No more faffing around – will one of the newspapers PLEASE give this story some context by demanding the views of our prime minister, and his government’s position?

Published: November 4, 2013 at 11:43am

Cyrenaica

As envisaged, the culturally autonomous Cyrenaica (eastern Libya) has unilaterally broken itself off from the rest of Libya and the government in Tripoli, and has set up its own government.

This was inevitable, given the circumstances. This is where the push to overthrow Gaddafi began almost two years ago. It was eastern Libya that started and drove the revolution against the Tripoli-based savage dictator.

This new government controls more than half of Libya’s oil production. It controls, indeed, a huge part of Libya, that part historically known as Cyrenaica.

The Maltese government, right on the doorstep, cannot carry on pretending that none of this is happening, while talking of valueless memorandums of understanding on oil deals with a Tripoli-based prime minister who is under siege and who has lost control of Libya.

When the revolution broke out in Tunisia almost two years ago, Joseph Muscat – the leader of the Opposition – could not see the inevitable, even though it was obvious what was coming next, that the Tunisian dictator would go down, that the fire would spread and that the Egyptian and Libyan dictators would go down too, that the consequences would be enormous.

Instead he told parliament that if he were in charge, he would immediately launch a tourism campaign to take Tunisia’s tourism business. That is how small-minded he is. Like the village trader whose mentality he grew up with, he sees everything as an opportunity biex iddawwar lira, and can’t see the bigger picture or the magnitude of the situation.

I rather suspect that with Libya blowing up in this manner, his first thought will be that this is a fantastic opportunity to sell a large number of Maltese passports very quickly to rich and well-connected (with the Dalli/Karmenu Vella/AST crowd) Libyans fleeing the country but unable to live anywhere else on their current passport.




9 Comments Comment

  1. Manuel says:

    Context? The Times won’t go through so much trouble. Ma tarax.

  2. H.P. Baxxter says:

    What blimmin’ context, pardon my profanity? We can barely place Libya on the map.

  3. Antoine Vella says:

    Presumably the Libyan Prime Minister is not the most popular person in Cyrenaica at the moment. Muscat’s boasting that they are personal friends might not go down so well in that region.

  4. George says:

    That is not to mention that The Times is also late in announcing this news.

    The latest news is that Jadhran sworn in his new Cyrenaican “cabinet”
    http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/11/03/jadhran-swears-in-his-new-cyrenaican-cabinet/#axzz2jenWdLXj

    The challenge actually materialised on 24th October:
    http://www.libyaherald.com/2013/10/24/cyrenaica-government-unveiled/#axzz2jenWdLXj

  5. foreigner dreamer says:

    ABOUT THE STRATEGIC CONTEXT

    Just last night I have been dreaming of the big picture of what is happening right now in Malta and this is the strategic context that came out:
    1) China injected the (first) 200M euro (the Chinese company asked for an heavy pledge: a HUMAN HOSTAGE….the Chinese Communist company wanted to have an high return but at a low risk…sorry a low risk Marxian Surplus)
    2) Most of the said Chinese money was then invested in the new gas generator station in Malta, payments have been e made to the CONTRACTOR generating for them also a large Marxian surplus
    3) Portion of that Marxian Surplus was then shared by the contractor with agents and MEDIATORS, who asked for that as a revenge for the exploitation of workers and citizens paying ARMS’ bills.
    4) Luckily some of the MEDIATORS were also in contact with the right people of the Libyan secret services or Libyan STASI who could facilitate Oil supply contracts from Libya to Malta by “oiling” the right Libyan people, clearly using e relatively large part of the above Marxian surplus
    5) The “Oiled” Libyan people then used part of their Marxian surplus to buy for themselves a Maltese passport: they paid nice fees to the CONCESSIONAIRE who was getting a nice Marxian surplus as well; the concessionaire decided in which low tax jurisdiction that profit should have been credited so that all their “Maltese Strategic Business Unit set up cost” could be paid without issues
    6) The “oiled” Libyan people will then enjoy a Maltese passport that helped them to move quickly out of Libya, first, and also to get those benefits from “tax planning” that that CONCESSIONAIRE was advertising. Clearly the Concessionaire intentionally ignored that OECD and the western countries were initiating a huge fight against jurisdictions permitting or favouring tax evasion and tax elusion (at least for the ones not doing it in an elegant and professional way like Malta was doing before this movie was projected in the theatres).
    7) The overall strategy / business plan was apparently very good, it was based on a real Marxian approach including exploitation and surplus, to the extent that it might have been thought by a SOCIALIST PHILOSOPHER: the gas station would have produced low cost electricity. The lower cost of OIL would have further reduced the weighted average production cost per unit of electricity thus allowing a reduction of bills to the Maltese Economy. The Maltese Government didn’t invest 1 cent. A large number of hostages, agents, mediators, etc saved for them a portion of the pie while only the Chinese money was invested. Malta had just started enjoying the benefit of the low electricity cost but a disaster was behind the corner:

    7a) OECD (organization for the cooperation and the economic development) condemned publicly the Republic of Malta for favouring tax planning activities. The Republic of Malta was included again in the black list from which it came completely out only in 2010. This caused many financial institutions and companies to abandon Malta with a hit to GDP and employment. Malta’s deficit went way above 3% of the largely reduced GDP, since the labourist government had understandable difficulties to reduce public expenditure as much as it would have been needed.

    7b) Pushed by Germany the EU suspended Malta from the Shengen treaty treaty and any EU subsidy to the Republic of Malta was withhold due to the uncontrolled dimension of the public deficit and to the new Maltese policy favouring tax-planning and tax-avoidance.

    7c)Since the actions on the Libyan people gave a big hit to the financial interest of the “seven sisters” (the largest oil extraction and trading company in the world) they started, from one side, lobbying with the United States and with France and from the other side….inexplicable accidents occurred to some of the “actors of the movie”

    7d) US and France attacked Libya (like in 2011) to come again into the possession of the Libyan oil rigs , cancelling all the contracts signed by the previous Libyan authority, including the contracts with Malta

    7e) China, that in the mean time still had to get back the 200M euro, became very upset and, after having verified the scarce value of the pledge they had initially obtained, sent 3 war ships in Malta and demanded to have Pembroke becoming their Military base to launch their attack to the US and France in Libya.

    Then I suddenly woke up and so I don’t know what was going to happen after. I hope tonight I will be able to dream about the second part.

    That’s all I was able to dream last night. Now, in order to make the dream become a movie, it is just needed to figure out which could be the actors:

    a) HUMAN HOSTAGE: this might be a relative of the Prime Minister pro-tempore or of a member of the government but he/she must know both Maltese and Mandarin Chinese
    b) CONTRACTOR: not a major problem to find a good contractor, preferably if British.
    c) MEDIATOR 1: we will need to find a good mediator, experienced in the energy sector but also able to use money to convince parties to sign deals that are not always WIN WIN. Possibly this last ability needs to be certified by the UN or the World Bank.
    d) MEDIATOR 2: we will need someone that is very well introduced in Libya, maybe even born there and/or who used to favour business there and who is used to deal with STASI type (German Democratic Secret Police)/secret service type of people
    e) CONCESSIONAIRE: definitely to find this actor it will be needed to issue a transparent public call, possibly published on the EU official gazette because it is a service for more than 100k euro!
    f) COMUNIST PHILOSPHER: I have no idea where a communist philosopher, I mean a real one, could be found nowadays ……

  6. Makjavel says:

    Joseph Muscat will see serious trouble in Libya as an opportunity to sell more passports.

    Shopkeeper mentality, more cash in the till. But like his master Mintoff, he hasn’t a clue how to create jobs.

  7. gigi says:

    And minister Konrad Mizzi is waiting for the end of 2013 when oil at a lower price will start coming from Libya.

  8. ken il malti says:

    Libya in three pieces: that is what the movers and shakers that planned all this wanted and that is what they got.

Leave a Comment