This is where an individual’s true political beliefs emerge: in attitudes to free speech
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November 15, 2013 at 12:12am
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We will not renounce to our freedom. Never.
So according to our American friend who spent 15 years in the USA, Daphne’s blog and the comments are causing more harm to OUR country than the hundreds of the top journals worldwide.
Josanne, speak to a few lawyers who are in the financial services and they can tell you that they are already receiving negative vibes and when this snowball becomes an avalanche, make sure that you don’t have the arrogance to blame the world press and Daphne for the damage caused.
I, for one, want to make sure that all my foreign friends, and colleagues know that I am totally against this obscenity of a law and that I find it all so embarrassing and humiliating, to say the least.
So why don’t you show your name here?
Because in case you hadn’t noticed, only days ago a journalist was arrested for no reason and ridiculed for four hours as well as having his personal property illegally confiscated. If they can do it to a public figure and journalist they will not think twice about doing it to a little fish like any one of us.
Malta is not a Liberal Democracy where freedom of speech is not only allowed but encouraged. Thankfully there are people like Caruana Galizia and Vella who are willing to stick their necks out for the rest of us. Why don’t you show your (emphasis added) name?
Maybe for the same reason you do not show yours M
I agree with every word written by cettina
She has. It’s cettina.
Can’t agree with Ms Cassar but the Maltese people arguing on The Telegraph comments board below the story that Daphne posted are an embarrassment. Really it’s hilarious. Forget the passport issue, what the hell must anybody non-Maltese reading this think? Even electricity bills are being discussed. As one possibly very bemused reader pointed out: “I think I’ve entered a parallel dimension where the Telegraph is a Maltese newspaper”.
Typical Labour thinking: it is not the obscene sale of Maltese citizenship which is harming Malta’s reputation but ‘those commenting on foreign news portals’.
If the government has any sense it will repeal the Act and humbly admit that it made a colossal mistake. This will still not be enough to remedy the harm caused to our reputation but it would be a good start.
It will take some time for Malta to regain the trust of the international community and its EU fellow member states.
If we do not want to draw attention to overwhelming adverse foreign publicity against Malta, Muscat & Co should stop behaving abominably. In today’s world It is useless to try sweep that mountain of dirt under a small carpet.
Bit stupid, is she.
Screw you, Josanne. We will not be silenced.
These dinosaurs still think that we live in the seventies, when the authorities could simply shut you up by sending a truckload full of ‘tarznari’ banging on trucks. Wake up dear dinosaurs, this is a free world now with news reaching the other side in a split of a second.
She was never ‘independent’. I seriously doubt she will ever be.
It’s very worrying when a journalist asks the general public to shut up. It seems that all Laburisti have a problem with free speech.
After decades of regular subscription and two false starts, I have finally dumped hard-copy Times of Malta. From now on, it’s the Malta Independent all week.
About time, too.
If you had a second cousin who molested children and was roundly condemned for it in public I think you’d want to make it quite clear it wasn’t a family trait.
Strange how Labour supporters think that’s a bad idea in principle. But then the Labour Party isn’t strong on morality isn’t it?
[Daphne – Oh, don’t assume anything like that. The family of one of Malta’s most notorious cocaine traffickers, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison and tried for conspiracy to murder, do anything but distance themselves from him. They do the opposite, lionise him as a victim and behave viciously towards his real victims. But then they all voted Labour, so what do you expect.]
Well if they voted Labour it rather confirms my point about the lack of morality in the Labour party and by extension a good number its supporters. I genuinely believe many of them don’t know better. It’s not a question of being moral or immoral, but amoral, like children. The problem is, you know how absolutely vicious children can be until they mature enough to acquire a sense of morality.
Scratch a Socialist and find an authoritarian, illiberal and elitist persona.
Yes, but they go around telling everyone how liberal they are and what a fascist everyone else is.
Now that’s very funny of Ms. Cassar. The negative attention has been drawn to Malta by Joseph Muscat and his ingenious citizenship-selling scheme.
Josanne,
I for one will continue speaking against this obscene scheme that is set to destroy our nation’s economic well being and our international reputation.
I oppose it with all my might and will continue opposing it because it is counter productive, corrupt, humiliating, embarrassing and will lead to nowhere good.
It is a scheme that inherently favours money laundering and terrorism of all shapes and sizes. It is masked behind a shroud of secrecy invalidating all of Muscat’s promises on transparency and meritocracy.
Overnight, the scheme has turned Malta into a cash strapped desperate nation from one with a successful and a strong economy.
I will not stop saying that the electorate did not see this coming because it was not in the Labour manifesto. The electorate was conned. It would have never voted for this scam. Therefore, Labour clearly intended duplicity.
I will never stop saying in Malta and abroad that Labour is not fit for purpose.
I disassociate myself from the treachery and obscenity of this scheme.
Shame on you with all your pretend Americanism when you do not even acknowledge that the First Amendment in the American Constitution protects freedom of speech.
Our own constitution enshrines this freedom too.
This protects our rights to talk rather than shut up. It protects our rights against the dictatorial leaders of the Malta Labour Party, Mintoff, Mifsud Bonnici, Sant and now Muscat.
I will not keep quiet. No. I am morally bound to speak against that which I disagree. Luckily, there are people like Daphne who attract enough attention by their professionalism and work so that people like me may have an avenue to speak out.
During the Labour heyday of the 1970s and 1980s these people and institutions could not exist because Mintoff tried to shut them up with all the means at his disposal. And I mean all means legal and illegal.
Go back to your history books Josanne. Go back to your constitution Josanne. Go and reflect that it is people like you who are bringing the wrong kind of attention on our nation.
You are the ones who are destroying its reputation.
We are just opposing the scam as is our constitutional and moral right to do so.
Well said Kevin!
Well put Kevin, couldn’t agree more.
What’s wrong with The Times? It’s self censorship is reaching petty communist levels. No mention that the truck was removing the Tent used by the PL politburo.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/mobile/view/20131115/local/truck-rolls-off-palace-square-damages-cars-building.494804
How ominous. Joseph Muscat must have been behind the wheel.
In MIntoff’s time they broke the Triton Fountain with their silly anniversary celebrations. Now it’s St George’s Square. What next? We have had enough of these twerps already.
Freedom5, it is time for everyone to know that The Times is now invaded with socialist elements. Anyone working there can tell whole stories. Forget The Times of the past.
So let’s sweep it all under the carpet, not discuss it and it will all be fine. Least said soonest mended.
To suggest that a blogger or somebody commenting beneath a newspaper report has more power than an elected government in changing a country’s image is quite flattering, I’m sure.
But In reality it sounds more like blaming the victim for the action of the abuser.
It seems as if Ms. Caruana Galizia is fighting the government single-handedly.
Yip. And giving them quite a hiding too.
She is not alone. She has us behind her.
Ms Cassar is using the prime minister’s tactic of deflecting responsibility from his corrupt and damaging actions by criticising those highlighting them.
What is ruining our reputation is the misguided and corrupt citizenship initiative and that it was bulldozed through parliament.
What may counter some of this bad press is that there are still some people of integrity who are willing to say the the law is wrong and how it was bulldozed through was also wrong.
Labour’s 1980s battle cry was “hadd ma jxandar barra li ommu qahba”.
It never occurred to them that they shouldn’t pimp their own mother.
Josanne Cassar’s post is a variation of the same theme.
Josianne, for goodness sake, this is not a run-of-the-mill law we are talking about but a humiliating, corrupt law which is demeaning our identity and being enacted for the sole purpose of acquiring money while risking a great deal.
Yes, we have every right and duty to do out utmost to protest against it and make it known that we do not agree with it.
Do the Labour elves start work at 9am?
The survey on Times of Malta this morning, till a few minutes before 9 am, showed 40% in favour of the sale of citizenship and 58% against.
I noticed that suddenly at around 9am, the number of votes started to increase very rapidly and the percentages started to shift with the percentage against, increasing while that in favour, decreasing.
The time now is 9:22. The number of votes is 13748… Against : 43%, in favour 55%.
The time now is 9:28.. The number of votes is 14160… against 44%, in favour 54%.
Nahseb li qam Privitera .
Iva, qam ghax beda jikkummenta.
The time now is 10:30. The number of votes is 17450.. Those voting yes : 50% and those voting no : 48%.
So in just one and a half hours …
Yes – from 40% increased to 50%
No – from 58 % decreased to 48%.
So, what next? Will they be saying that the majority of Maltese are in favour of selling citizenship?
Hold a referendum and you will know exactly what the Maltese people want. That is the only democratic way to know. Let the people decide.
That’s how it always works – any vote that reflects badly on the present government is balanced out in the space of an hour.
Just Me can’t you see that the labour propaganda machine is manipulating these surveys. Word is going round amongst labour supporters to vote yes.
“I do think the patriotic thing to do is to critique my country. How else do you make a country better but by pointing out its flaws?” – Bill Maher
You clearly have no idea what patriotism is, Josanne Cassar – Not that I expect otherwise from someone with a Mintoffian mentality like yours, that is.
I, for one, have prepared all my foreign friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues for what is to come the moment that your party came in to power – everyone must know what ignorants like yourself are turning my country into.
Re Times survey:: you have to give credit where it is due; the Labour Party are very good at rounding up sheep quickly.
Give her a government job and she’ll sell her mother and father.
That’s right. The Labour propaganda machine is at top gear.
The fact that it needs to and finds the need to operate this way should already be food for thought.
Has the Nationalist Party ever done that? No. Not because they can’t but because it’s unthinkable for the Nationalist Party that you should dictate to others what to think and what to write.
Respect for individual thought and the freedom to operate has always been of uppermost priority to them.
Their job has been to provide the liberating structures that permit this, and this have done excellently.
The notion that the party is there to pander to individual whims and that those individuals, or the party itself, are then bought puppets is ludicrous on both fronts.
Typical MLP forma mentis. They changed their image to post- nationalist to hoodwink the electorate and as soon as they get back into government they revert to their former fascist ideals.
I never read her articles and never will bother to do so.
Daphne, did you follow Musumeci’s wall on FB the last few days? It is Unbelievable.
Dear Ms. Cassar,
I read your post on Facebook just a few minutes ago and the first thing that came to my mind was a time-honoured Maltese expression which deals with either pharmacists or the world’s oldest profession. To have the gall to berate social media users, for commenting on the deluge of criticism and scorn Malta is being subjected to, as a result of Muscat’s harebrained citizenship scheme, borders on the insane.
It’s bad enough that the Pravdaesque PBS did not consider this international humiliation as being worthy of a mention in all of yesterday’s news bulletins. It’s flabbergasting to see the extent to which you and various other PL apologists are willing to go in order to defend the indefensible.
Telling us to keep it low, on a social network. Laziness in thought personified.
And how dare this Ms Cassar tell us English-speaking citizens that we have no right to be patriotic, as though not speaking our native tongue all the time makes us less of a Maltese citizen.
My my, what a chip this woman has on her shoulders, but then all Labour people seem to have one.
Josianne, the bad attention drawn to Malta is most definetly through the sale of citizenship and not through the blogs and anyone with a peanut brain can see that.
It’s like the Fawlty Towers scene scene with the Germans, but not at all funny:
“Don’t mention the IIP! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.”
The Labour Party is well organised when it comes to mobilise their supporters.
One can see that the LP apologists do not appear on this blog. Having said that I have no doubt that they are as curious as ever and read your blog religiously.
Ms. Cassar should be in no doubt that all ambassadors are reporting the news about this ridiculous scheme to their foreign ministers and am sure that the Americans are thrilled that Malta has found a loop hole for visa free entry to USA. Or has it? Besides why would she want to suppress free speech?
Your readers should voice their opinion regarding the Citizenship Scheme by voting on the Times of Malta website poll.
JH, it is more like rounding up goats than sheep.
Veru kas li l-qawl Malti jixraq sew hawn. ‘Bassejt int, pastaz jien’. Kemm qedin tajjeb.
Funny how the silencing tactic to avoid shaming is used by many who defend all sorts of abusers.
The shame is on the abuser and not on those who expose him. Perhaps if we had more journalists worth their salt we would have more people who could see things in perspective.
Instead most journalists simply regurgitate the mantra that people of talent are those who can pay Eur 650,000. Figure that out!
Watching bits of Xarabank I had the sudden urge to suggest a marble plaque to list all those who preached impartiality and sang the virtue in presenting different points of view to the public, but have now lost their soul or rather prostituted themselves.
There is an emerging need for ‘Ahna ahna jew m’ahniex’, don’t you think? But who dares put the bell on the cat’s collar?
It’s called “globalisation”, Ms Cassar, and – unlike in the 70s – it means that when you act like a c***, the whole world knows about it before you can say the word “censorship”.
Sale of Maltese citizenship – how the world sees it
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Sale-of-Maltese-citizenship-how-the-world-sees-it/176956612500193?ref=ts&fref=ts