Dear Housewife, the atmosphere in those days was one where if one said something “out of place,” or was seen with “the wrong people” even that would have to be paid for. I can tell you that the air around Marsa, Floriana and up to Valletta was heavy with the smell of fear that day.

Just imagine the sound of the trucks slowly advancing in line towards the Times, carrying the illustrious labour characters who were standing in the trucks and beating the sides of these trucks with metal rods in a steady menacing beat.

Those who heard and went to check what was happening just knew that these guys were on a mission and that something terrible was about to happen. Even today I can hear my heart thudding when I recall that ugly scene with ugly people bent on gang violence, their collective stare vindictive and grey with hatred.

How the same people are permitted to be tolerated, and even considered or regarded politically, today is something I fail to appreciate given the crime that ensued. The smell of smoke after the burning is something that can’t be fabricated either and the air was thick with it.

I have been reading these comments here for a while and really come to the conclusion that Malta is not about North and South and such divides, but about about those who have values and the guts to stand up for them, those who know what the values should be and prefer to remain either looking on, or looking knowingly away, as perpetual bystanders – ready to gossip but rarely seen where action is required – and those who have no clue what values the others are making such a fuss over and probably never will.

I suppose manipulation of the system happens, as Daphne mentioned with Joe Grima and the fact that he was educated to know the code and SHOULD have known, when the lure of the fast buck – or self importance – in the short term overrides any sense of long term values.

Others would fall short on the guts score: Guts to withstand pressure; Guts to say no when knowledge clearly shows that what is happening is wrong; Guts to take action when this is required; Guts to take on a system of wrongdoing that has had its codes badly wired from the word go; Guts to give a nation a sense of this, as Daphne – with validating input from the commentators – is doing single-handedly, as I see it.

The warning signs for the present situation are there: labour have already gotten rid of two insightful values-conscious beacons. Why are the danger alarms not sounding louder?

Issa sew. This one, or the one above?

ok ronnie. Tkomplix tqazzizna bl-ideat strambi tieghek fuq l-IVF. Min mhux kapaci jgib tfal b’mod naturali m’ghandhux dritt jiddetta l-agenda sporka tieghu.

Il-kumment tieghi kellu jkun kumment sarkastiku.

I do not blame the housewife here if she doesn’t believe the story about Ta’ Times.
These days, it seems that even the ones working there do not believe it ever happened.

Clifford, don’t be an idiot. I’ve expressed my thoughts about Mintoff many times on this blog and I pretty much concur with Daphne’s analysis of Dom.

IVF is a very topical subject and it seems like this subject too has been hijacked by the Mullahs within the PN.

Having the country run by religious fundamentalists is very disturbing to me.

Maybe you think it is OK that the PM and ministers give more weight to what the bishops or Paul Vincenti think about a subject than what the professionals and science think, but I do and I would think many other people do as well.

[Daphne – It’s a pity it’s such a dull subject, really. The only people who can get exercised about IVF are stakeholders: those who had it, those who want it, and those who work in it. It’s not captivating, like divorce or gay marriage or abortion.]There’s something decidedly creepy about fiddling about with Fallopian tubes and ovaries and the rest. We don’t really want to know; we’re just happy people get their babies. But there you go.]

Brilliant. So now The Times is in cahoots with Daphne and published an article in 2009 with fabricated interviews just so that Daphne can talk about it in 2012. Veru x’jghidu in-nies Def, int Sahhara

The wild week we’ve just had brought to life the cheeky Saatchi & Saatchi billboards hitting our motorways. We were suddenly taken back to the savage polarization of the Golden Period. And a painful, bloody period it was!

This is the true legacy of Dom: brutal divisiveness.