Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi and Vaclav Havel – when all we had on 31 March 1979 was that bloody and murderous dictator, Muammar Gaddafi
Given that Jo’s government is playing scenes of Mandela, Gandhi, Havel and Martin Luther King, I thought I had better give you some photographs from the real 31 March 1979.
Times of Malta reports:
The Labour Party is this evening commemorating the 35th anniversary of Freedom Day in a slick ceremony with video clips of Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi being played on a big screen.
(…)
The clips, all extolling the virtues of freedom, included a speech by Vaclav Havel, the Czech freedom leader, in 1989 when the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia ended.
Martin Luther King? Nelson Mandela? Vaclav Havel? Mahatma Gandhi?
What on earth do they have to do with the British government not wanting to renew the lease on Malta as a military base because Mintoff wanted to screw them for more rent and they decided it wasn’t worth it?
If they had agreed to his slum-landlord demands for more rent-money, they would probably still be here.
The only foreign head of state at the ceremony on 31 March 1979 was MUAMMAR GADDAFI.
The only one – Mintoff invited people from all over. He literally begged and grovelled with the British prime minister, James Callaghan, pleading with him to be there (the telephone conversation transcripts were released by the British government under the 30-year rule, in 2009), but Callaghan told him he was busy fighting an election against Margaret Thatcher.
You can see what they’re doing here, of course – rewriting history for the new generation which never was taught the truth not even by the Nationalist Party, and having history rewritten for people my age and older, so that we don’t dare contradict it even if we know it isn’t true, because we are outnumbered.
And then Times of Malta reported on this piece of super-tacky hamallagni, that is straight out of a spoof, except that it’s real:
Singers also performed between one clip and another as the solemn ceremony proceeded under a fresh breeze.
They included Mary Spiteri, who sung Tema 79. She was recently snubbed by the organisers of Gensna from singing the song after they opted for Ira Losco. Foreign Minister George Vella was emotional, as a tear rolled down his cheek.
In a short comment to introduce a song dedicated to Joseph Muscat – it was specifically written for him – Ms Spiteri said this was a song from the heart, from someone who “was and will always remain a Labourite”.
“Two years ago I made you a promise and here it is because we Labourites deliver on what we promise,” she said as Dr Muscat smiled.
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Fuck you, Mintoff.
Woops. That just slipped out.
I think the song from the film Titanic ,”My heart will go on” which she once dedicated to Fenech Adami was more fitting to dedicate to Joseph.
Commemorating 35 years of a close (blood brothers) relationship with a murderous, bisexual, child rapist.
There’s even Commissioner Guy looking on.
Xi hlew.
X’emozzjoni.
Qisu l-bierah.
Agree with what you said but how is being bisexual bad?
In this context as bad as being a child which is the next adjective in the series..
Logic says One cannot have the best of both worlds, let alone sexes.
Il-problema li qisu l-bieraħ. Imma qed nerġgħu ngħixuha llum.
Furthermore, Gandhi, Mandela, King and Havel would have puked at just the thought of this made-up charade.
Titnejku biss bic-cwiec.
Lewis Carroll’s next novel should have been ‘Malta in Wonderland’.
They now conveniently threw out of the window Mikiel Anton Vassalli , Manwel Dimech and the Sette Giugnio victims! These Maltese freedom fighters are no longer admired.
Why did the PN never reveal the truth?
Exactly what I was thinking. At the risk of suffering a bout of reflux oesophagitis I watched a few minutes of the celebrations on One TV.
How can these people quote Mandela, Luther King and Havel when at the very same time, and now, in 2014, silence their own people. Lord have mercy on us.
The Prime Minister and the new President should put their money where her mouth is and give an amnesty to all asylum seekers and give them a Maltese passport. That would really be helping the most vulnerable and not just paying lip service.
”Martin Luther King? Nelson Mandela? Vaclav Havel? Mahatma Gandhi? ”
They also dragged in John Kennedy, ‘Bridge over troubled water’ and ‘Imagine’.
I am watching the farce right now on tv.
My God!
But are they really serious?
They sound like a kitsch presentation of the sort you get at a school prize day. They forgot to add a few clips from ‘The King and I’, ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ and of course, ‘Allons Enfants De La Patrie’.
This looks like the Chinese and North Korean Presidents have converted to converted to capitalism after having read “Robinson Crusoe”, hilarious indeed.
ooops, and of course they forgot to add in a suitable clip from some Gaddafi, Kim Il Sung and Ceaucescu speech of the time.
Hallina Jo, b’min trid tghaddi iz-zmien?
Why didn’t they show video clips of Nicolae Ceausescu, Kim il Sung, Mao Zedong, Muammar Gaddafi and Josip Broz Tito instead?
Those were the Malta government’s friends at the time, some of them even receiving a Gieh ir-Repubblika.
And if they wish to be contemporary, they can also include video clips from Xi Jinping, Viktor Yanukovych, Valentina Matvienko and Vladimir Putin. They are Jo’s new friends.
What next if now Times of Malta is reproducing Labour’s crap propaganda? Maybe this October we will have a report in Times of Malta, marking 35 years from the day when it set its own offices on fire by mistake.
Throw in Robert Mugabe for good measure.
It’s ridiculous that government is spending thousands if not millions of public money celebrating a non-important anniversary remembering the end of lease agreement that was signed 7 years prior.
It is actually painful that 26 years after the 1987 election this day is still a national holiday and that monstrous, trashy monument still ruins the piazza in Vittoriosa.
We have an obligation to tell everyone, especially younger people, that the departure of British forces in 1979 had NO IMPACT on our sovereignty. We were already an independent nation and a republic.
31 March 1979 was only a normal day on which the Maltese government was given back few quays, pontoons and forts that were leased to the British. Ironically, that lease was probably less threatening to our sovereignty than, say, the recent sale of our only properly functioning power plant to China itself.
Cyprus has two areas that are considered British territories and that didn’t affect their neutrality, independence, sovereignty or EU membership.
So let’s stop this travesty and state clearly that Freedom Day brought to us no freedom at all. It actually led the way for eight years of quasi dictatorship funded by Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya.
Just a reminder: by October of that same year Gaddafi sent gunboats to stop Saipem Due from drilling for oil on Maltese territorial waters.
In a meeting in Valletta (Baviera) Mintoff said that this was an “Att tal-akbar ghadu kontra Malta” an act committed by the worst enemy.
In that meeting Mintoff also made a reference about military airplanes passing over Malta without asking permission let alone paying.
Qed jitkesshu! he said.
Thank you. It’s what’s written in the history books (obviously not Jo and Mark Camilleri’s “Ħelsien”), but no one seems to care. Maybe after a couple of generations we will be able to look back at the time period with a bit of objectivity.
A switch-off tacky programme if ever there was one, supposedly put up to “unite” the nation. U halluna.
Vaclav Havel!
I’m sure all the Labourites have devoured his opus.
What horrible memories. I had put all those horrible memories behind me, never imagining that they would be brought out to haunt me once again. And what is worse, twisted in a way that is totally insulting to people of my generation.
I will never forget the 31st of March 1979 for as long as I shall live. Through curiosity we had driven to the port well after midnight, thinking that the celebrations would be all over, where we came across hundreds and perhaps thousands, of Libyans in their usual attire, disembarking from a ship and marching all over the place chanting “Mintoff, Gaddafi”. That is how close the ‘blood brother’ relationship was!
And these people have the audacity to mention the names of true freedom fighters on the occasion of celebrating that infamous day!
Dear God in heaven. For a second there I thought they were about to start playing ‘Born Free’ when they were about to start going up the hill to lay their bouquets.
We can mock and we can blow raspberries …but the PL spin machine works. I don’t like it – I hate it – but it works.
Bastards.
Whilst our PN is slumbering
Not so fast. This extravaganza was laid in by the Labour Party. Muscat was a mistieden specjali.
This is Labour. claiming 31st March as its own private property. They’re more than welcome to it, but their celebration spits on the hollow promise that national days will not be partisan.
The execution of the event itself is more than enough to alienate anyone further anyone who feel antipathy towards Labour’s version of history.
I was in Malta on the 31st March 1979. Even back then I knew it was a farce and a charade.
Jum il-helsien will remain a non event no matter how much spin PL continues to give it.
Mintoff falla meta ma gabx l-indipendenza hu.
Ta’ sociopath li kien ivvendika ruhu mill-poplu Malti billi wekkilu socjalizmu fallut w b’hekk hexa l-progress ekonomiku ta Malta.
The show somehow reminded me of how the pigs used to treat the other ‘less equal animals’ in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The song written specifically for Joseph caps it all.
Mintoff wanted to insult the people of Birgu – he was from Bormla – by building a monstrosity, right in front of their beautiful church and its façade. He convinced them that this was going to be an honour for them, having the Monument tal-Helsien, right there under their nose.
Many, in private, hated the thing and they still do.
But since they have been brought up not to speak out against il-Perit and il-Partit, they accepted it as their destiny.
Again a lot of nice words, which probably don’t go down so nicely with the grassroots of the PL. They are still targeting the Nationalists who have a grudge for their party with all the bling they’re producing.
Muscat announced that children won’t be kept in detention, great, but what about their parents?
Just another trick to deviate the attention from the government’s current turmoil and to try and attract some sympathy in the present situation he’s found himself.
That announcement was a sop to the video clips of Mandela and Luther King. By making that hollow statement, he undercut the possibility of unflattering headlines.
Muscat has never bern to a detention centre and for his entire political career, he has been perfectly content to leave people on the high seas or locked up on arrival.
Why are children locked up, anyway? The official policy is that they are released into open centres along with their families.
Everybody seems to forget that the actual lease for the bases was due to expire in 1973 and the British planned to leave then. It was Mintoff who negotiated with the British government to extend the lease till 1979. So where is the freedom that is being celebrated today?
Just as the spin worked in 2013; alas, the PN remains subdued.
Jum il-Helsien with a Gaddafi grinning from ear to ear at Malta being delivered obsequiously into his crushing embrace by a thwarted Mintoff who had just failed to retain Britain as our traditional custodian and provider of jobs to dockyard workers and NATO employees!
Jum il Helsien in Malta celebrated with the most typical of British and American song, verse and music.
The PN should have dismantled that obscenity of a ‘monument’ the first opportunity they had.
Unfortunately, they legitimised it so that the new generations continue to be conned into believing that Freedom Day is what the PL make it out to be rather than the day that the dictator Gaddafi was idolised by the ‘partit tal-haddiema’ and its venal leader, after the British left because THEY REFUSED MINTOFF’S BEGGING PLEA TO STAY.