[Daphne – My Muslim girlfriends lead lives no different to mine, Christopher. And a generation back, Maltese women led lives no different to those in Muslim countries. ALL religions seek to oppress women. I sometimes think one of the main driving forces behind the growth of organised religion was the need men had to keep women subjugated. Catholicism is no different; it is merely forced to operate in a secular democracy nowadays, that’s all.]

Paper came from China. So did paper bills – the ones you use to pay for things. Most of what came westwards over the Silk Route was in heavy demand in Europe. Much of what went east wasn’t very popular, right down to Britain’s gifts being rejected by the Emperor of China.

Algebra is not a European invention.

And Maltese certainly isn’t ‘European’.

A pedantic observation: there are 56 ethnic groups in China (26 in Yunnan alone). The Han are the largest group.

My intention is not to belittle the unanimous statement made by the Maltese. I’m wary of the distortion made by certain individuals to push an ideology.

It seems that this mechanism is induced whenever someone removes the mundane details to iintroduce a faith system in their strain of politics. That really gets my goat.

Manuel Dimech is portrayed as John the Baptist, opening the way to the coming of the Salvatur and Borg Pisani and 1565 have been conveniently appropriated for the coming of another.

The truth, I think, is much less romantic. When its facets are acknowledged however, the instruments to build a future are sharpened leading to a refined design.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to practise my tarantella.

Jozef, I have heard that the Turkish omit this event in school history subject. They’ve sent thousands of troops and the best commanders, but for them it didnt happen. Not that it should matter much for us, but that’s the loser account for you.

[Daphne – Honestly, Sandro. Isn’t this just what I’ve been trying to tell you? It was an event for Malta, but it was not an event for anyone else, including the aggressor. This is the Ottoman Empire you’re talking about, not ‘the Turks’.]

The fact remains the unanimous ‘monotheistic’ statement made freely by the Maltese in the 1565 ‘interaction’, which can be arrived to even prima facie. More, unlike Cyprus and what you think, the outcome sorted us out big deal in this respect, and it is not a myth. It is tangible and relevant to this day.

Borg Pisani can be anything to anyone according to sympathies. History records him as a spy, which at that moment, he was.

Buon San Gennaro.

Jason’s Facebook comment vera trid tkun Jason Micallef ta!

I have never been to Sweden or Norway or Israel. However I I have visited Turkey which is a secular but Islamic society.

I feel more at home in Germany or Ireland than in Turkey. Therefore I think I would feel more at home in Sweden than in Libya or Israel.

There are many cultural differences between our Western society and North African or Middle Eastern societies (as in religion, dress and food).

[Daphne – I said Tel Aviv, not ‘Israel’. It’s Malta away from home, believe me. As for your feeling at home in Germany and Ireland, that’s impossible because they couldn’t be less like your home. What you misinterpret as ‘feeling at home’ is the comfort and security of familiarity through a lifetime of positive socio-cultural messages which breed trust. You would not have felt at home in Germany 70 years ago. You do not feel at home in Turkey because of a lifetime of negative messages that have bred fear and mistrust. To the Germans and the Irish, a Maltese person might as well be a Turk – same difference. You feel at home in their countries but they do not feel at home in yours.]

Now for some real reasearch on the origin of the Maltese language and its resemblance with the Lebanese language:

http://malta.lebaneseclub.org/index.htm

http://phoenicia.org/maltese.html

According to the Acts of the Apostles say, the Maltese were described as “barbaroi”, meaning they spoke neither Latin nor Greek.

[Daphne – David, you are such an amateur. 1. Greek, Latin and Phoenician were not the only three languages in the Mediterranean 2,000 years ago. 2. Two thousand years ago, the people who lived on Malta might well have spoken a Canaanite language because they were from across the water in Carthage. There is, however, no continuity with that population because Arab scouts arriving from Sicily in early medieval times described the island as devoid of inhabitants. We speak corrupted Arabic precisely because, when the islands were repopulated once more soon after that, it was again from across the water in Tunisia, via Sicily. The most common ‘place of origin’ surname in Malta is Kairouan-a (Caruana) http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/499

Lebanese is not a language. The language spoken in Lebanon is Arabic. Hence the ‘thrilling’ similarities. The Phoenicians wouldn’t have recognised a word of it. ]

Was Manuel Dimech a criminal, guilty of murder and spared the gallows simply because he was legally a minor or Missier Is-Socjalismu Malti?

Was Carmelo Borg Pisani ultimate hero, traitor or one of the most tragic figures in recent history?

Was Mons. Saydon a softspoken academic who never forgot his rural origins, or a staunch leftist who defied the hierarchy of the church?

The real disservice, if I may, is when cognition, research and analysis are supposed to lead to one accepted version of history, usually by the victors. It tends to promote myth and the comfort that we’re sorted.

As for my forefathers, I’m afraid the paternal side were still in Naples in1565, one of them quite a painter.
They were all servicemen in 1943, little did they know one would marry into a family who had a member arrested and detained simply because he loved his music and was a frequent visitor to Rome.

Does that make me less Maltese?