Comments on: Norman and Arlette mark the Great White Christian Maltese victory over Muslim Turkish darkies

By: H.P. Baxxter

H.P. Baxxter — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 07:35:00 +0000

Because we suck up to our audience and future invitees to the book launch, that’s why.

Good history is irreverent. It must be.

By: H.P. Baxxter

H.P. Baxxter — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 07:31:00 +0000

And yet you call it by its Italian name.

I know you mean well, but please check yourself. It jars.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Wed, 16 Sep 2015 06:41:00 +0000

The Americans are free to demystify their own myths. It is the myths about the history of the society in which I live that interest me, for reasons that should be obvious.

It is not merely an intellectual exercise. Those myths affect our lives in the here and now. The myths about American history don’t affect us, in Malta, at all.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Mon, 14 Sep 2015 15:02:00 +0000

Oh, I agree on that score.

But that has nothing at all to do with the inherent qualities of Sr Dukes and Sr Ellul, such as they were.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 23:39:00 +0000

Ottoman ships only raided ships flying under a non-Muslim (not Christian) flag for the very same reasons that the ships of the Order of St John and their official corsairs allowed only Muslims and Jews to be taken into slavery in Malta.

You are projecting present-day concepts of state and nationhood five centuries into the past.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 23:33:00 +0000

I see it is necessary to repeat something several times in the hope that it is understood. This time I shall do it in point form.

1. The Ottoman rulers were not after Malta the island.

2. They were uninterested in acquiring the geographical position of Malta. They already controlled the whole of the Barbary Coast (that’s most of the North African littoral) including Tunis and Tripoli.

3. They were interested only in eradicating the Order of St John.

4. They were not interested in eradicating the Order of St John for reasons of competition in religion, but for reasons of competition in the control of the seas. Piracy was a massive business and a main revenue stream for the Order of St John, which did a lot of corsairing.

5. The Ottoman forces were not interested in ‘the Maltese’, who were just a bunch of anonymous peasants on a rock. They were only interested in the Order of St John. If the Order of St John were headquartered in Lampedusa or Pantelleria, they would have laid siege to them there.

By: H.P. Baxxter

H.P. Baxxter — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 22:13:00 +0000

In reply to Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The real reason might have been even more embarrassing (for the Maltese government and people that go on about Crosses and Crescents).

It might have been a show of force against an outlying territory of Charles V (Christian) after the King of France (Christian) broke off his alliance with the Ottoman Sultan (Muslim).

The alliance had been extremely useful to both parties, and allowed the French to raid deep into Mediterranean territories held by the Holy Roman Empire.

But La Vallette was French so I’m not allowed to say these things.

By: Maria Aquilina

Maria Aquilina — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 21:56:00 +0000

In reply to thealley. New trend for men,young and old.Didn't you read that a beard is in fashion?

By: H.P. Baxxter

H.P. Baxxter — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 21:45:00 +0000

Actually, it didn’t. It reached its greatest extent just after the First World War, during George V’s reign.

He who forgets the anorak of history is doomed to repeat its mistakes. Or sumfink.

By: Daphne Caruana Galizia

Daphne Caruana Galizia — Sun, 13 Sep 2015 21:43:00 +0000

Totally irrelevant. People were much shorter then. And other than that, tininess is the exception among the peoples which Ms Baldacchino and Mr Lowell admire. She’d be trodden upon in a crush of Vikings.