For this, the education system is partly to blame. Our students learn about our remote history but little or nothing is taught about our very recent past.

Maybe because it might be taken as talking about politics?

So we are doing a disservice to our students as we are presenting them with a stunted version of our recent past.

How can they relate to this past and learn to be wise when weighing the actions and words of the political class, especially?

Is European history a part of the school curriculum?

Again if they’ve never come across the the good and the bad in other countries, they are learning history in a vacuum.

And when those who fear their past and would like to forget and make us forget, and are trying and succeeding- to some extent, then this even worse.

Again, when those of us who lived through those terrible years won’t be here, there will be nobody to tell them. They will believe that the Golden Years were really so.

http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/01/04/china-renewed-restrictions-send-online-chill

‘…..On December 28, 2012, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, China’s legislative body, passed the “Decision to Strengthen the Protection of Online Information.” The Decision contains troubling provisions that require internet access and telecommunications providers to collect personal information about users when they sign up for internet access, landline, or mobile phone service. Paragraph 6 of the Decision also applies to service providers that allow users to publish online, who must be able to connect pseudonyms to real identities when citizens post information. In the days following the decision, several well-known online activists found that their weibo micro-blogging accounts had been shut down.

“These new mandates send a chilling message to China’s netizens,” said Cynthia Wong, senior researcher on the internet and human rights at Human Rights Watch. “The government’s decision is an effort to silence critics and curb anonymity online by further conscripting internet companies to monitor and censor users.”

“Real name registration” requirements allow authorities to more easily identify online commentators or tie mobile use to specific individuals, limiting anonymous expression, “whistleblowers” who spotlight official corruption, and the right to privacy. Even without energetic enforcement, the law will suppress critical speech as users may fear that anything they post critical of the government could lead to reprisals.

Although the right to freedom of expression is guaranteed in article 35 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government continues to regularly impose sharp curbs, including through broad internet censorship, surveillance practices, and prosecution of citizens and journalists for their online activity. For example, in February 2012, writer Zhu Yufu was sentenced to seven years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” because he posted a poem online calling for political reform in the wake of the Arab Spring…’

The website is full.

That’s what embassies in our country are for (in part): gathering information and possible policy outcomes in the host state.

If they’re doing their work right, I’m sure statesmen from the USA and Europe (amongst others) already know about Malta’s possible re-alignment to the rogue states of the world should Labour come to power.

What this scenario would mean for our relations with the rest of the civilised world is anyone’s guess.

Then we can all have a dip in his swimming pool.

If the there was another wiki leaks, do you think there would be some large bells ringing?

Does Muscat know the implications of the Tibet saga on the world platform, both at political and street level is?? But then again he will have to write like this quite a bit if China is giving him a power station for free!

This guy is turning out to be far more dangerous than the PN could ever predict!! Some little red lights must be going off somewhere in the world.

But with the state of the Maltese people’s general interest in Maltese and foreign history being what it is, I’m not really surprised.

Most just don’t care enough to see what events and movements led to their current life to appreciate what to avoid in future. Quite sad, but unfortunately true.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” has never been more true locally.