Libya is a state and Gaddafi represents the regime that ran the Libyan state.

The Gaddafi regime is effectively now part of history, but the Libyan state remains.

My words that Malta continues to whore for Libya may be hypothetical but they may also be correct. Your premise that this is irrelevant is astounding.

[Daphne – Farrugia, I – unlike you – am capable of distinguishing in this matter between:

1. Libya the state without Gaddafi and Gaddafi’s regime;
2. Legitimate business and non-legitimate business. Yes, it’s true that under Gaddafi things that are against the law in other states – like bribery and corruption – were legitimate. But going along with it was wrong because that is how dictators are shored up. The United States has laws preventing US businesses/citizens from bribing or corrupting public officials anywhere in the world, an ‘extra-territorial’ law which opens US citizens to prosecution in the USA for bribing, for example, somebody in Libya. Malta has no such laws, and some of the people – including politicians – who reinvented themselves as consultants on doing business in Libya actually prided themselves on knowing the right people to bribe.]

As for the latter part of my arguments which you call premature: tell that to France and the UK. Both countries have been negotiating oil concessions in Libya since the beginning of the rebellion. The president of the French oil company Total had even visited the Benghazi government.

[Daphne – Good for them. Well done. They stuck their necks out for the rebellion, they have spent billions of their own tax money, now let them collect. That’s the way it works: it’s called liberalism (the real British meaning, as opposed to sex and divorce).]

This raised alarm in Italy and its national oil company ENI. Not to be outdone by the French, Italy also belatedly recongised the Transitional Nation Council (TNC) in Benghazi (the TNC were awarding ENI oil concessions to Total prior to Italian recognition of TNC).

Meanwhile, Maltese politicians did not seize the opportunity to ask the TNC to declare the Gulf of Sirt as international water (they would have conceded in return for diplomatic recognition). Instead, we kept on bickering on ‘x’ghamel Mintoff’ or ‘x’ghamel Gonzi ma’ Gadaffi’ as if the world really cares (your blog probably led the ‘debate’).

[Daphne – The world may not care, but we do and that’s enough. Remember Socrates’ instruction: know thyself. What do you imagine it means?]

Libya may be pressured by the US to disown the Gulf of Sirt but not by Maltese politicians who continue to whore for Libya till this day. This explains why Malta recognised the TNC, a government that does not recognise our sovereign right over the Medina Bank and further south to the northern rim of the oil-rich Sirt Basin.

[Daphne – Farrugia, you are unable to distinguish between normal diplomatic negotiations (Gulf of Sirte, etc) and whoring (green uniforms for state school children, green public buses, green passports with Libya featured prominently, Arabic ranked with Maltese and English as a university entrance requirement, armed Libyan soldiers allowed to move freely in Malta, Libya given the building FACING THE MALTESE SEAT OF POWER ACROSS PALACE SQUARE, Maltese schoolchildren given copies of the Green Book, taking money from Gaddafi in return for closing down the British military base…those were awful days, Farrugia. Gaddafi and Mintoff are inseparable in my mind now because they were inseparable in mind as a child. Maltese children were the only ones outside LIbya who knew exactly what Gaddafi looked like, recognised his image and knew his name. For shame.]

If that is not whoring for Libya then tell me what that is? Where and when in history did a state recognise a government that does not recognise the borders of that state?

[Daphne – You are obviously not a student, or even a cursory reader, of history.]

We have to thank our Dr Tonio Borg for this treachery.

The Italians weren’t much better. The only thing that kept them away from licking the under soles of Gaddafi’s boots were their NATO obligations. The played the devil’s game much better than us and ended with a lot of bombs and lead.

Clap clap ……..Im 2nd gen sweetie , my Pa was a nice Tal-pepe boy from Qui si sana (ah , you know the type) he moved to Tas-Soho in the 1950’s , – but correct , the 1980’s Malti of Soho were exported though .

Admit it ,the bottom line however is your narrative, based on a stereotype is amusingly wrong but forgiveable- Issa, because I’m Maltese & I live in Soho , that does’t make me a pimp or a ponce or a Dwarf , ok . If you want to see such freakery , I heard you could do no better than to take a trip down Testaferrata Street ,& other such places .

I’ll say it again , they ( World leaders ) are all Pimp’s & Whores , this aint no family show .

Sahha ,

And who are exactly the whores and Pimps then ,

“Gaddafi donates to Malta’s Social Security fund ” , oh please .It’s the done thing one way or another in Politics – Tony Blair visited Libya in 2004 on behalf on BP & Sarkozy’s 2007 successful election campaign was part founded by again MR.Frizz Head . None of this makes it right but you can’t cut and paste history to fit ones agenda without looking at this in broader terms – We are all Pimps and Whores ! .

And look at this , It was no big secret the then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wanted to knock Mintoff whilst all this was going on:

http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=52129

Yes ok , we all know Mintoff was no Luke Sky Walker , but he wasn’t no Darth Vader either , so that makes him a kinda erm , Han Solo , hmmm yes .

[Daphne – I don’t know about Malta whoring itself to Britain as a metaphor, Zanzi, but there was certainly a lot of that literally in your part of London. Maybe that’s why you think ‘we are all Pimps and Whores’.

And given a choice between being yoked to Britain and being yoked to Gaddafi’s Libya, if those were really the only two choices available, only nut-jobs would have chosen the latter. But then Malta is full of them. Why, we had so many to spare we even exported them to Soho to run the sex trade. The bottom line is, when you left Malta, you left to ply your trade in Soho, not in Tripoli.]

You are out of context…Hush now, go back to your slumber..

“Perhaps you are too young to remember the jokes on RAI at the time: Malta, la Valletta di Gaddafi, a pun on the Italian word for ‘showgirl’ being the same as the name of our capital.”

…and so also too young to remember that Joe Grima, then MLP Minister for Tourism, had publicly threatened to sue the utterer of those words – a crow-like hand puppet named Rockefeller.

[Daphne – ??????]

Only as recently as last September: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100915/local/30th-anniversary-of-neutral-malta.326944

There was once upon a time an Inspector Javert, one would find this character in Victor Hugo’s world famous ‘Les Miserable’, a gift to humanity Honore de Balzac would call it.

His duty towards his profession: impeccable, irreproachable, and incorruptible. He would keep on chasing a Jean Valjean, a villain and as was common in his times, name and crime were recorded in special outcasts ‘registry’ a kind of rogue’s gallery.

His passion in hunting Jean down and have justice done turns to a kind of ‘obsession’ a ‘culture of vengeance’. His whole energy is centered to that charge he would keep chasing even now that Jean is old, dying and pitifully useless, I am not using this word despairingly, Andre Malraux in his novel ‘La Condition Humaine’ will put it this way.
They say it takes nine months to make a man and one day to kill. But it takes more than nine months to make; it needs seventy/eighty years of vigor, of determination, of so many things. When this man is done, when he completely loses trace of his very young days, and youth and now that he is a real man, he is simply good for nothing other than to pass away. This is generally speaking of course.

Javert however, is still full of health, and vigor, Italians would say “sua vita va a gonfie vele’ his profession gives him that ‘raison d’être’. Javert hunt takes a twist from a prosecutor he becomes slowly and inexorable haunted by his own self, he is himself in the process of maturing, but the self discovery is painful. Unfortunately Javert never redeems himself, he is as steadfast as ever, only to let himself slide and disappear into the black, icy waters of the Seine.

I am always attentive to the other side of what seems obvious. Did Mintoff make history or history made him?