Here’s to progressive liberalism
Published:
December 21, 2011 at 8:21pm
Dom Mintoff with Kim Il Sung in North Korea - when that troupe sang 'Ma taghmlu xejn mal-perit Mintoff
A 1980s meeting of the Malta-North Korea Friendship Society: the portraits on the wall show Mintoff, KMB and Kim Il Sung
Agatha Barbara lays flowers at a memorial to Kim Il Sung in Valletta
Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, 1980
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Aeons behind true progressive liberalism
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZCl0_gHzpE
Daphne, as we near the end of 2011, I have looked back on what has transpired on your blog this year.
Firstly, you have given us memorable entertainment and laughs.
Secondly, your wit and humour have ‘wiped the floor’ with your detractors.
However, your single handed, complete and utter decimation of the up and coming (no pun), moronic Labour chavs is a major wonder.
Now, as I see in this thread, you are moving on to the geriatric, far more dangerous, Labour dinosaurs.
Can’t wait to see the results in 2012.
Great stuff.
Maybe AST can explain to his LP chums the policies his friends in North Korea are applying which are leading to millions of people starving to death and if he still supports the regime.
Why does that last pic look so much like this one?
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/grazzi-perit1.jpg
an interesting Mintoff/ north Korea/ Mugabe connection here;
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2010/02/09/secret-treaty-between-north-korea-and-malta/
Honourable mention of Malta here;
http://www.joecrazy.com/tag/dprk/
Just a few months ago;
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-254566393.html
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111221/local/franco-debono-warns-he-will-not-back-the-government-unless-justice-and-home-affairs-ministry-is-split-immediately.399414
Look at me mummy! I’m headline news again!
What’s the fuss?
“Franco Debono warns he will not back the government unless ministry is split immediately”. Jaf jisthi dal-fiswa?
Daphne, I am shocked again reading Franco Debono’s unrealistic demands. Blackmailing the Prime Minter and the government is wholly undemocratic. The PM can’t continue tolerating this unruly MP.
Continuing with his shenanigans, Debono is jeopardizing the government and instilling fear among the workers.
My gut feeling is that we are going to have early election.
Daphne, can the PN executive committee prevent Franco Debono from contesting the next election? No PM can tolerate a blackmailer, regardless what party it comes from.
Paul Micallef
Today, 07:39
He will get his wish list, or bye bye NP, he has the ball to do it.
As for DEMOCRACY at least take the time to read what he is saying, sa he is right in all aspects.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111221/local/franco-debono-warns-he-will-not-back-the-government-unless-justice-and-home-affairs-ministry-is-split-immediately.399414
Which ball the left or the right?
Painful reminders of a horrible past – really painful. Cannot understand how these times were described as “Golden”
Mhux kull ma jleqq hu deheb kont nismaghhom jghidu.
But why do the Labour Party always back the wrong horses ?
My other comment has nothing to do with the above but it appears that Franco Debono is at it again. It seems that now he is not worrying that he will bring the government down. The question of loyalty to your party does not seem to bother him. What does he care, as long as he is in the limelight. Little does he know that his political career is over even if he gets what he wants. Unless of course, he crosses over to the PL.
Etil, even in the PL his career would be over.
Photos like these…still make our country’s and not just MLP’s reputation blush.
Blush? Irid ikollok iz-zejt f’ wiccek biex tisthi l-ewwel. Dawk wicchom qieghed jew qaghad ghal kollox.
Although I do not agree with their political views I do not see the big fuss that everyone is making that these people had ties with Gaddafi.. Kim Jong-il etc?
Malta would have never been what it is today without it trying to make as many ‘friends’ as possible.
I do not think that at that point in time… Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il were telling the Labour government… listen we are mistreating and killing our people do you want to be our friends?
Wara kulhadd bravu!
[Daphne – That’s quite a childish take on the situation. Gaddafi, Kim Jong-Il and Mintoff/KMB’s friends were all pariahs to the democratic west at the time. Hindsight does not come into it. Mintoff and KMB chose them precisely because they were what they were.]
The Point, you made me recall the period when in the SMU there were particular members probably instructors who actually were North Koreans beating the Nationalist supporters with batons and throwing tear gas canisters.
Pity they were North Koreans and couldn’t be promoted after 1987.
Totally unconnected I know but I just read that Franco Debono is throwing tantrums again. Why can’t he just shut the hell up? We’re really sick of him and reading your columns hasn’t seem to have helped him.
What a royal pain in the neck!
This is off topic.
The following is the title of an article on http://www.maltastar.com.
“Eurobarometer: 60% of Maltese think that situation of national economy in totally ‘bad’; 63% think that the worst is still to come”
These fools could not be bothered to get things right on their own website. I do not want to think of how amateur they are going to be when in power.
http://www.maltastar.com/mstar.html
Sorry to be asking this here. I can’t seem to find a way of going back more than 10 or so posts in your blog. Sometimes I want to look at something you’ve written more than a dozen or so posts ago and I can’t find a way. Going to the archives is confusing because you’ve got something wrong with the date system as I keep getting strange dates like December 20th 2013.
[Daphne – 2013 isn’t the date. It’s the time. You search the archive the same way you search all other online archives: by date or keyword.]
I agree, Daphne, but still, going back to articles which you have missed, and therefore not knowing the keywords, is confusing.
Sometimes you post a quick series of articles in succession and I do not manage to catch up.
Daphne,
this ‘problem’ is accentuated in your prolific days, when missing your blog for just 24 hours means some articles quickly disappear out of the blog.
Sorry, darling, but Mintoff/KMB/Labour (past and present) are neither “progressive” nor “liberal”. That’s just like calling your articles “balanced”.
Daphne we’re from the same generation but I don’t remember the Mintoff years as well as you do. However you really can’t compare the Mintoff years with Kim il Sung’s and the other Kim’s Korea with what was happening in Malta.
My father used to buy il-Mument and he said that it was physically dangerous to do so but in N. Korea even if you frown at a picture of the dear leader you are imprisoned!
Your problem is that you are too emotional when it comes to anything Mintoff. He was an unpleasant dictator but for heaven’s sake there were a few things that he was good at like for example sweeping away the cobwebs of the past.
Even in your argument about sodomy you are wrong.The sodomy laws were used against homosexuals even though we all know what the literal meaning of sodomy is. So the Mintoff government did something good for gays in Malta.
[Daphne – You can’t be my age if you don’t remember the Mintoff years. I was 20 years old when he resigned as prime minister, so I remember them perfectly well. And if you don’t remember them as well as I do, then you can’t claim to have superior knowledge of them, or be surprised that I react emotionally to that period while you, who fail to remember them, don’t. No, I am not wrong about the sodomy law. It applied to heterosexuals as well as to homosexual men, and the complaints which reached the authorities were made by women against their husbands, not by prudes or third-party troublemakers against homosexual men. Mintoff did not abolish the anti-sodomy law because he respected gay men. He did not respect gay men but referred to them as pufti and championed macho chauvinist culture with all his references to male family jewels and other similar metaphors and similes. He did it to upset the Curia – the very same reason his government introduced civil marriage but stopped short of the law that should have been concomitant but wasn’t: divorce. Mintoff did nothing to sweep away ‘the cobwebs of the past’ – whatever you might mean by that. He sent Maltese society headlong into a brick wall, and we are still recovering from that catastrophic period. He failed singularly to do the most important thing for the proletariat whose adulation he sought – purely because he derived strength from it – but who he despised and treated with contempt. He failed to help them make something of themselves, to give them access to education and opportunities. The ignorance and poverty were just unbelievable: think the worst of the worst on today’s Facebook walls and multiple that exponentially. The real changes to society happened post 1987. Up until 1987, people stayed as primitive and ignorant as they had been for generations. Think people with no access to any information at all, no idea of the world outside, unable to read or write, caught in a tiny bubble the size of their street or really primitive village, and there you have it. It was Eddie Fenech Adami who changed the lives of the working-class for the better, and they will never forgive him for it.]
Adam and Eve lived with less then the basic essentials, shared an apple and were forbidden to think for themselves under pain of punishment .
Yet they thought they were in the Garden of Eden.
Malta was just like that in the Golden Mintoff/KMB era.
Can anyone imagine having babies in the pre-1987 era and managing to lay hands on formula milk, disposable nappies and baby food only if you knew the agent or a middle-man and paid extra for the “pjacir”? UNBELIEVABLE BUT TRUE.
I vote to have Daphne’s reply engaved on a slab of marble and turned into a national monument. That’s the best summary ever of our history after independence. Up yours, Dominic Fenech.
“no idea of the world outside”
Are you implying there was a ban on outbound travel?
There was no ban, but there might as well have been because people didn’t have the money to leave the country, and even if they did, exchange control restrictions made it very difficult. Also, access to the world outside does not mean travel necessarily. Most of our access to the world outside now comes through the internet and satellite/cable television. Back then, we didn’t have those things and people who lived working-class lives in Malta were completely cut off. They couldn’t even read a foreign newspaper or magazine because they didn’t have the language skills even if they could be bothered, which they could not.
Franco the a**h*** is at it again. Mintoff was a pain to Sant, and this one is a pain to Gonzi. Both think that they can run the country the way they want to just by blackmailing the party in government with their vote.
I don’t care what Mintoff did to Sant, they both deserved each other, but hell, why is Franco doing this?
Can’t anybody at HQ get rid of him once and for all?
Why doesn’t he do us all a favour, just pack his things and emigrate to Timbuktu?
OMG – this says it all. Gonzi ‘bullied’ by this pathetic loser who’s always moaning about his health. A lot of us have stressful jobs dear Franco – apparently you are not up to this job if you have ‘untold health issues’ because of the stress. Pathetic.
franco debono
Today, 10:03
i think that dr borg olivier should have said tha he was almost sleeping in our kitchen to convince me to vote, because with a clear conscience i had great difficluties to vote in favour of a ministry, whih i had been sayin for years had a completely wrong attitud to justice and home affairs. nothing personal but i was never in agreement, i declared publicly, and the situation shows.
i think dr borg oliver is one of the persons who knows that one of his decisons, which he has come lately to appreciate that was wrong, and had to remedy, has caused untold harm to my health over the past years, but i never spoke about it in public.
dr borg olivier should have said that he was at my home when the PM called me or i called him and informed me he would be splitting ministries by the end of the year. he did not know, i told him about it, but after some time he saw it with my parents on NET news
i think dr borg olivier should have said he is aware of my state of health and that he was at my home when dr jeanpierre farrugia came to visit me
there are other thing which dr borg olivier should have said, but i stop here for now.
dr borg olivier is aware i am s fed up with the situation of democrcy in malta that i was ready to leave everything i have built with much sacrifice, on my own, and with no one’s help, least from the party, and leave the country, and my family and go to italy, where i have always wanted to work.
when i was elected at 33, i had built a legal office from nothing, made a name for myself as a criminal lawyer and managed to get elected from an impossible district as the youngest government mp after contesting three elections.
i had already had to endure a lot and it was only my great loyalty which kept me in the PN
He can f**k off to Italy for all I care. They seem to have a penchant for smug w**kers.
http://kimjongillookingatthings.tumblr.com/
The following reminds me of 1970s Malta:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8711895.stm