shoulder to Al Qaida and getting rid of them will surely fuel their strategic arsenal.
Disposing of dictators also provides a superb disguise to diverting attention and public sentiment away from what could be a seriously dangerous security scenario for Europe!
Why does the Dear Leader, besides being sartorially challenged, always seem to suffer from bad hair days.
I was just having the same conversation with a friend now. I think some things are going to come out in the open.
Also with the world’s eyes on us it could be messy.
We are the closest European neighbour to a crazed dictator who two weeks ago thought he would be in power for life. He has nothing to lose. What’s not to say he won’t take us all down with him?
I will be happier when the army takes the side of the people.
Here’s an elephant in the room.
Over the past few years I estimate that the Corinthia Group (including IHI & MIH) have issued approx €225 million worth of bonds on the local stock exchange:
Corinthia 55m, IHI 95m & MIH 75m
The value of the IHI bonds appear to have fallen between 5-10% over the last couple of days yet its all very quiet in the “press” so far.
Well, now that Gaddafi can’t come to the rescue, some other dictator will have to be found to subsidise those investments. I do feel sorry for the unfortunate Maltese punters although on reflection, they should have seen this coming, if not sooner then later.
Let us be realistic and careful. Corinthia has substantial investments in hotels in Europe and in Malta. So the amounts quoted above are not necessarily related to Libya.
http://www.libyafeb17.com/
Gaddafi has been making fun of world leaders since 1969. The oil weapon allowed him to do that. With his unorthodox dress (I am not referring to traditional Libyan attire here), Alaskan head gear, the carrying of the tent and its setting up in European centres, together with his raving and racist speeches in European cities, he has mocked everyone.
He has mocked the very ideals which make Europe humanist. And everyone seems happy to suck up to him.
Most current European leaders should hang their heads in shame and say ‘mea culpa’, unless, unknowingly to the ordinary citizen, many leaders (including Maltese?) were living in Gaddafi’s pocket.
“Gaddafi has been making fun of world leaders since 1969. The oil weapon allowed him to do that”
True words indeed, but a village clown is often useful if for nothing else, pure entertaining purposes.
Let’s face it, Gaddafi was never respected but rather tolerated because of his country’s oil wealth, ‘honoured’ just to please his little mind. As it turned out it all went to his head and the way he talked last, he truly believes that he owns Libya.
We criticize our dealings with him, although one would agree that we dealt with him because there was nobody else to deal with, but we also fail to remember that for years, Malta (supposedely) obtained oil at a ‘preferential price’.
I don’t believe that because I am under the impression that oil is purchased at set OPEC prices, unless Malta was paying OPEC prices and received a rebate from Libya which has never been accounted for and which probably went to line up some pockets. But that’s another speculation on my part.
Maybe we (Malta) obtained ‘oil at a preferential price’, but some would say that it would have been even cheaper if we drilled up our oil ourselves. Who knows why we never got down to doing it. There used to be so many secret visits and meetings in the past.
Another John, another way of expressing what you say is that it is not only the Libyan people who are terrorised by, and held in the grip of, Gaddafi, but all of oil-hungry Europe and the developed world, including Malta.
And this is this thanks to Libya’s oil resources which he controls closely and violently. He knows that this gives him and his regime a lot of power regionally and globally. This means that any action intended to oust him must include his people but it has to be supported by us, Europeans, and the rest of the world.
The point is that the Americans, Europeans, and us – we all have vested interests in the system created by his regime, and therefore we are all compromised. We are now not in a position to decide whether we want him there or out of there.
Right. But for those who see/think short term only. In the long run (ie as long as there is oil for sale), it does not really matter if Gaddafi stays in power and produces oil because irrelevant of who or what replaces him, the oil would end up on the market anyway.
And this without making reference to the fact the Libya produces only 2% of the total world yearly production. This applies as well to all foreign businesses in Libya. Those investors panicking about an ousting of Gaddafi seem to forget that their services would continue to be needed.
This of course, unless they had really close ties to the family.
My main question still remains, ie why has Malta not really gotten down to the business fo drilling for oil? And another springs to mind: why does it seem that our leading politicians make it a point to visit Gaddafi personally, even if they are in opposition? And another, what can explain the very close relationship between Gaddafi, Mintoff and KMB?
I can’t really understand this finger pointing at ourselves. There is not one single country that did not do business with Libya especially since the sanctions were withdrawn.
Ironically huge investments were made in Libya by the very countries that were all out against Gaddafi’s Libya.
Worst is the fact that most, including the very US and UK traded huge military deals with Gaddafi, the latter itself having sold huge orders of munitions, crowd control equipment and sophisticated electronic/intel hardware notwithstanding the Lockerbie saga.
Over the weekend Cameron hurried to Eygpt to try and save UK’s face in this scenario and the British Foreign Secretary made it a point to announce on all media that the UK had rejected a total of 50 arms export licences to Libya and Bahrain……..as if (yes sure and those that were approved)?
The French, well two pieces of such nice Gaddafi assets just landed in Malta this week, but of course those were sold to the Libyan people (to be used against them as necessary evil according to Gaddafi’s needs).
Italy, Germany, Spain, Balkan states, Russia, etc – just carry out a simple internet search and you will quickly learn the extent of business they had with Gaddafi.
In the small arms sector alone (and I know this from reliable sources in my sector) Russia received a Libyan order last March for over a quarter of a million (yes 250,000 pcs) modern AK47 military and SVD sniper rifles and only God knows for what and for whom they were bought, considering that the Libyan armed forces number around 119,000 with some 40,000 loyal reserves.
So shame them all if it comes to it, thereby I cannot understand what we Maltese have to be ashamed of in the business and in the relations we had with Libya.
I have been to Libya several times and my engineering travels there spanned from east to west. The system worked Gaddafi style and you had no choice.
You couldn’t even mention Gaddafi’s name in any conversation as my Libyan friends would shush me up just in case there were some ears about. Considering the circumstances how can one blame any Maltese, Malta or Maltese authorities for having done business in that market.
I sincerely hope that either through the Libyan people’s own struggle or through international intervention, the Gaddafi era will be no more and Libya will progress to a bright future that will bring stability to the region.
However, if not then the worst is to come since there is some much “hardware” down there that all of us will regret that this turmoil ever started.
Let’s introduce a few inconvenient facts into this discussion.
1. Libya’s biggest foreign oil operator is Italy’s Eni. Eni receives one fifth of its oil & gas from Libya.
The company also operates the Greenstream gas pipeline from Libya to Italy through the Mediterranean Sea. Operators in Libya include Eni, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Repsol, OMV and Statoil. This should actually read Italy, Britain, The Netherlands, Spain, Austria and Norway.
In other words, a lot of people are very, very nervous about Libya – this is no Tunisia. During EU meetings, you can imagine delegates hiding behind Italy and Malta’s skirts pretending to bemoan their ‘lack of cooperation’ on sanctions while being secretly relieved they don’t have to take the rap themselves.
2. Up to 25% of Italy’s power generation can run, on any given day, on Libyan gas. No doubt this can quickly be substituted by firing the turbines with the High Principles of Maltese journalists.
3. There are Maltese people quite possibly trapped in Libya. Despite accusations of being ‘bla bajd’, this is no time to be macho but a time to be ultra-cautious. You can wave your ‘bajd’ in my face as much as you like but right now a Maltese minister only needs to say and do what needs to be said and done to keep those people safe. Everything else is posturing.
[Daphne – Every country in Europe has citizens there in Libya and it hasn’t stopped them speaking in a very forceful manner. Yes, Malta u l-Italja biss bla bajd, and quite frankly, it figures. Qabda nancies u mummy’s boys.]
4. Regarding the medals I am shocked, shocked about these awards. Almost as shocked as seeing Nelson Mandela being oh so cosy with his best buddy over here http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/368124.stm and over here http://plane-truth.com/Aoude/geocities/mandela.html. Almost as shocked as seeing Blair kneel before the Leader of the Great Jamahariya. Almost as shocked as seeing Washington & Co. kiss serious butt in Saudi, Kuwait, Bahrain, etc. And nearly as shocked to see former German Chancellor Schröder call Putin a ‘flawless democrat’ soon after becoming a director of the pipeline company that imports Russian gas into Germany.
5. Daphne is suffering sleepless nights over the Libya situation. And well she might. Although this blog usually defends the rights of asylum seekers, I am sure she can see where all this could so easily end.
[Daphne – That’s not at all why I am worried. Have some imagination.]
Malta (and indeed Europe) cannot handle the potential volume of (undoubtedly genuine) refugees this could generate and the situation in the Mediterranean could turn very ugly very quickly. There are no perfect answers or solutions but, all in all, I tend to support Tonio Borg’s super-cautious approach whether or not his brother is stuck in Libya. Let’s hold back a bit from the preaching and react carefully as events unfold.
[Daphne – People die because others say nothing and have said nothing for 42 years. Tonio Borg is quite willing to stick his neck out for hypothetical foetuses but will not do so for six million human beings. If you respect that, I don’t.]
React CAREFULLY? If your head were screwed on right, you’d see that a truly careful reaction would be the sort you advocate against.
If my head were screwed on right? Ah, the good old ad hominem attack. Never fails to clear the air.
I’m not sure where the ‘hypothetical foetuses’ come into it – was this article about your opinion of Tonio Borg in general or about Libya?
[Daphne – Our foreign minister, in a previous cabinet incarnation – minister of the interior, I believe – helped spearhead a campaign to have a ban on abortion entrenched in the Constitution of Malta. He used his resources as cabinet minister to write to the heads of all NGOs and organisations in Malta to encourage them to put their names to a petition organised by a group called Gift of Life, which sought this change to the constitution. This sits greatly at odds with his reluctance to say anything about the violence against real, live human beings 250 miles away.]
Also, it’s a bit rich to say that ‘others have said nothing’. We all remember the massive sanctions imposed on Libya for several years during which that country’s main link to the world was a regular ferry from Malta to Tripoli.
For a long time, Gaddafi was an international pariah and was only quite recently ‘rehabilitated’. That was certainly a mistake but I still can’t see why that makes us ‘nancy boys’.
[Daphne – The Italians and the Maltese are notoriously spineless equivocators, Brandon. Strangely enough, Maltese and Italian women have a parallel reputation for toughness and backbone compared to their male co-nationals’ reputation for the lack of either.]
To use the American terminology, I am 100% ‘pro-choice’ and see the drastic abortion laws in Malta as a way to control women under the guise of religion.
But the Minister’s reticence – a carefully chosen word – on Libya is a separate manner and I disagree with mixing the two issues.
As for the spinelessness of Maltese men, thank you for making it clear that the George Cross was awarded only to Maltese women and not posthumously to my (Maltese) grand-uncle who was killed by a Nazi bomb while rushing medical supplies to (male) anti-aircraft gunners.
[Daphne – Let’s not be dramatic.]
So Gaddafi wants to “if need be” courageously die a martyr for his country. But then he didn’t join the people demonstrating in his favour on Green Square, because it was raining. How’s that for courage?
He must have awarded himself a medal for every thousand or so of his fellow countrymen he murdered.
Come next week, and at this rate, he will have his entire chest plastered with medals.
anthony
fejn taf, forsi ikun diga bdew jiekluh id-dud.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/finance-ministry-says-weapons-to-libya-passed-through-malta-not-exported
Quote
“Germany was third in the list, with 53 million euros of licences, mostly for electronic jamming equipment used to disrupt mobile phone, internet and GPS communication.”
BBC and other international media :
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Col Gaddafi’s speech was “very, very appalling” and “amounted to him declaring war on his own people”.
I guess Merkel better shut up.
Let’s see what else we can find about each other European country.
[Daphne – As I wrote in my column in The Malta Independent today, the fact that the USA, Britain and Germany have vested commercial interests in Gaddafi’s regime makes their condemnation of him more effective and certainly braver, not less. Compare their attitude to that of Malta, with its relatively minuscule commercial interests and total reluctance to speak out.]
I do see your point, however on the other hand one can also say that the big players’ statements can be viewed as sheer hypocrisy. To add insult to injury their chorus was a condemnation of the sin and not the sinner.
[Daphne – It wasn’t a condemnation of the sin but not the sinner, at all. True, there were no Ronald Reagan ‘This is the mad dog of the Middle East’ statements, but don’t forget that Reagan’s statement was followed by sending US to bomb Gaddafi’s compound. And it looks like nobody’s planning anything like that now, more’s the pity, though I’ve no doubt that there’s a massive intelligence-gathering operation working out where he is, because they might have to do just that. As for hypocrisy: would you rather they said nothing?]
“As for hypocrisy: would you rather they said nothing?”
Ask that to my friends in Benghazi.
More details on military deals :
http://euobserver.com/9/31853/?rk=1
With Gaddafi having diminished control over his forces and possibly eliminated sooner or later, were will all this arsenal end and in whose hands ? Are we any safer without Gaddafi ?
Contrary to Egypt and Tunisia there is no military structure to oversee and coordinate democratic governance in Libya. Therefore the prospects of a Libyan civil war are very realistic notwithstanding the best wishes from the genuine Libyan men on the street. If anarchy will prevail in Libya they could actually ignite North Africa with a second round but far more deadlier.
As for WMD why the silence from the key EU and US players about this massive nightmare ? The bulge under the EU carpet is so huge that they can’t fathom what to do about it.
BTW Malta is approx 360Km away from Tripoli and those F1 figher jets took approx 8 minutes to get here. Not even enough time for a coffee and a cigarette.