A national disgrace on Remembrance Sunday – Instead of commemorating the courage of those who died in battle, Labour demonstrates for courage in paying electricity bills
“In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place, and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.”
– John McCrae, 3 May, 1915
Joseph Muscat has been Opposition leader for just a few weeks, yet even in this short time he has breached protocol, ignored procedure, demonstrated ignorance of how things are done, and embarrassed himself and his party by attempting to usurp the role of prime minister, while his wife does the same with the role of prime minister’s wife.
Muscat has written an excruciating letter of congratulations to the president-elect of the United States, in which he ignored all formalities and went so far as to refer to ‘our two countries’, classifying himself as a head of state or head of government. He has ‘addressed the nation’, something only the head of state or prime minister can do, while sitting before the symbol of statehood, the Maltese flag – which is the prerogative solely of those who represent the state or its government. Muscat represents nothing more than the Labour Party. He is at liberty to speak with the Maltese flag as a backdrop, but only if the Labour ‘torca’ hangs beside it.
He has addressed the prime minister repeatedly as Lawrence on television, even while the prime minister called him Dr Muscat. He has gone to Tripoli and returned to say that he has negotiated with the Libyan government on Malta’s behalf, when he does not represent Malta and has neither the remit nor the authority to do anything of the sort. His wife has forced her way into the simple opening ceremony of a block of apartments in London, built to house the families of Maltese children receiving cancer treatment, bypassing the chairman of the foundation – the prime minister’s wife – and turning up with Super One cameras to invade the privacy of the children involved.
Like true arrivistes, Muscat and his wife are oblivious to the full significance and implications of what they are doing. Not only are they blissfully unaware of the manners and mores to which they must adhere now that they are the leader of the opposition and his wife, but they remain – quite incredibly – unknowing that transgressions of protocol and good manners go down like a lead balloon with many of those people they are trying hard to impress. They are so far out of their depth that they don’t know something is required of them in this regard. Protocol and procedure are outside their experience, but that is why leaders who come from nowhere acquire advisers to save them from embarrassing themselves, their party, and ultimately, their country.
For with his latest display of appalling taste, Joseph Muscat has shamed not just himself, but Malta. While the allied nations of the First and Second World Wars mark Remembrance Sunday with solemn ceremony and quietude, Malta’s capital city will be taken over by Maltese who are ignorant of the significance of the day and there to ‘manifest their courage’ in paying the full price for electricity.
While many parts of the world commemorate the true courage of those who fought and died in the great wars of the 20th century and the battles of today, the man who would be our prime minister will be leading the charge down Republic Street, claiming that courage is what is required to pay an electricity bill. The irony, of course, will elude him.
I can’t decide what is worse: that Joseph Muscat does not know about Remembrance Sunday; that he knows about it and doesn’t think it important or relevant; that he realises it is important, and still doesn’t think it the most appalling taste to call the crowds to demonstrate about electricity bills when they should be remembering those who died to spare us any problem greater than the price of electricity. One of these three options has to be the explanation: he doesn’t know; he knows and doesn’t understand the significance; he understands the significance and couldn’t care less.
It is cause for dismay that Malta has a supposedly progressive and left-wing opposition leader who, instead of making a speech today about the horrors of war and the sacrifices of millions, chooses to kvetch about the price of electricity instead. It is dispiriting to think that millions died – most of them young men in their late teens and early 20s – in the most barbaric way so that Muscat and his supporters can demonstrate freely in Valletta about suffering no greater than paying the full price for electricity.
Muscat clearly has no sense of occasion, of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate. Despite having lived in Brussels for at least four years, he seems not to know the significance of those paper poppies worn in lapels. The poppies symbolise those which grew over the bodies of the dead in Ypres, where one of the bloodiest and most terrible battles of the First World War took place. The 11th of November, Armistice Day, remains a national holiday in Belgium precisely because this particular gory wound continues to bleed in public memory. But Muscat probably never bothered to ask what the holiday is all about – even though, coming from Malta and not from the Congo or China, he should have known.
Whatever it is, ignorance of the existence of Remembrance Sunday or contempt for its significance, the leader of the opposition is confident that he will go unchallenged, because not one reporter will try to find out whether Malta, which played a key role in one of the two greatest conflagrations of all time, has an opposition leader for whom the terms Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday mean little or nothing. His ignorance should not surprise us. Only a few days ago, I encountered a Maltese woman in her early 20s – a postgraduate student at the university here – who had never heard of Mussolini. When told that he was one of the Axis leaders in the Second World War, she said that she had heard about ‘the war’ but didn’t know ‘exactly when it was’. This is in Malta, where the capital city was more heavily bombed than London was in the blitz.
It is particularly sad that the one day in the year set aside to honour the memory of those who died in every war since the First World War – the Second World War, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the Bosnian conflicts, Rwanda, Kosovo, – should be ignored or brushed aside by, of all people, the leader of a political party which claims to be anti-war and left-leaning.
For Joseph Muscat and the rest of the shoddily-behaved personages who surround him, here is some potted information. Remembrance Sunday is the Sunday closest to Armistice Day. Armistice Day is the 11th of November – the day the armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiegne in France, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, for an end to hostilities on the Western Front. At first, it commemorated the dead of that war. Now, it commemorates the dead of all wars. It coincides with the feast of St Martin of Tours, giving it increased significance in Roman Catholicism. In those countries which were Allies in the First and Second World Wars, Remembrance Sunday is sacred to the memory of the millions who died, while Armistice Day is marked with two minutes of silence at 11am. In Germany, it marks the start of the carnival season.
Going on the shenanigans scheduled to take place this afternoon in Valletta, Joseph Muscat and the Labour Party are in the wrong country. Engraved on war memorials throughout the English-speaking world is the legend ‘Their name liveth for evermore.’ Over in the mire of ignorance at Mile End, their name has long been forgotten.
This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.
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Shame on social partners for not attending, protecting their adorable pn whilst excluding the workers’ interest! …People should unite together today…this is the day. All countries do this…it’s called democracy…we MUST stand up….we cannot ignore all these taxes especially the water and electricity bills… whether we are red, blue, green etc etc, we MUST unite!
[Daphne – I see you missed the point of the whole article. And what you mean is ‘adored’ not ‘adorable’; this is like when, in death notices, we’re told that X leaves to mourn his loss his adorable grandchildren. I always think – surely they mean ‘adored’.]
THIS IS WHAT REAL COURAGE IS ABOUT
In 2004, Bill Stone was 103. That did not stop him leading the commemoration of the 90th anniversary of the start of the First World War just as he spent all the other anniversaries before them. At the Cenotaph in London on November 11, 2004, he stood to attention, carrying a wreath for his lost comrades.
This is part of the story as it was reported in a newspaper:
When war broke out on 4 August 1914, Mr Stone was a 14-year-old farmhand. Undaunted by his age, he walked three miles from his Devon hamlet to the nearest recruiting office for the Royal Navy.
The only factor that prevented him joining two of his brothers in the armed forces was his father, who refused to sign his papers. But four years later the youngster joined the Navy as a stoker. At the end of the war he saw the remains of the German fleet, scuttled at Scapa Flow. “We saw the German battleships; some were on the seabed. You could see the funnels and half-masts. I thought, ‘That’s the bloody place for them’.”
Like so many of his surviving comrades, Mr Stone had assumed the Great War had been the war to end wars. He stayed in the Navy and 20 years later he realised it was not.
He was to leave the service in 1940, but served through the Second World War, starting with five trips to the beaches of Dunkirk.
Mr Stone, his chest emblazoned with rows of medals, said: “We were bombed continually, fired at from all directions. It was hell. I said, ‘God help us’. Our sister ship about 50 yards away was bombed and she just disappeared with 200 soldiers on board and the crew, all killed.”
Like the fellow veterans beside him, the former sailor, who served in eight ships, was modest about his service, saying he was only a “fortunate representative” of those who had died.
And this is the story of Fred Lloyd. He too was at the Cenotaph in London when the 90th anniversary of the First World War was commemorated.
By 5am yesterday Fred Lloyd had woken and shaved twice. It was, he said, to ensure that he was properly turned out to pay his respects to his fallen comrades – in particular the two he simply refers to as Bill and Tom.
The 106-year-old former soldier travelled to the Cenotaph in Whitehall from his native village of Uckfield, East Sussex, to remember the two brothers he joined up to fight alongside, only to return without them.
A young gardener on a country estate before he joined up, Mr Lloyd knew the importance of family more than most. The youngest of 16 siblings, he was orphaned at the age of two and brought up by his eldest sister.
It was this close bond which persuaded him to follow his brothers to the battlefields of France to fight a foe he had no desire to destroy.
Yesterday, his voice animated and with a steady stare that belies his age, he said: “I miss Bill so much. Tom was killed first, and that was terrible, but Bill and I were only a year apart in age and we grew up together. We played together and went to school together. Everything we did, we did together.”
He added: “War is not something nice to remember. There is nothing wonderful about it. It was a bad time and we were often outnumbered by the Germans. But it was not them I went to fight. I wanted to help Bill and Tom, but I couldn’t in the end.”
The road to the Western Front was far from straight for the former artilleryman. After first trying to join up at 17 and then being rejected by his local regiment, he eventually joined the Royal Field Artillery in 1916 and carried out his training on giant howitzers used to shell German positions over large distances.
But just as he was ready to go into action, his unit was struck by an outbreak of meningitis. He spent nearly a fortnight in a coma. Of the 32 men who fell victim to the illness, only two returned to active service – one was Fred.
Unable to serve with the guns in France because of his weakened condition, he joined the Royal Veterinary Corps and undertook the dangerous task of transferring horses to the front lines.
Mr Lloyd was never posted near his brothers. Tom, who was 14 years older and a father figure, died from multiple wounds in 1917. Bill, who had been due to marry after the war, was killed less than three months before the armistice.
When he returned to Sussex in 1918, Mr Lloyd married a local woman, Alice Weaver, started a family and, like so many of his comrades, did his best to forget the conflict he describes as “unnecessary”.
In the glare of the August sun on Whitehall yesterday, the old soldier admitted he still finds it difficult to discuss what he saw. He said: “The things I remember most were the rats and the lice. Wars still go on. They are no more pleasant than they were then. There’s nothing nice about killing, so I prefer to remember what I loved; my brothers.”
And these are extracts from an article that Jonathan Bastable published about Normandy in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
“Up on the plateau, a 10-minute wlk away, I can see the US flag fluttering on a tall flagpole. As I set off towards it I am mindful that thousands of men died trying to cver the half-mile from here to there. This is the Calvados coast, D-Day country, and I am in the middle of the killing field known as Omaha Beach.
Operation Overlord was the turning point of World War II. More than that, it was a pivotal day in history. On the morning of 6 June 1944, 5,000 ships carried 150,000 men across the English Channel and pitched them into the sea and into battle.”
“Following the flag, I arrive in the serene and beautiful cemetery. ….
The lines of graves form perfect perpendiculars and diagonals that seem to go on endlessly. The symmetry of their crosses is occasionally interrupted by a stone Star of David, where a Jewish soldier lies. Some of the crosses bear the words:
‘ Here Rests in Honored Glory
A Comrade in Arms
Known But to God.’
It is touching that many of these anonymous dead have fresh flowers on their graves.”
“At the British cemetery..as you walk around you realise that there are other nationalities here, and that each one has a headstone of a different shape. You find a little plot of Russians…there are some Czechs, Poles, a few Italians, and one or two Muslims of indeterminate nationality. There are Germans, too. No messages on their headstones, no comfort to be taken in the justice of the cause or a death well met. There is just a name, a date of birth and a date of death – usually no more than 20 years between them.”
I think that in choosing today for his ‘manifestation of courage’, Joseph Muscat has been conditioned by the fact that tomorrow he has to make his speech in parliament in reply to the budget, for which he needs a lot of courage in the face of a reply by the Prime Minster on Wednesday. Past Labour leaders have always turned to the masses for courage. I would not be surprised if they would hold a ‘spontaneous’ demonstration to greet him on his way in and out of parliament tomorrow.
[Daphne – ‘Past Labour leaders have always turned to the masses for courage.’ Not really. The last one turned to drink.]
What a pity it is that a postgraduate student does not to know anything about the Second World War!
It is also shameful for the Maltese education system is faltering to such pitiful levels. I dare to think that Minister Christina’s recent proposal to phase out streaming out of the Maltese educational system, over the following three years, will throw more upcoming individuals into historical oblivion.
Daphne, ‘right between the eyes’!
As usual Daphne, a to-the-point article. Yes, nurses of Rainbow ward who went for the opening were saying how arrogant Mrs. Muscat was. A friend of mine who is in one of these flats with her rather sick daughter was outraged by the lack of respect for privacy shown by the One journalists and cameramen. How much they need to learn from Dr. & Mrs. Gonzi!
I remember when once I attended the ceremony in Ieper (rather than “Ypres” — it’s in Flanders) held daily at sunset at the Menin Gate of the city. It’s a simple and moving ceremony, the last post played by a lone man on the bugle who stands at the centre of a memorial bearing the names of tens of thousands soldiers of the British Empire who have no known grave. Including the names of many Maltese servicemen.
I remember on that day amongst the audience was an official military representation of the Republic of Ireland. This was a country whose experience of being a member of the British Empire was not positive, whose support for the Allied side in the Great War was not unequivocal (vide the Easter Rising) and who chose to stay neutral during WWII.
Yet, the Irish were there. Certainly not because they are Anglophiles or “Empire-nostalgics” but because their men are buried there. And they have not forgotten them.
[Daphne – It’s Ypres when you’re writing in English, just as you wouldn’t say you’re flying to Roma or Munchen tomorrow.]
But I understand you indignation. I felt the same way when, last year, Jacques went all positive about an initiative taken by comedian-turned-angry-not-so-young-man Beppe Grillo.
On 8 September, the day commemorating the fall of the Italian regime in WWII, Grillo decided to celebrate “Vaffanculo Day” (even more cheekily abbreviated to V-Day) regarding some grievances he has about the Italian electoral system.
For that I was described as “the great defender of dualistic politics”.
Bah!
I’m not really surprised that a student had little knowledge of the last world war. The introduction of Systems of Knowledge in 6th Form and HMC (at tertiary level) was a tacit admission of failure in the edu system since (I believe) a lot of the material covered in these modules should be done at secondary school level. Students have been raised to believe that subjects like literature, history etc are unimportant and unneccessary. And by the looks of it, the situation will just get worse.
[Daphne – Apparently, the usual excuse is ‘but I didn’t take history at school’. This is like saying that you don’t know the name of Italy’s capital city because you ‘didn’t do geography at school.’ I distinctly remember something called ‘general knowledge’. It should be brought back and made compulsory.]
This is the best anti-war poem ever written.
Wilfred Owen
Dulce Et Decorum Est
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.
GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
@ hope
yeah ‘adorable pn’….hehe Austin springs to mind..all warm and cuddly!
He probably even addressed Obama as “Barack” in that letter.
[Daphne – No. ‘Dear Senator Obama’ – you know, he drank cocktails with him only a week ago.]
@NGT ” Students have been raised to believe that subjects like literature, history etc are unimportant and unneccessary”
They have a point. Literature and history , however interesting and enthralling they may be, are relatively unimportant and unnecessary.
[Daphne – Oh, that’s where you’re wrong. Try opening your mouth at a dinner-party somewhere other than Malta and announcing that you don’t know when the Second World War happened. You’ll kind of lose out in the networking stakes, I think. They’ll all have you down as too thick to do business with.]
Lino Cert: It all depends on what kind of literature and what kind of history you are reading. It also helps to read good literary and historical works critically and with an open mind. I suspect, from the tone of your comment, that you do neither.
Lino Cert – an example of how an awareness of history and literature helps you to achieve your goals:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article5114841.ece
@Daphne
Sure, if you’re aspiring to be president of the United States of America, or perhaps even prime minister of Malta, or even a journalist like yourself, a fundamental knowledge of history and literature won’t hurt. But I doubt it would help most people in a practical sense. I studied both English literature and Maltese History till an advanced level but while I find both fascinating I find no practical use for either in my work or social life. I don’t know what your dinner parties are like but if I had to bring up history or literature at a dinner party I doubt I would ever be invited again. Unless we were playing trivial pursuit of course.
[Daphne – You probably don’t realise how much both disciplines have informed your life and your decisions. They would certainly shape others’ perception of you.]
Lino Cert: “Literature and history, however interesting and enthralling they may be, are relatively unimportant and unnecessary”
Relative to what? And what do you consider more necessary and important to know than what shaped and what shapes the world you live in?
[Daphne – When people say they’re unimportant, I suspect that what they mean is in the utilitarian sense that shaped Mintoff’s approach to tertiary education: unimportant in the making of money. Yet what was the main distinguishing factor between Sarah Palin and Barack Obama? You guessed it: one is an intellectual and the other thinks that Africa is a country.]
hope: Water and electricity bills are not taxes. They are bills for what you use for yourself.
The difference between Palin and Obama is not just in their depth of knowledge and understanding of the world around them, but in their attitude to acquiring both. Palin doesn’t just lack knowledge of the world. She isn’t even curious about it.
[Daphne – Best description of Mr and Mrs Palin, and by a Republican campaign aide, no less: “small-town hillbillies raiding Neiman Marcus from east coast to west.” Sounds familiar.]
Lino Cert: “Literature and history, however interesting and enthralling they may be, are relatively unimportant and unnecessary”
You may find these quotations interesting:
“History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity. ”
Cicero, Pro Publio Sestio
and
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ”
George Santayana
NEVER FORGET WHY WE REMEMBER WHAT REAL COURAGE IS ALL ABOUT
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=x3wh9raeD_Y&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=j7peTBVprtY&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=YgStF-hnZds&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=DazporXMvZI&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=YkgBwYIYk4A&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=pqndnU8Ze6g&feature=related
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=S8rbnfurkXc&feature=related
Lino Cert – I can tell you that in most of my social meetings, history in one form or other always crops up during the discussion. Maybe you are surrounded by people who either play the fool at dinner or else just speak about a mono-subject e.g. football, cars, men/women etc…
[Daphne – But that tends to be the general experience anyway. Conversation is not our strong point.]
Why are we so shocked when a post-grad student doesn’t have such basic knowledge? As a nation, we are a hopeless case re. general knowledge. Take the level of everything we do, from the radio programmes we listen to, to the tv programmes we watch, the articles we read, and the politicos we vote for. They all aim for the lowest common denominator. And this extends to other things as well. I work in a museum, and the number of parents who tell their kids, “U jien x’jimpurtani mill-muzewijiet” is astonishing. And you notice the enthusiasm draining away from their kids’ eyes, defeated. And when they enter our bookshop, you would think books were radioactive. “Hallihomlhu l-kotba l-man ghax tqattaghhom.” What a sad, closed, wilfully ignorant mind.
After an orderly retreat through Burma fighting against superior Japanese forces advancing towards India, the Indian Army finally managed to halt the Japanese advance on the Indian border in the battles of Imphal and Kohima; the battle at Kohima was particularly brutal; at one point it was literally fought across a tennis court and involved hand-to-hand combat.
In the immaculate cemetery, surrounded by pine trees on the slope of the hill in the centre of Kohima, there are graves of not just Indian Army soldiers but also British African, and other Commonwealth soldiers, all of whom fought alongside the Indian Army in the Burma campaign.
A monument in the cemetery carries the words attributed to John Maxwell Edmonds:
“When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today.”
I address this comment to those ‘true Maltese’ who, in the morning of this Remembrance Sunday, felt that they were demonstrating their courage by walking from Porte des Bombes towards Valletta in time to catch a quick hamburger before the afternoon ‘manifestation’, and who walked past and studiously ignored the commemorative ceremony at the Cenotaph,that they may perhaps get to know what genuine courage and commitment to the good of one’s fellow man are all about.
@ Vanni “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”
I disagree. History is in fact the main reason mankind is in such a mess at the moment. Look at what is happening in the middle east for example. If history was not given such importance there would be no such trouble. True, if nations ever learned from their mistake, history would matter. But as history shows, nations and people rarely learn from their mistakes. That’s why the world is just as dangerous today as it was a thousand years ago.
More controversially , in fact I doubt history does exist at all, since once an instant in time is past all that is left are momentos, such as fossils, photos etc, but the actual moment is gone for ever. Giving too much importance to history may also influence your behaviour and make you make the wrong decision based on bias. For example you may have an inherent bias against buying a new SKODA, despite that they are now produced by Volkswagen.
Therefore in conclusion I believe the kids of today may be wise in giving history such little importance, because perhaps history is not as important as we used to think.
“to grab a quick hamburger before the afternoon ‘manifestation’”
Quite unlike the soldier who lost his toes to frostbite but went back into battle because his finger could still pull a trigger.
Just below the monastery on Monte Cassino, on the slope on hill ‘593’, lie buried 1063 Polish men – part of Polish army units that had fought under horrific conditions and finally turned the tide of battle, so opening the way to the Allied advance for the liberation of Rome.
One of the inscriptions on the memorial reads “Polish soldiers resting here on Italian soil fell in the battle for ‘Our and Your freedom’…and in their hearts they carried Poland to which they were never able to return.”
Let those who this evening returned home from the MLP manifestation, feeling elated by having demonstrated their courage in meeting the challenges of paying the bill for the electricity and water that they themselves consume, ponder on the above.
History always tends to repeat itself,That is why it is so practical and important to make sure that future generations are knowledgable on the subject.
WELL SAID MR VELLA. Sadly you speak of values which are fast disappearing. We only have certain ‘leaders’ to blame for they did not instil in their followers the true meaning of ‘loyalty to one’s country’. And to think that had they done this it would have given them some of the ‘class’ they lack. But reaping ignorance gave them power, or so they thought………..
What do you expect in a country that says of its war dead “mietna ta’ xejn, mietna ghall-barrani”?
London Area, you’re talking bollocks. How about giving history some importance because it would make “today’s kids” cultured, and give a little colour to their bland conversations?
Oh and Malta does not hold the monopoly on cretinism. In a recent survey, a full 46 percent of French citizens below 60 did not know what the 11th November national holiday commemorates. Perhaps they’re following London Area’s suggestion, possibly while spouting pseudo-political anti-war intello-slogans.
London Area: It sounds like you had one too many last night. What are you doing bickering about the unimportance of history? You sound like something out of Orwell’s 1984.
And London Area: car production is hardly the best example to bolster your argument. It just highlights the importance of what you denigrate.
London Area: “Therefore in conclusion I believe the kids of today may be wise in giving history such little importance, because perhaps history is not as important as we used to think.”
What is important is not so much history itself, but the lessons that may and should be drawn from the events. The latter is obviously dependent on the knowledge of the former, so history must never be put aside.
@ London Area
I wouldn’t be seen dead in a Skoda, sorry.
Slight tangent, with your permission.
From the Maltatoday site:
“LATEST: Muscat calls on Government to withdraw tariffs immediately (Sunday 09 November 2008 – Updated 19:00 CET)”
Errrr, and what if the Goverment refuses to do so? Will Muscat keep on calling, and calling, and calling…..?
However this gem takes the biscuit:
“Illum interview: Charles Mangion respects social partners’ decision not to attend Labour manifestation ”
Nice of him to tell us that he feels that he needs to tell us that respects people with opposing views to his. Ah well I guess the time is gone when they would have been called as lacking in the bocci department.
Corinne Vella Monday, 10 November 1008hrs
“London Area: It sounds like you had one too many last night. What are you doing bickering about the unimportance of history? You sound like something out of Orwell’s 1984.”
Or from tHE not-too-distant local past when school children were taught that Maltese history started in 1971 when the MLP took power.
A ‘MANIFESTATION’ OF COURAGE – SPOT THE DIFFERENCE
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081110/local/its-time-for-action-muscat
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081110/local/the-veteran-soldier-who-will-not-miss-remembrance-day
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20081110/local/raf-tornadoes-fly-past-in-remembrance-day-ceremony
@ Corinne Vella – If comparing those clips doesn’t shame
Joseph Muscat, I don’t think anything ever will.
Cikki: I doubt he is capable of feeling shame. He isn’t even capable of recognising a truly good PR opportunity when he sees one. He could have been at Floriana in the morning and then told the massed sheep in the afternoon why he wore his poppy with pride – two sets of news photos, and all in one day, with none of the backlash of his latest, most horrible gaffe.
Instead Muscat chose to hitch his wagon to Obama’s rising star, oblivious to the irony of basking in what he thinks is reflected glory. We knew all along that Muscat is not very good at sums, but he still feels the need to prove it. If he applied his and his party’s calculation of what constitutes a majority vote, he’d have to conclude that Obama’s is not a majority election.
@ Lino Cert – “They have a point. Literature and history , however interesting and enthralling they may be, are relatively unimportant and unnecessary.”
What, is literature unimportant? Is Shakespeare unimportant? What about Dante, is he of no importance? Is the Divine Comedy unnecessary? What about King Lear and Hamlet, were the days Shakespeare spent writing them an unnecessary waste of time?
You see, this is what’s wrong with this gawd-damned country of ours – the idea that you can get along without knowing anything about history or about literature. Some university students are only educated in their particular subject matter and in nothing else.