GUEST POST: If they’re all paranoid, then there’s probably a good reason for that
Sent in by Matthew S:
When you’re cutting cocaine in your garage, you automatically think that every car parked outside is a police car. When your garage is clean, you barely notice the cars passing by outside.
I think that the people in power in Malta are genuinely feeling threatened. Unless one is mentally ill or has a personality disorder, one generally doesn’t suffer from paranoia. If everyone in government is paranoid, then there’s probably a good reason for that. My understanding is that the current administration is paranoid because it cut so many shady deals before the general election and made so many promises it knew it could not keep.
Our leaders are literally expecting someone who has been crossed to come and shoot them in the back. China is not to be trifled with. Malta keeps signing agreements with a government (Libya) which is at war.
Manuel Mallia’s criminal clients have been dropping like flies over the last three years. They’ve been killing each other. Might they also want to kill him? Construction magnates and nightclub owners are some of the most aggressive businessmen around and both they and the environmentalists were made lavish promises before the election. Those promises are in conflict. Maltese businesses were hoping to get a piece of the power station and public transport pies but it has all gone awry.
Putting everyone on the government payroll is impossible. Many people, including police and army personnel, have unjustly been pushed aside. Some politicians have very complicated lives involving strippers, lapdancers, wives and mistresses all at the same time. We have no idea whether any of them are on drugs, but the possibility is not that remote. Somebody is buying and using all that cocaine flooding in to Malta, and it’s not teenagers in the slums.
The prospective police CEO is even accused of plotting a murder.
If I were any of them, I’d be paranoid too. Many of the people who were promised something are determined to get their way and who knows what can happen if they feel betrayed. A ticking time-bomb can go off at any minute.
The last Maltese leader to be this paranoid was Dom Mintoff. He had very good reasons for that. His best friends in international politics were the criminally insane Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Il Sung, Romania’s Ceaucescu and the Chinese dictators. The Malta police got their training from the North Korean police. Who made the arrangements? Alex Sceberras Trigona, Mintoff’s foreign minister and Muscat’s appointee to the World Trade Organisation.
Malta then had to tailor its policies to Gaddafi’s whims. Libyan students were being hanged in Malta, and Mintoff’s police colluded by passing off the murders as suicide. The west hated Malta for its dictatorial friends. Lorry Sant was running around with compromising photos which showed that his boss had cuckolded his own brother. Criminals ruled the streets and burned and shattered buildings with impunity. The general populace was pissed about the lack of jobs, the lack of products on shelves and the overall dire situation of the country.
If I had been Dom Mintoff, I’d have been paranoid too. When you make so many enemies and your friends are involved in criminal activity and all sorts of corrupt deals, you have to be. One accountant who crossed Lorry Sant’s henchmen was found dead in a well, chopped up into little pieces with a chainsaw. Or have we forgotten that, too?
The Dutch prime minister famously rides around on a bicycle. One of the current pope’s first acts on being elected was to have the protective roof of the pope mobile removed. These people feel that they don’t have much to fear because they have wronged no one. The fact that our leaders in Malta today feel so much under threat should really worry us.
It’s not just delusions of grandeur. This is how mafiosi and drug dealers operate. If they are so frightened, then we have good reason to be frightened too.
24 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
http://www.independent.com.mt/file.aspx?f=95559
There you go…3 armed MSS agents at a Charity event!
And all three wearing that Maltese clenched-jaw “ara @q*****a ma ttawwalx ilsienek” expression.
The occasional bran muffin will help with that.
You are not considering a worse scenario:
Many journalists have fallen for the conspiracy theory of government. I do assure you that they would produce more accurate work if they adhered to the cock-up theory.
—Bernard Ingham
It is worse because stupidity is much, much more dangerous than malice. And the more I read your blog, the more I’m getting convinced that we have here a bunch of utterly stupid people trying to run the country in a cunning way.
Would you agree with my interpretation?
I wouldn’t, because the people running the country are not stupid at all, but possess the kind of low cunning and resourcefulness typical of gangsters and mob bosses.
So no, these are not the cock-ups of a stupid government, but the tip of the iceberg of a vast network of evil, corruption and sleaze. Sometimes a bomb goes off and a gun gets fired, and that’s the only time we get a glimpse into this murky world.
In 50 years of independence, not one government has managed to clean up this filthy country. The other lot went for jobs and economic growth at the expense of justice. This lot went for their own personal gain at the expense of everything including the national interest, unleashing years of pent-up jealousy and anger.
I cringe when I see the Nationalist Party wasting its energy and the country’s on Ideas Conventions and policy forums. We don’t need new policies and new ideas. We need a very old policy – justice. That’s it.
Give us justice and we, the people, will come up with the new ideas to take us forward, don’t you worry about that. But clean up this ruddy country. We’ve had enough.
Baxxter for PM.
What do you mean by “justice”?
Justice? Simple. It means prosecuting the criminals, locking away the guilty and protecting the innocent from the evil deeds and schemes of the guilty.
If the guilty and the innocent get the same treatment, what’s the point of respecting the law?
Laws are the basis of a just society and of nationhood. If they are written, then they must be enforced. Are we a nation, or a bunch of marauding thugs thrown together on the same rock?
I see. But that does not depend on the government of the day, does it? It depends on the Police.
And let’s admit it, Muscat’s government has passed a law removing statutes of limitations on corruption charges.
So I don’t see your point. Sorry.
No, it does depend on the government, and I’m rapidly losing my patience.
Case 1: Illegal “boathouses”. Why should it even be a political issue? Just give them a week’s notice, and demolish the lot. That’s Future Government Policy No. 1, to be enacted as soon as the new government is sworn in.
Case 2: Unpaid VAT. Give a month’s notice, then send the bailiffs. I don’t care if it’s the most powerful construction magnate on the island.
Case 3: Unpaid utility bills. A bit of self-cleansing is in order here. Pay them immediately, or sell off your property. And then pay them. Then you can get the state to sue.
Or are we saying the Police run the country? Separation of powers is not an excuse for bad governance.
Sorry Baxxter, old horse (and I’d really like you to keep your cool), but you’re contradicting yourself here.
When I asked you what justice is, you replied referring to private misdeeds.
“Justice? Simple. It means prosecuting the criminals, locking away the guilty and protecting the innocent from the evil deeds and schemes of the guilty.”
Now, you are referring to public misdeeds: misappropriation of public land, VAT evasion, and electricity theft.
In your first answer the victim is the individual; in the second, it’s the state.
You might argue, of course, that the individual ultimately pays for the state. Whereas you would be right, however you would only superficially be right.
The reasons why are too obvious to require explication.
I do not wish to get in the cross fire, but Baxxter is right.
I cannot understand why Albatross thinks that Baxxter’s comment on prosecuting the criminals is about private misdeeds. A crime is a violation of public law, and therefore against the public at large, which is in any case made up of private individuals.
And yes, unless policy implements rule of law, it’s no point spending any time and money on policy.
And I agree that there is no need to re-invent the wheel with the policy fora and Ideas Convention. While they are good ideas to reconnect a political party to the people – perhaps to leaders in society – the truth is that if you look back through time, including the long period when the PN was in government, you would find that there were policies, and and many of them were the right policies. The environment comes to mind: by 2013, there were many policies on this subject which could serve as a good basis to protect Malta’s environment in future.
The problem was in the implementation and execution of those policies. In fact, they were, many times, simply ignored. And in many cases, politicians were simply not aware of the existing policies, sometimes, I dare say, not interested in policies. Politics was not policy based, but invented on the spot, depending on which interests needed to be protected. This is what irked many people.
Now add to that the fact that many politicians have their own interests and conflicts of interests, and policy execution becomes a nightmare.
Turning on the PN, those policy fora do not need to re-invent policies. Many good policies exist and are universally accepted. What they need to do is find those mechanisms that will ensure that policies are implemented. And yes, justice is going to feature high in those mechanisms.
A situation so very well explained.
Prosit, Baxxter.
So true.
One of your three wishes has been granted, Master Baxxter.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141124/local/enemalta-police-descend-on-boathouses-cut-off-power-supply-to-abusers.545497
Re: Albatross and illegal boathouses –
Please re-read the Times article. They are cutting the electricity supply to those who have not applied for a smart meter ONLY.
They are cutting the electricity to make the people talk about those boathouses rather than about Manwel Mallia.
Right now, the public is more interested in the prime minister cutting Mallia loose, rather than Enemalta cutting power to illegal boathouses.
I, for one, mostly agree. It is a combination of pseudo-cunning, stupidty, and small island insular crass ignorance.
http://cikku.net/linocauchiconclusion.html
It’s exactly the same type of paranoia that, on a grander scale, is causing the global elite to transform the US (and the whole Western world) into a police state through the fear of (stage managed) t’rr’r… oops, ‘konspiri tieris’ are not allowed on the Runny Nosepad.
Kev, you need to give a moment-to-moment of how this works in the everyday life of a targeted innocent person for people to understand.
Conspiracy is a perception that seems unrelated.
You need to show how this works in practice: how the network reaches out even into the ARMS bills, into the tax bills and how modifications and touches to everyday services are put into place, how the agents within banks are mobilised to apply pressure.
How the police have detailed tails on their victims and how they use the excuse of fiscal inspections to gain transparency into every aspect of their lives. How conversations are listened to without the necessary legalities being respected, how employees of such systems are roped into this parallel service provision.
How secrets and keeping quiet benefit no-one at the end of the day. Rather, we all expose the part that has affected us for the picture to reflect more bits of the terrorising truth.
This is not a plan that has been enacted overnight.
How lives are ripped apart without a bullet being fired.
May they ever live in fear, long after their 36,000 vote victory has turned to ashes in their mouths.
May they never find the peace to enjoy their spoils.
May they – as their Chinese friends say – live in interesting times.
Who knows why the government is dead set on creating a bigger market for illegal drugs in Malta, by decriminalising possession?