The ambassador's words are chilling not reassuring
The Libyan ambassador is an emissary of this lunatic. Contrary to what he says, he does not represent the Libyan people for the simple reason that Libya is not a democracy.
What is it with Maltese reporters, and why are they so frightened of challenging anyone, unless it is the leader of a political party and they work for the television station of the other party?
They just sit there and listen. Sometimes, they ask a tremulous question. I’m beginning to think that it’s not so much that they’re afraid to ask questions, but that questions do not even occur to them, which is just as bad if not worse.
So if the Libyan ambassador didn’t mention Gaddafi by name in his statement to the press this morning, why didn’t any reporter force him to do so by asking him relentless, specific questions?
Did they go there just to have a statement read out to them by the emissary of a psychopathic lunatic who is killing his own people after having oppressed them horribly for years?
Are Maltese journalists really so wet and timid, so unwilling to stick their necks out even if they’re paid to do so? Imagine if one of Gaddafi’s ambassadors were to face reporters from the US, British, German or French media at this point.
But then perhaps that’s why Gaddafi’s ambassador was willing to face the Maltese media – because he knew it would be safe and that the experience would be benign.
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Now compare what the Maltese evacuees from Libya are saying to reporters, with the shocked descriptions of evacuees of other nationalities, who talk about murder and mayhem.
The general tone of what the Maltese say is “Oh it’s not so bad, we heard a couple of gunshots, but…we wouldn’t have minded staying, but we thought we’d come over until things calm down. We might go back.”
Talk about obtuse tunnel vision or deliberate refusal to guage the situation. One of them, a Chris Fenech quoted on timesofmalta.com this morning, was clearly trying to keep his options open because he intended to return “in a couple of days when things calm down”.
When things calm down? In a couple of days? What is he thinking – that the army is going to be sent out into the streets and then it’s back to work on Monday? Unbelievable. Let’s give this man the benefit of the doubt – perhaps he was in a state of shock and didn’t know what he was saying or thinking.
And so, whereas Britons talking to The Financial Times and the BBC described the scenes at the airport as “like the fall of Saigon”, our Chris Fenech said it was “understandably chaotic” and that “what is said on TV may be out of proportion”.
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Al Jazeera’s representative in Malta, Cal Perry, is complaining on Twitter of not being allowed into the ambassador’s presence this morning, along with other journalists. Al Jazeera is probably aware that the emissaries of murderous dictators do not have any qualms about locking out reporters if they want to, particularly if those reporters have told the watching world that Aisha Gaddafi tried to flee to Malta when she didn’t (think about it – why would she want to come here) or that Libyan warships had defected and were heading towards Malta.
I think that Al Jazeera is relying too much on what Karl Stagna Navarra, a former employee who now works for Saviour Balzan and Roger Degiorgio at Malta Today, tells them. The man strikes me as a bit of a self-aggrandising fantasist of the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando school.
Malta Today’s website was packed yesterday afternoon with stories insisting that Aisha Gaddafi was on that plane despite the denials from the Maltese government and Aisha Gaddafi herself.
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Here’s timesofmalta.com’s description of what the Libyan ambassador told reporters while they sat there and listened like good children at Tal-Muzew without interrupting him – as though there is some kind of etiquette rule book which says you must show respect to somebody who is not too embarrassed to represent a madman and a murderer.
And nobody had ‘il-gazz’ to point out to Gaddafi’s ambassador that no, he does not represent the Libyan people because Libya is not a democracy. He represents Muammar Gaddafi and his regime, and that is the context in which he should be addressed by reporters.
The setting up of an Islamic state would be catastrophic for Europe? Is that the headline – really? I imagine these people can’t see that this is the line taken by dictators right across North Africa: the west had better shore us up because the alternative is Islamic fundamentalism. Maaaa, how scary. So let’s stick with the murderous dictator and his sponsorship of terrorists, then.
Indeed.
There is absolutely no logic in this reasoning and no intelligence to bear it out. What we are seeing is a group of Muslims playing on European fear of Islam to maintain their own control of a situation.
And still nobody asks the obvious question: how can any hypothetical Islamic state possibly be worse than what we have had on our doorstep for 42 years? Gaddafi, who sponsored terrorism and is clearly clinically insane, is not better than an ayatollah.
It is just that we have become accustomed to coping with him over four decades. It is only when he is finally gone that we will fully understand just what tension he caused in our lives and our foreign policy.
timesofmalta.com – this morning
Libyan ambassador says he will stay on – calls for evolution, not revolution
Setting up of Islamic emirate would be ‘catastrophic for Europe’
Libyan ambassador Saadun Suayeh in a reconciliatory personal statement at the embassy today said he was deeply concerned by the loss of life in Libya. He said that without apportioning blame, he wanted to condemn violence and the excessive use of force,
The ambassador, who never mentioned Col Gaddafi by name in his statement, said he would remain ambassador because he was here to serve the people of his country, as well as to serve relations with Malta.
Referring to protests held outside the embassy, he said everyone had a right to his opinion, but he regretted inaccuracies in the media, such as about Aysha Gaddafi (Col Gaddafi’s daughter) trying to come to Malta yesterday.
The Libyan embassy, draped with the all-green Libyan flag which anti-Gaddafi protesters want to see removed.
He also said that the number of deaths in Libya was being exaggerated and the official death toll was around 300.
He denied that civilians were being bombed by the Libyan government.Dr Suayeh said ambassadors would be taken on tours of places allegedly bombed, and Maltese journalists and other foreigners were welcome to go to Libya. Their presence, he said, should help remove distortions about the situation in the country.
He did not know, however, for safety reasons, whether they could go to the Eastern part of the country but the western part of the country was quiet and stable.
He admitted that ‘small parts’ of the country in the East had fallen ‘to insurgents’, according to the Libyan foreign ministry, and it was estimated that there were up to 2,500 ‘foreign operatives’ working in the eastern parts of Libya. They were mostly responsible for the killings and the trouble, he said.
The ambassador said he was working around the clock with the Maltese Foreign Ministry to help Maltese workers return to Malta.
“Call me what you like, but what would have happen if there was no ambassador here” he said with reference to calls for his resignation.
“An embassy represents the country. We have a sovereign state” he said.
He said the Libyan government had formed a committee headed by a judge to investigate the events of the past few days and present a report to the People’s Congress. The government would not interfere in its workings and the report would be published.
Dr Suayeh said this was a time for national unity. Strife and violence were heartbreaking and a divided Libya would be catastrophic for Libya and if an Islamic emirate was formed that would be catastrophic for Europe.
“What Libya needs is stability, reconciliation and dialogue,” he said and he felt there were reasonable elements within the Opposition with whom one could dialogue so that all people in Libya could be fairly represented for a more democratic Libya.
He was sure the Libyan government was more than willing to reform, the most important thing being unity of the Libyan people.
“What Libya needs is evolution, not revolution,” the ambassador said.
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What utter, complete garbage and lies. When people like the Ambassador talk under such circumstances, we should ask where is their family? In Libya? Or safe in Malta? Is he able to talk FREELY or is he made to do or say things because he is blackmailed? This is an old game.
It looks in the above photo that Ghaddafi is wearing the eight pointed Maltese medal below the green/gold strap.
All those medals he’s wearing can be bought from any pawn shop.
@Davidg: that is the National Order of Merit of the Republic of Malta.
“reconciliatory personal statement ”
Why personal? Was it not an official press conference?
And reconciliatory towards whom?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-12564104
And our Chris Fenech describes Tripoli airport as ‘understandably chaotic’. Listen to this Irish professor’s description of people carrying their worldly goods as they tried to escape.
“while they sat there and listened like good children at Tal-Muzew without interrupting him”
Good one.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110224/local/libyans-want-to-arrest-criminal-pilot-at-malta-hotel
Don’t know if this is a joke, but even if it is, it is in the worst of taste:
“http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/national/somalis-in-libya-%E2%80%98hunted%E2%80%99-on-suspicion-of-being-mercenaries-unhcr”
Submitted on Thu, 02/24/2011 – 07:04.
“FUCK THIS DIRTY LIBYAN. oo i wish to kill dirty libyan to go 2 heaven. i don’t care man woman child.. i wish to kill this dirty kafirs oo god give me the chance.. fuck arab terorst
arabkilla”
[Daphne – Saviour Balzan and Roger Degiorgio are quite mad to allow comments through without moderation or editing, which all online newspapers employ. But I suppose it figures. It’s definitely not a joke. The internet is full of that sort of thing.]
I agree with your attitude re Maltese journalists in general, but could you not have attended the press conference yourself?
[Daphne – I don’t work in a newsroom. Why exactly would I bother turning up to do other people’s work for them?]
Two ways of looking at it, I guess: (i) doing other people’s work, or (ii) recognising that they will never do a proper job and therefore stepping in.
My comment was not meant to be confrontational; I simply perceived your article as having a bit of an “armchair critic” slant to it.
[Daphne – That’s because you assume I somehow have more access to press conferences of this sort than you do. But I don’t. And even if I did, then I have no more reason or incentive to go than you do. There’s one distinction though: mine can never be the criticism of an armchair critic, because I actually know what I’m talking about.]
Seems he got his Al-Qaeda-mongering cue from one other quirk that goes by the name of George Dubya.
It is sad to see that St. Michael’s Training College at Ta’ Giorni, St. Julian’s no longer belongs to the Maltese people and producing good quality Maltese professionals as it did in the past. As far as I know Dom Mintoff had irreversibly given the building as a present to Gaddafi in the 80s.
I think he had given St. Michael’s to the Libyans for a lease of 100 years
Thanks, Rita – so there is a ray of light at the end of the tunnel.
I think it was sold lock stock and barrel for LM2,000,000
Il-‘gurnalisti’ taghna bla b*** u bla sinsla.
The former Libyan Head of Protocol (until very recently he still was in his post) was interviewed Al Jazeera yesterday, by a very intrepid journalist who didn’t shy from the hard questions – in the line of – “You were Gaddafi’s Head of Protocol until very recently, how can you assure us that you were never involved in atrocities, embezzlement, etc?’
This Al Masmari fellow (I think that is is name) was sitting very comfortably in a studio in Paris ranting about Gaddafi’s brutal regime. I am sorry, but these people who until very recently were in Gaddafi’s pockets and only defected now because the sh*t hit the fan, have no credibility in my eyes.
It is for the same reason that I refuse to read Lino Spiteri’s memoirs or scribblings in the press: he was in it up to his neck as part of Mintoff’s cabinet and did nothing when he could have done something…So sorry – ‘ Coulda, woulda, shoulda’ does not cut any ice.
Well said, Hot Mama.
Well said X2 re. Lino Spiteri.
Here is the interview with the former Libyan Head of Protocol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uUNZDD1LAE
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110224/local/libyan-ambassador
Make sure you watch the video – I’m not sure whose behaviour is the weirder, the journalists’s or the ambassadors’.
And yes, they should have asked him how an Islamic Emirate could possibly be worse than Gaddafi.
Our bold and daring journalists all observe that very Maltese trait of treating even the vilest of people with kid gloves – because you never know what the future might bring and that you might need something from that person.
That is why you are right, Daphne, we have reporters (and poor ones at that) not journalists in this country.
In this day and age, we have news networks which give us an extensive view of events as they are happening at that moment but thanks to you, Daphne, you are able to point out the salient issues which pseudo reporters do not have the courage to ask and write about.
The least we Maltese can do is to erase the past faux-pas of our leaders in the past by joining the march on Saturday in favour of a free Libya.
Incredible. There’s no other word to describe such a statement.
Dr Suayeh speaks to the Times but appears not to read it.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110224/local/libyan-army-units-strike-back-at-protesters
Dr Suayeh claims to represent the Libyan people. That is why he should resign. If he wishes to represent his people, he should stand among them, not against them.
Hawnhekk Daphne ghandha ragun mitejn fil-mija. Il-gurnalisti Maltin fil-maggoranza cwiec u kretini.
Prosit, Daphne. I hope all so-called Maltese journalists know how to at least read your article and learn from the many points you have given them.
Did somebody pop any hallucinatory drugs into somebody’s coffee in Attard?
Another Comical Ali, this ambassador.
Quite ironic that we are being scaremongered with Islamic fundamentalism when up to a decade ago Gaddafi was one of the terrorist-supporting regimes. Up to 2001 Israeli citizens were still banned from going to Libya.