Have you noticed the logical fallacies in Muscat’s argument for ‘EU’ help on immigration?
He’s repeated this argument several times, most recently in a television interview when he was in Brussels for the council meeting.
1. When European banks failed during the financial crisis, the EU pulled together and bailed out the worst-hit member states.
2. The Maltese taxpayer paid money out of his pocket and helped with the bail-out.
3. Now that the Maltese need help, the ‘EU’ should help us because we helped in the financial crisis.
4. If this does not happen, it means that the ‘EU’ only cares about money and not about lives.
That’s the kind of rhetoric you can use in a village bar or mass meeting in Malta. It doesn’t work at the level at which he tried to press home his point. It made him sound like somebody with a fifth-rate brain, from the backwoods of God knows where.
Here’s my response.
a. The European Union is not a Freemasons’ lodge. Decisions for action are not taken on the basis of an obligation for reciprocal assistance to fellow members.
b. Malta’s contribution to the bail-out was not a voluntary act of charity but an obligation under a group decision, made according to a set of principles. It was not money given in the expectation of something in return.
c. It is not the Maltese who need help, but the people who are dying and drowning. Can this be more obvious? Apparently, yes, because our prime minister and his government have not understood this, and speak from egocentricity. ‘The EU’, however, being rooted in the world’s most highly developed civilisation, has long understood it and this accounts for its attitude, both towards Malta’s prime minister and towards the immigrant situation.
d. It is precisely because ‘the EU’ cares about lives beyond money that a decision was taken to bail out the banks. An organisation that cared about money but not lives would not have spent its money bailing out other people’s banks to save millions of lives from spiralling into destitution.
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It’s all about the money with Joseph Muscat. He just sees the immigration issue as another way of raising money so he can pay out more iced buns. Just like he did with our citizenship.
Joseph jahseb li l-mexxejja Ewropej mhux konxji ta’ dan. Ta’ b’xejn isolat, injorat u mhux ikkalkulat.
http://youtu.be/INPlZujD1Fs
What really bugs me is that this sorry excuse for a prime minister keeps firing these stupid inanities but we never hear of anyone retorting and putting him in his place.
The biggest hypocrisy shown in all this is the accusation that “the EU cares about money, not lives”, by someone who threathened pushback to potential refugees (because his country is too small), before going on to talk excitedly to the international media about selling citizenship.
You’re on a roll. The PN should be copying and pasting this.
You are wasting your time.
Those who get it have no need to read it.
And those who don’t get it won’t understand it anyway.
But hopefully some of those switchers get the message.
No Mr.Ball, DCG blog has opened up many minds indeed and should continue to do so. That is what a decent blog is all about. Keep at it Daphne.
Muscat sounds like somebody with a fifth-rate brain, from the backwoods of God knows where because that is what he is.
Oh shit I missed Silvio Parnis’s coffee morning.
Your argumentation is flawless, and Joseph Muscat knows that, but the average Maltese elector would not realize it (if that weren’t the case, a MLP recycled from the 80s wouldn’t have won with such a majority despite all the “funding”). And because Joseph Muscat knows that, he speaks precisely in that way.
Joseph Muscat is threatening Europe with lack of cooperation on future bailouts because he is not in need of the EU when it comes to bailing out Malta.
Like he did with bailing out Enemalta from bankruptcy because of his plans to reduce the electricity tariffs, he will go to the government of China. Besides, China’s Exim Bank is full of cash, which it regularly loans to resource-rich African countries like Ghana, Nigeria, Angola and Sudan.
And to make things easier, Joseph Muscat recruited Shiv Nair – an individual who is permanently debarred by the World Bank for fraud and corruption since 1999/2000 – as his consultant. Besides being China’s ‘secret weapon in Africa’ (The Economist), Nair himself claims (LinkedIn account) that he has specialised in working with the China Africa Development Fund and the Chinese Exim Bank.
As a last resort, if worst comes to worst, Muscat will increase Henley & Partners’ commission so that they can sell more Maltese passports – and less passports of St. Kitts, Grenada, and Nevis – to finance his bailout.
If the bailout concerns the Euro, then he has less to worry about. Edward Sigg Luna, the Professor of Mintoffianomics, has already been quoted saying that he will give his all to strengthen the Renminbi. At that point, Joseph Muscat will be glad to see the Euro crash, while the Renminbi soars.
Joseph Muscat is such a hypocrite when he mentions our contribution to the financial crisis. He forgot that he screamed his lungs out in protest that Malta is paying out too much. He found a European budget contribution to Malta of 1.2 billion. He never mentions it.
There is no simplistic solution to the immigration problem. There never was, and will never be. If Muscat knows this, then he would do well to say so.
If he doesn’t, then God help us.
What is a “logical” fallacy?
[Daphne – http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/logical%20fallacies.htm ]