The old lie of the gunboat incident, passed off as history. There isn’t enough firewood to burn Dominic Fenech and Henry Frendo in effigy.

Then, on the other hand this may all have been a front, perhaps the victory had such superficial factors that we are now seeing the initial stages of desperation.

[Daphne – No, Gahan, I am right. Mintoff turned to Gaddafi for help in March 1979, and Gaddafi was – in fact – the only foreign head of state/government present for the flag-lowering ceremony in Birgu, accompanied by a shipload of Libyans who made their presence felt heavily. What happened in the autumn of that year was the inevitable consequence of Mintoff putting himself at the mercy of a bloody dictator who had bought him and who also knew Malta no longer had a British military base. But the man, as I have said repeatedly, was not bright at all despite the myth to the contrary, and made a succession of really poor decisions. Pushing the envelope too far in negotiations with the British to try to get more money out of them was one such catastrophic decision: he wound up with no money at all, because they said ‘look, we don’t need this’ and left. Putting himself at the mercy of Gaddafi, a beggar at his table, was another such bad decision. And we know the consequences of that, including the one you describe here.]

In the autumn of 1979 two Libyan gunboats threatened the Saipem Due oil rig with their guns, and there was no one to defend us. The British forces had left the island on 31 March that year and Mintoff told his party faithful at the Baviera mass meeting that Libya committed an act which is only done by one’s worse enemies “Att ta’ l-akbar għadu”.

TThe Nationalists a week later were chanting “U waħħalulu u Gaddafi waħħalulu!”

From then onwards, all ties were broken with Libya, until one day a young Saif Gaddafi appeared on a plane in Malta and Mintoff handed him two goats as a present to his father Muammar.

[Daphne – You are very wrong about all ties being broken with Libya. This was the period when the intense relationship with Libya began, including compulsory Arabic in schools, children being presented with copies of the Green Book, a heavy presence for the Libyan Cultural Institute, and Sliema literally over-run by Libyan ‘students’ from the school at Ta’ Giorni. And let’s not forget something more important: some of those Libyan ‘students’ murdered in their rooms by the classic Gaddafi method of hanging, murders which were then passed off as suicide with the cooperation of the Maltese police who ‘knew better’ than to press home with their investigations.]

However, may I ask why on earth he had to include the Angela Jolie bit – stating that her film will be nothing short of a ‘block-buster’? Already a ‘block-buster’ folks!

Is Malta such a minimal entity that it takes the prime minister to announce that a film company will be shooting one of its (presumably many) productions at Mgarr ix-Xini?

Perhaps the prime minister was turning to a lighter subject to relieve the concern that some of his other pronouncements had raised before.

http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20061107/local/mp-promises-to-resign-if-no-oil-is-found-under-mlp-government.36075

Ha ha, better give the drilling concession to the Russians then, as they are reputed to be experts at ultra long depth oil drilling.

http://www.rense.com/general75/zoil.htm