Every time he speaks we get flashbacks
The Labour Party understands that a great swathe of the population gets post-traumatic stress disorder flashbacks every time it sees a mass of people waving its emblem. That’s why it changed it.
Sadly, it can’t change other things, like Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, who has emerged from his lair yet again to remind us how ghastly things were when he was prime minister, though unlike the passengers on that hijacked Egyptair plane who died under his watch at Malta airport because of Malta’s constitutional neutrality, we are still alive today.
That KMB has a tendency to become infatuated with psychopaths we know already, because he is probably the only person who walks this earth and loves Dom Mintoff – I mean really loves him, as opposed to hero-worshipping is-Salvatur without actually knowing him.
He probably doesn’t even know what a psychopath is, or if he does, then he must believe they’re fine and it’s perfectly acceptable to have one running a country.
He’s already told us that he thinks we should mediate between Muammar Gaddafi and those who oppose him. Perhaps he doesn’t understand the full scale of the problem, or why they want him to go. But then we already know that he and his master think of people as cardboard cut-outs, pawns to be pushed around for personal ends.
Nor does KMB understand that at this stage, nobody wants Gaddafi to stay, certainly not international leaders who have now had their noses rubbed into the true nature of the man and the real suffering of Libyans. Nobody can pretend any longer not to know. And Gaddafi has revealed himself for the psychopath he always was: incapable of reform or remorse but brilliant at pretending.
What if Gaddafi, stays on, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici asks in the report below. What happens to our commercial and security interests?
As with the Egyptair disaster and life in general under his premiership and that of his mentor Mintoff, the approach is ‘People come last in the list of considerations’.
I think a more pressing question for this cold and heartless man would be ‘What happens to the people of Libya?’
This is typically a Labour sentiment and you can see it emerging all over the internet: “Let’s curry favour with Gaddafi because if he stays on we’re finished, but if he is overthrown it doesn’t matter. His opponents are not dangerous like he is and so we can afford not to help them and they’ll still let us do business there. But if Gaddafi stays on it’s better for us because we’re used to the system and we have the right contacts. If he goes, we’ll have to start making contacts all over again, so let’s stay out of it and hope that he wins. And while we’re doing that, we’ll make sure to keep on his right side like we’ve been doing for the last 42 years.”
Why do I get the awful feeling that the Labour crowd – Karmenu Vella, AST, Joseph Muscat and the rest – are just hanging around with their fingers crossed waiting for things to revert to ‘normal’ so that they can get back to business on a flight out to Tripoli on Gaddafi’s jet?
Perhaps they should tell us whether the Gaddafi private jet which brought them back to Malta from Libya last August was the very same one used to bring back Lockerbie bomber Al Megrahi from Britain. It would be a damn shame, in that case, that Anglu Farrugia wasn’t with them. He would have loved to have a photo for his website ‘Anglu sits on seat were Megrahi he sat’ as he did with that famous bench where the Princess of Wales was once photographed outside the Taj Mahal.
timesofmalta.com, this morning
Libya uprising
KMB: ‘Don’t take sides in a civil war’
Former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici, who runs a campaign to preserve Malta’s independence and neutrality, has reiterated his position against any form of military intervention in Libya.
Referring to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi’s assertion that Malta’s neutrality does not mean being neutralised, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said he could not understand such an attitude, which, he added, seemed to be aimed at preparing public opinion to accept military intervention.
“We cannot just compromise the national interest to be praised by British Prime Minister David Cameron,” Dr Mifsud Bonnici said, reiterating his suggestion for Malta to play a mediating role.
“When there is a conflict you start by trying to secure a ceasefire not by contemplating military intervention. If there can be mediation between the Jewish people and Palestinians, why cannot there be mediation between Libyans? What theory is this? Or is there another agenda at play here?”
Dr Mifsud Bonnici argues that if this is not a Maltese defence matter, any action would breach the country’s neutrality clause, even if within the framework of a UN Security Council resolution.
He said the Libyan protesters were now evidently armed, so the situation was clearly that of a civil war. Therefore, contemplating any action was “illogical”.
“What happens now if things do not go down the road everyone seems to be anticipating? What if Gaddafi gets the upper hand in the end? What happens to our commercial and security interests?”
26 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
If KMB has a history book handy, he can turn the page to the bit when Chamberlain returned from his meeting with Hitler.
What happens, Karm, if you were to just shut up, for once?
Well, how about asking The Times if it was they who rang him up in the first place? And what for?
[Daphne – Because it’s a news story, Albert. We criticise The Times when it isn’t proactive and then we criticise it when it is. I assume you are roughly my generation or older. Well, in that case you will know that the names Gaddafi/Karmenu/Mintoff go together in our minds. Gaddafi green was everywhere in our lives. Children at state schools were taken to Gaddafi meetings and to see exhibitions put on by the Libyan Culture Bureau or whatever it was. So yes, it is extremely relevant to ask him what he thinks. If Mintoff weren’t senile, they would ask him too. Two other people they should ask: Karmenu Vella, who came back to Malta in Gaddafi’s private jet and who is (well, was) very well connected there, having been chairman of a 50% Libyan-government-owned company, and international secretary AST. Joe Grima has told us what he thinks already, on Inkontri. Gaddafi taghna c-children’s allowance.]
But I was just replying to willywonka’s comment here.
The Times phones KMB, and he replies. So, it’s not a question of shutting up, as one is answering a legitimate question by a reporter.
[Daphne – I suppose he meant that he should just shut up about neutrality. Or how about ‘No comment – I have retired from politics.’]
I think that Mintoff’s hand-over of the party to KMB was a sadistic act; I think Mintoff at the time had seen what was on the horizon.
Let’s keep our heads below the parapet.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110303/local/don-t-take-sides-in-a-civil-war
glorianne farrugia
He is right..This will take long,and we shouldn’t interfere,not for all the money and praises in the world.Now we are starting to realize in what a peaceful country we are living.We want to stay this way.Should the need arise,we will take to the streets to show our dissaproval …
[Daphne – Ahjar tibbukkja n-Nexos minn issa mela, ghax dawk impenjati hafna.]
Actually Nexos Daph have been hired for government events as well…
[Daphne – Of course. They are practically the only company which provides the service. I wasn’t intimating that they are used only for Labour events. That was a reference to the fact that Labour’s hunger-marches come uniquely equipped with sound and light systems from Nexos (expensive), which is a bit….inappropriate. There’s a difference between an ‘event’ and a protest march. Protest marches should look as spontaneous and under-organised as possible.]
I find it hardly surprising that someone who was in power during a period of flagrant human right breaches is now urging us not to take sides in a conflict between a tyrant and a long-abused neighbouring population.
That’s why he can actually tell us that with a straight face – because like his friend and blood-brother says now, he said then that there weren’t any any breaches of civil or fundamental rights.
Well said, Ernest
This is the reality of the Gaddafi regime that gave “human rights” prize to Mintoff via his delivery boy KMB.
In 2004, five Bulgarian nurses were found guilty by a Libyan court of deliberately infecting hundreds of children at a Benghazi hospital with HIV. This was a cover up operation by the Gaddafi regime to hide the consequences of its own incompetence.
The nurses, who have always maintained their innocence, say they had been tortured into confessing. They spent years on death row before finally being freed and sent home in 2007.
The interview with them can be seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zTvAsShaLM&feature=player_embedded
About 10/12 years ago, I had two Libyan young women as patients who were visiting Malta to see their Maltese mother’s family. I was shocked with what they told me when they answered me that I previously had heard the Libyan authorities say that AIDS did not exist in Libya.
About 400 patients with AIDS were promised that they would be treated by being placed in a specially built secure place. Then suddenly one night, when everybody was asleep, the whole place was dynamited and all the inmates were killed.
There goes Cretinosaurus Rex again…………
Well, let’s hope this one disappears off the face of the earth, or at least Malta. I was a teenager when he was prime minister and had to spend my youth participating in school protests and passing on top-secret messages to fellow students that English lectures would be held in my parent’s basement and not at school due to unrest.
Il-vera vojt.
Brendan O’Neill would have had Daphne in mind when he wrote this piece.
“The narcissism of the iPad imperialists who want to invade Libya”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100077594/the-narcissism-of-the-ipad-imperialists-who-want-to-invade-libya/#
[Daphne – Hmmm, it hardly applies to me, I would say. I don’t live in the Home Counties far away from Libya, but 250 miles away from Tripoli. And I didn’t grow up in liberal Britain, but in Gaddafi’s vassal-state. So no, wrong target. Perhaps we should hear what the Irishman has to say about Gaddafi’s long-term sponsorship of the IRA. Now that would be interesting. But I can’t possibly comment because I don’t live in the Home Counties. I live in Malta, where the IRA were irrelevant.]
And Bruno agrees: “Libyans are doing it by themselves”
http://blogs.euobserver.com/waterfield/2011/03/01/libyans-are-doing-it-by-themselves-without-eu/
[Daphne – Utter rubbish. There speaks somebody who has probably never met a Libyan in his life. They are not doing it by themselves because those who are are being dragged away and never seen again – see the interview reproduced on this site. And they are desperate for a no-fly zone. If this idiot thinks that badly armed civilians can surge into Tripoli and can it over, he is thinking ‘student demo’. There is no way that they can get to Gaddafi physically, and as long as he remains alive, he will remain in control of the city. But you would have to live 250 miles away to know that, and to have actually been there, and to know people who live there.]
“Anglu sits on seat were Megrahi he sat’ as he did with that famous bench where the Princess of Wales was once photographed outside the Taj Mahal”
He got his bearing twisted and sat on the wrong bench. Now, with elephants it is a bit earlier – distinguishing the tail from the trunk might present problems, but the huge flappy appendages on each side at the front end cannot be missed.
Does he have plans to accept another humanitarian award from Gaddafi? Or present one on his behalf?
Does this man honestly think that things can return to the way they were before, with Gaddafi taking up where he left off?
This protector of our Constitution is the very one who rode on a lorry with dockyard thugs and called them the aristocracy of the workers as they went to ransack the Archbishop’s Curia and the Law Courts where he now shuffles into work every day.
I was in Valletta that day and was terrorised for wanting nothing more than to live in a normal country.
So go to hell, Karmenu, and stop trying to make yourself a hero.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110303/local/eritreans-plead-for-help-for-asylum-seekers-stranded-in-libya
“There are reports that sub-Saharan Africans are being indiscriminately stabbed and killed with knives and machetes in the city of Benghazi. We have information that at least two Eritreans were killed, while several others were stabbed and injured,” say a number of Eritreans resident in Malta in a letter to the Maltese government.
This is because black Africans in Libya are being considered automatically to be Gaddafi’s mercenaries by the rebels.
Such goes to show that the conflict in Libya is no simple clearcut conflict. The issues there (like they were in other Middle Eastern and Asian countries) are much more complicated than a simple “struggle for liberty”. That is why the West is ill-advised to meddle in these affairs.
[Daphne – Don’t talk bollocks, Albert. Do you see an attitude towards black Africans that is any different in Malta? Take a look at the comments-board on timesofmalta.com. The ignorant, llike the poor, will be with us always and everywhere. Look at the way Maltese people talk about Libyans, and the reams of comments on timesofmalta.com saying that they should go and protest in their own country? Does that make the issues in Malta ‘much more complicated than a simple struggle for liberty’? No, it does not. It remains that some people remain sadly unevolved. In Benghazi they have an excuse – no education, as it was Gaddafi’s policy to keep people uneducated. In Malta, nobody has any such excuse.]
Albert, from the outset the West did its best to ensure that we are talking about two distinct forces, which they knew would inevitably lead to a showdown. Not that Gaddafi deserves any better, but a prolonged civil war will not solve much.
Mediation by the Arab League with a view to eventually stifle Gaddafi out of existence could work. But time is running out for that and it is clear that the West wants none of this.
But just look at how he’s regained composure since his initial shock. Consider how confused he looked in the 20-second umbrella spectacle following his mystifying disappearance.
Then came the two first speeches, one from a wrecked building, still wearing grim garb and giving the impression that he was fighting for survival (you must have seen this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GcUutnU2gk), and the other from atop the Knights’ fortress, wearing his Russian shapka and still in need of a shower and clean clothes.
But now he’s had his shower and is back to wearing his royalty attire, realising that he was gaining no sympathy by looking miserable and defeated. Regaining an air of control is crucial here and that’s what he’s done.
What I see now is a Gaddafi who knows he’s in deep shit, but who also knows he can fight it out and wish for luck – such as Saudi Arabia erupting next (there’s talk of a ‘Day of Rage’ on 11 March).
I could go on, of course, for the whole scene is more complicated than it seems, but people here are put off by information that goes against their scripted worldview, so they brush it off as ‘conspiracy theory’ and attack you personally for lack of a better argument.
[Daphne – Attack, Kevin? You’re just teased. Nuza l-kid’s gloves ta’ Saviour mieghek. And I don’t know why you’re so touchy anyway. There’s nothing you haven’t said here above which I don’t agree with or have said myself.]
Worry not, Daphne. I am largely referring to the Daphne-lites, you know, the mob; your acolytes, the applauders and flatterers…
[Daphne – Everybody teases you, Kevin. You just choose to take it seriously.]
Seriously now, to think that I could take at heart anything said here, now that would be embarrassing.
Most of these inane comments come from many who have not lived in the 60s, 70s and 80s, so they don’t know what it means to really struggle to re-gain freedom of speech and democracy.
Many are racist because they are not interested in educating themselves about other nationalities, their customs and history. Their Maltese history book has only two chapters:
Chapter 1: The ‘Golden Years’
Chapter 2: Kif Gonzi qatilna bil-guh.
Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici puts forward the argument that since both sides are armed, it is a civil war. But it didn’t start as a civil war. Why didn’t he speak out when the unarmed protesters were killed? Initially they were not armed. Maybe KMB was still uncertain what to believe.
KMB must have had to make a tremendous effort to tell us that we should not take sides.
I am ‘morally convinced’ that what he really wished to say was that we should support Gaddafi to bring the country back to normality (KMB’s idea of normality that is) but even he is bright enough to know that it would be going to far.
I’m seriously beginning to think that KMB may be autistic-savant without much “savant”. Seriously. No offence meant to anyone, but such a person should never have been in control of our country.