It's time for Labour to admit that it gave Gaddafi blow-jobs for cash
The face that is permanently etched in the minds of all sentient Maltese aged 40+. To Labour, he was 'Christmas Father'. To the rest of us, he was the bogeyman from hell.
Don’t the Labour elves know their own party history, the history of their own country? Clearly not.
They’re banging on about how Lawrence Gonzi was the last national leader to meet Gaddafi before 17 February. And they’re in blissful ignorance of the fact that GADDAFI BANKROLLED THE LABOUR PARTY. Yes, he bankrolled it.
Joe Sammut, the Mosta accountant who keeps millions for Saadi and Mutassim Gaddafi (in banks in Malta) and uses the money to pay their spendthrift bills, was the Labour Party’s TREASURER. That’s how he got the Gaddafi contacts and the Gaddafi trust.
Surely the Labour elves don’t imagine that Saadi and Mutassim Gaddafi picked Sammut’s name from the Yellow Pages.
Gaddafi did not just bankroll Labour. He gave Dom Mintoff the money for the social services that Labour elves like to boast about without knowing what’s what.
Yes, the social services they are so proud of were paid for by the bloody, murderous dictator to whom Dom Mintoff, AST, KMB, Lorry Sant, Karmenu Vella and the rest of the sorry Labour dinosaur brigade whored themselves like common prostitutes – for cash.
Instead of doing their job properly and setting the economic stage for better work and more pay which would lead to enough tax revenue to finance social services, the Labour government gave Gaddafi blow-jobs for money. I use the expression metaphorically, and you’ll have some idea of just how bad the situation was by the fact that I feel the need to point this out.
Lawrence Gonzi was horribly, badly advised to go to Tripoli when he did, when even I, behind my laptop and in touch with Libyans who are neither businessmen nor members of the regime (same difference), could see what was coming next. But he went as a prime minister and not as a supplicant, bosom buddy or prostitute.
Those who believe that his visit is in any way comparable to the relationship between the Labour Party and Muammar Gaddafi – an intimate relationship which those my age grew up with and were deeply oppressed by – have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.
But that is no excuse. As adults, they should get their facts straight.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110823/world/eu-ready-to-pay-state-bills-to-get-new-libya-on-feet.381562
Oil talks, I guess!
Maybe, but so do the more important values of freedom, democracy and individual rights. Why shouldn’t Libyan people have those too?
In the 70s, the time of fear, Mintoff invited this tyrant to address the Maltese parliament.
What the hell he was thinking?
The MLP was always on the wrong side of history and behind the curve.
The MLP is infatuated with dictators and sought friends like Gaddafi, Ceausescu and North Korea.
The MLP was against the independence of Malta, against the sale of Mid Med bank ‘to foreigners’, against the sale of the money-losing Dockyard, against education, against the EU, against Malta joining the euro zone, against the rehabilitation of Valletta, against the liberalization of financial services, against the Delimara power station, against…
Generations later they discover that Nationalist policies were the right ones. PN governments bungle things up but in the final analysis Malta has moved ahead.
The 70s were not the “golden years” but were the “lost years” for many people including the very people who supported the MLP blindly.
Mintoff and Gaddafi had at least one thing in common: a massive chip on their shoulder. Gaddafi famously supported anyone who was ‘against imperialism’. For that, read ‘anyone whose existence reminded them of their own inferiority complex’.
Well then, how does Mintoff explain his Integration plan with the ‘imperialists’?
He doesn’t and didn’t, of course. He just wanted to be one-up on il-hakkiem, as he saw it. Integration would have put him on the same level as his ‘oppressor’, even though Malta’s potential self-determination would have been dead and buried.
Unbelievable! You read comments online, and a considerable number of our fellow Maltese praise the Libyan people but still wish that they are under Gaddafi’s dictatorship. They mention civil war,better the devil you know, etc…
Funny how some of them wouldn’t apply that to the local political arena, and don’t vote PN because “better the devil you know”.
I have the feeling that Gaddafi gave them big sums of money to build their Centru Nazzjonali in Hamrun.
It was built practically in a couple of years, and it cost them millions of Maltese liri – not the sort of money you can collect as il-ftit minghand il-hafna.
Very well said – agree with you 100%.
Maybe it’s time MLP came clean and published their accounts – assuming that they are properly kept, that is.
Mintoff had the contemptible habit of cosying up to pariah leaders.
In his narrow-mindedness he thought he could extract more from them then from the decent men and women who were then leading the world’s great democracies.
As a result of his despicable foreign policy, Malta ended up, for all intents and purposes, a pariah state itself by the mid eighties.
This is going to be a nut to tough to crack for Joey the twerp and his elves.
Maybe now they’ll put an end to this neutrality clause bullshit they are all so touchy about.
“He gave Dom Mintoff the money for the social services that Labour elves like to boast about without knowing what’s what.” – That’s what being a good diplomat is.They got these deals from everywhere at the time not just Gaddafi.
And the whole of europe has been giving blow-jobs to Gaddafi for money until recently.
I’m in no way saying that I agree with Mintoff’s policies but the money obtained was later used to “set the economic stage for better work and more pay which would lead to enough tax revenue to finance social services”.
Ps currently the economic stage doesn’t manage to finance these social services and that is why the country has 12,500 euros of debt for each citizen.
Clever dick. What are you suggesting? Offering Gaddafi a safe haven in exchange for a few of his ill-gotten billions?
No
I’ve seen this argument dozens of times, and I think there’s some confusion over the difference between a business deal and a donation in exchange for political favours.
Malta gave blow-jobs to Ghaddafi in the sense that it supported him all the way, long after the court of international opinion had passed a guilty verdict.
We smiled and embraced and feted him like a national hero, and even gave him a gong to seal the special relationship. Result: the country got some cash, and that was it. When the cash ran out, it ran out.
The rest of Europe did not give blowjobs.
They sold him stuff and got lucrative contracts for the last major European heavy industries (basically weapons and oil) in exchange for turning a blind eye. Result: those firms were able to keep going, and developed their capabilities.
When the contracts expired, they could apply that expertise elsewhere. No medals, no Ghaddafi Gardens, just normal business.
Baxxter, i think you’re splitting hairs here. The major difference is that Malta carries no weight and by necessity floats like a cork in heavy seas. It’s not like we can wield our big corporations around and threaten the investment funds held by dictators.
Mandela heaped praise on Gaddafi for his support against apartheid. Why shouldn’t he? Gaddafi supported the ANC when everybody else was looking away or dealing with the SA government underhand.
I’m certainly not excusing Gaddafi or any other dictator here. The will of the people is sovereign but to get there requires more than sanctions and finger pointing.
I don’t understand your last paragraph.
Re. hair-splitting: No, there’s a world of difference.
Malta: Sincere sucking-up followed by vacillation and fence-sitting tinged with our eternal mistrust of NATO, The West and the rest of Europe bar Italy
The rest of Europe: Decisive policies and clear condemnation of Ghaddafi as a terrorist, with no military action, together with clear contracts for weapons sales and oil exploration, followed by decisive military action against Ghaddafi.
The difference between us and the rest of Europe is that we, in government as in private life, will forever fail conflate professional and personal relationships.
Let me re-phrase: it’s easy for Britain to send different messages to different audiences.
We read of Prince Andrew’s mishaps on this blog, it was to a select audience and it was important, when the message was made public, the government simply discredited the prince.
They’re a big country with a vast civil service, not to mention the businesses with a daily turnover bigger than Malta’s annual budget.
The important contact points a country like England has with Libya is infinitely bigger than what we can even dream of. It was easy for Reagan to pull through with the Iran-Contra scandal for example. I cannot think how Malta can ever pull off something like that.
I have to agree that we lack a sophisticated civil service but that will come with time. We’re a fledgling nation after all.
regarding the last para: no sweat. I wanted to re-assert my position on the Libya crisis.
Baxxter, you are right and we are too emotional. We had to go and give him a bloody medal. The British quite happily made millions on arms sales, yet when push came to shove they shoved.
We are years away from this level of diplomacy and it seems the best are the ex colonial powers.
The English were quite happily turning the Chinese into opium addicts during their early forays into the Far East so long as the trading companies got their way .
Absolutely. It’s the hamallu gene at work.
If he’s my friend, I’m on back-slapping level. If he’s my enemy, I’m into name-calling. Case in point? Xarabank. “Peppi” wants to ask a question to Herr Doktor Theophraste Fotherington-Ubergang. So he goes and puts his hand on his shoulder in the chummiest way possible and it’s “Thé, ahna sirna nafu li int trabbi l-fniek, hux veru?”.
Buried among the useless proverbs in First Aid to English was a useful one: Familiarity breeds contempt.
Yes Frans, the debt is there because, had Mintoff looked to the future and not to the political expedient, he would have based the social services in a different manner.
That is why we now need to create more nad better jobs – to plug the hole created 30 years ago. Basically, if everyone were to pay for his/her social services, the hole would not be there – but no! Our NI today pays for the services of today. Ergo the pensions problem.
I do not see Gonzi calling anyone Blood Brother for money but.
Again I’m not saying that I agree with Mintoff’s every Policy but you’re saying Mintoff looked at the political expedient?Mintoff raised taxes a lot and when he left office Malta had no debt but a good surplus. One way or the other Mintoff made sure he was fiscally conservative.
What about when Gonzi gave children’s allowance to every family in Malta including those who don’t need it(i.e. not just those that earn less than 10K)?Was that not just looking at political expedient?Do you think that doesn’t contribute to the debt?
[Daphne – Let me not mince words, Frans: so what if we had a goddamn surplus if we had NOTHING ELSE? You lived through those years, right? So when you got up every day to put on your Sanga shoes and your nylon shirt to go to your crappy job for your crappy pay and after that face an evening’s crappy entertainment of fuzzy black and white television if there wasn’t a power cut to match the water cut, did you say ‘Eeeeeee, l-aqwa ghandna serplass!’ There’s a happy medium, you know – we didn’t have to live like we were rivalling Albania for the position of Most Miserable Place in the Med after Libya.]
Look on the bright side, Daphne. At least Waterboy was available to mask the odour of unflushed excrement in lavatories.
You can create your own personal surplus by living like a pauper while earning a moderate wage. Are you tempted?
Mintoff was inflicted on us. He certainly wasn’t MY choice, any more than that broxk he appointed in his stead.
Frans, try drinking your bank account next time you’re thirsty.
You say that ‘Mintoff raised taxes’ like it was a feather in his cap. Yes, he raised taxes all right, from the very people who could potentially provide productive jobs, but instead did everything in their power to stash the money where Mintoff couldn’t lay his hands on it.
May I point out that even though he introduced one labour corps after another, the number of unemployed workers always hovered around the 10,000 mark.
But, worst of all, Mintoff introduced the philosophy, which is proving so hard to eradicate, that the country can afford to provide everything for free; the mentality of social services and handouts ‘from the cradle to the grave’. It was never going to be sustainable, especially when it was partly (mostly?) funded by the Gaddafi millions which could, and did, dry up.
It raised a whole generation of people who became experts at milking the system, without doing much in the way of work or self-improvement. The less you appear to have, the more benefits you are eligible to, so why bother with hard work?
“We had nothing else”…maybe we didn’t have all the flashy things we have today but we certainly had a whole lot more than we previously had.
[Daphne – Maybe we’re different, Frans, but none of that was worth anything without freedom from fear.]
He took beggars of the streets made sure the elderly and redundant we cared for. Don’t get me wrong by today’s standards we’d be the equivalent of some shitty town in Poland.But you do have to start from somewhere to reform a country and you don’t start by making nice flashy things.
Goes without saying that we’re different :)
Here are a few things that Mintoff didn’t do:
encourage private enterprise, rather than tearing down existing businesses;
shore up banks, rather than bankrupting them;
encourage initiative, rather than dependency;
create opportunity, rather than rationing it out;
open up the possibility of education to all, rather than creating an inverse elite.
There’s more, but that will suffice for now.
That’s not being a good diplomat. That is having no conscience.
If Ghaddafi’s gone, who’s bankrolling the Labour Party now?
[Daphne – Nobody, hence the cash crisis.]
I see. That must be why they’re desperately courting the major construction magnates. The whole island will be paved over with breeze block come 2013.
Apparently ic-Caqnu has become Labour’s favourite host for wedding eceptions and parties – no wonder that Karmenu Vella and Marlene Mizzi chose Monte Kristo for their kids’ respective wedding receptions.
The Maltese Labour Party remind me of Ed Miliband who goes on and on about Cameron and Murdoch while conveniently forgetting that his party was in the pocket of News International
But according to these Labour elves we’re not supposed to talk about the past because it is not relevant to today.
Bringing up the past, an obvious thing to bring up when it comes to politicians, they tell you that you are living in the past, regardless of the fact that everything they say against the PN, whether it is true or a load of rubbish, all took place in the past.
Do they think we rely on them to tell us what past is OK to talk about and which isn’t? How typical of them.
They all have a terrible past to think about, especially the old fogeys like AST, Joe Grima, Joe Debono Grech. Dr Joe Muscat couldn’t care less – he hopped off to Italy to avoid questions which he knows he is unable to answer.
Mandelson and Saif (see Miliband?)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2029419/Playboy-Saifs-web-connections-rich-powerful.html
Why Gaddafi reminds me of Labour – Simon Busuttil
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110824/opinion/Why-Gaddafi-reminds-me-of-Labour.381608
My Laburista nanna, 25 years ago, had a picture of Gaddafi hanging in her home.
Cool. Must like them tall, dark and loaded.
Like Clinton Paul mela. You know, like badass soldiers!
Daphne .. I think you are off the mark here. Ghaddafi did not give Mintoff money for the social services. Mintoff hit hard the middle class with high taxation, to grant social services.
So instead of building a sound economy where real wealth is generated, his policy was just to re distribute the existing wealth.
[Daphne – David, Mintoff’s social services were kickstarted with a cash injection of several million from Muammar Gaddafi. Over the years, those social services were – and this as explained only recently by Joe Grima, who was a minister at the time – were bankrolled by cheap oil from Gaddafi, which Malta sold on at a profit. Yes, the income tax rate was horrendous – the top tier was taxed at 95% as I recall – but not many people were earning much (and those who did smuggled it out of the country or operated in the black economy) and the money went into his mythical kaxxa.]
Proof of this was Mintoff’s admission that he wished to create jobs, as under Labour rule Malta had a chronic unemployment problem, with KMB putting around 8,000 people on the pulic sector payroll in the last six months of his regime.
Under Labour’s 1971- 1987 rule, Borg Olivier’s vision of Malta becoming the unspoilt Montecarlo was ruined. Upmarket tourism was ruined; yacht marinas and all the infrastructure falling to bits; Malta’s Foreign Affairs policy was definitely alien to FDI; social housing dictated by electoral boundaries ruining vast tracts of green areas.
One must bear in mind that Borg Oiliver was in government for a mere seven years post-independence, plus the handicap of having Mintoff as a formidable leader of the opposition, and an army of idle workers at Malta Drydocks.
Ghaddafi funded Mintoff personally, and probably bankrolled the Labour Party, yes, but did little for Malta as a nation.
Let’s assume that these 8000 extra workers had a conservative Lm3000 (€7000) annual salary. That makes it €56 million in annual salaries alone. That was the MLP’s surplus.
Ms DCG, you forgot to point out the undeniable and obvious: that the MLP in goverment gave those blow jobs to Gheddafi at a time when he was financing organized terrorism in the west, including the IRA, and hanging students and university professors in his country in the former Green Square live on Libyan state TV.
[Daphne – Libyan students were hanged not only in Libya. If you go through copies of The Times from the early 1980s, you’ll find reports of students found hanged in mysterious circumstances at the Ta’ Giorni school. The police investigations always concluded – of course – that it was suicide. And newspaper readers assumed that Libyans were much predisposed to killing themselves.]
Any Maltese person living abroad in the 70s and 80s would confirm that, in the “Ewropa ta Kajjin” (according to Dom), Malta was considered to be Libyan territory.
The Gheddafi sons considered Malta as their playground.
I was unaware of students found hung at Ta Giorni during the Mintoff era.
How horrible.
Malta was a trans shipment point for Gaddafi’s supply of Semtex to the IRA, a stockpile that kept them in business up to today.
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/04/04/gozo-used-as-arms-transit-point-for-libya-and-the-ira-in-1985-in-the-telegraph-today/
For all the talk of helsien, Mintoff pandered to Gaddafi, allowing him to repeatedly undermine Malta’s sovereignty.
Libya sponsored terrorism in many ways, not just by supplying Semtex to the IRA. By issuing terrorists with fake passports bearing false names, he enabled safe passage through Malta. In Fathi Shaqaqi’s case, that was short-lived, but still long enough for him to wreak havoc with a suicide bombing campaign supported by Gaddafi (as long as they’re fighting ‘imperialism’, anything goes).
Fathi Shaqaqi (also sometimes referred to as Shkaki), travelled using a fake Libyan passport naming him as Dr Ibrahim Ali Shawesh. Holders of a Libyan passport were able to enter Malta without a visa, enabling Shaqaqi to travel through Malta four times from 1993 before he was killed on 26th October 1995. On his last, fateful visit, he was on his way to Tripoli to meet Muammar Gaddafi who had promised to help finance Shaqaqi’s mission.
Shaqaqi was one of the co-founders of Islamic Jihad, which initiated suicide bombing as a weapon. He legitimised suicide, calling it sacrifice.
Gaddafi was also good for other sorts of business with the Maltese:
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=T8dEAAAAIBAJ&sjid=mLYMAAAAIBAJ&pg=2095,4258624&dq=malta+libya&hl=en
Daily Union – Nov 18, 1984
Libyan ‘hit squad’ foiled in attempted assassination
By Robert H Reid, Associated Press writer
CAIRO, Egypt – Egypt used faked photographs of a former Libyan prime minister lying in a pool of blood to trick Libya into claiming he had been assassinated by a death squad bired by Col. Moammar Khadafy, President Hosni Mubarak said Saturday.
Egyptian officials identified two Britons and two Maltese arrested as members of the Libyan-hired hit squad, and said the four told of other Libyan plots to assassinate leaders in West Germany, France, India, Pakistan, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.
[…]
Rushdi identified those arrested as Anthony William Gill, 48, and godfrey Chiner, 47, both of Lond; and Romero Nicholas Chakambari, 42, and Edgar Bonic Cacia, age unknown, both of Malta.
The story’s picked up here http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13512968.html It’s in German but you can get the gist if you run ‘Auto translate”
Go to translate.google.com and paste the story in the box. The translation is atrocious but it reveals some interesting details:
. Gill was an auto parts trader, new to the bloody business of international terrorism. His wife in Essex said that it’s not at all like that to him.
. Gaddafi financed the assasination of Indira Gandhi
. One of the Egyptian ‘assassins’ (an undercover officer) went to Valletta with the photo in his breastpocket. Libya’s rep rolled up in Crete and met Gaddafi just as he’d finished lunch with Miterrand. Gaddafi ordered the immediate publication of the photos to please the Arab world with a Libyan success message.
. When Bakush turned out to be alive, the revolutionary leader himself rushed to a non-scheduled visit to Malta. “Most likely to pull the duped masterminds to justice,” suggested the Egyptian interior minister.
. According to Interior Minister Rushdie Gaddafi had British and Maltese even plan to kidnap an F-16 fighter engine of the Egyptian Air Force.
. The fabulous four telephoned Malta from Egypt “Although “everyone knows”, as one diplomat noted, shaking his head, “that in Egypt telephone calls are monitored”.
You can see a very bad photo of the unimpressive hit squad on the third page here:
http://wissen.spiegel.de/wissen/image/show.html?did=13512968&aref=image036/2006/06/13/cq-sp198404801370140.pdf&thumb=false
I don’t know if it’s the same person but a certain Edgar Bonnici Cachia is a colourful (to say the least) character who was briefly involved with a religious television station (UTV). He later ended up in prison for fraud.
I take it that the names are really Romero Nicholas Schembri, Godfrey Cini and Edgar Bonnici Cachia (which is not a common name at all. ( http://archive.maltatoday.com.mt/2007/08/12/t15.html )
Fl-elezzjoni generali tal-1981 Edgar Bonnici Cachia kien kanditat Laburista fl-ewwel distrett.
Just a slight correction; the hangings were mostly done in Benghazi
Victims of April 17, tortured to death, assasinated, executed without trial in Cyprus, Germany, UK, Italy, Malta. These are just a few of them:
http://sijill.tripod.com/victims/
Students hung at Ta Giorni?
[Daphne – Yes, and the Malta police wrote them off as suicide.]
What about the Libyan student who was chased by pro-Gaddafi students and beaten up all the way from Ta’ Gorni to Bahar ic-Caghaq and was never seen again?
Was Anglu Farrugia involved in any way?
‘The Gheddafi sons considered Malta as their playground’
In what way was Malta their playground? Would it be off the mark to assume that there might be illegitimate Gaddafi offsprings in Malta?
No.
Yes, in the sense that Ghaddafi’s sons knew exactly where to shop for uber-hot supermodels, and it certainly wasn’t Semitic Malta.
Brazen confidence. Don’t be too sure.
Our local grocer, a staunch Labour supporter, had two large photos – one of Mintoff and another of Gaddafi – framed in his shop with flowers in front of them – ‘Is-salvaturi ta’ Malta’, or so he thought.
My impression was that the cult of Gaddafi was being nurtured by our ‘esteemed leader’ at that time, until they fell out over ‘The Blata’ issue.
Any one remembers that enormous black graffitti proclaiming proudly that “GHEDDAFI ALLA TA MALTA’ daubed on a prominent wall near the Dicembru Tlettax road for all , driving down to the south, to see?
It stayed there all throughout the Mintoff/KMB era and was removed only after the 1987 election.
http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=1561377989&sk=wall
Robert Musumeci
Hafna mill- politici tal-punent li illum qed jghidu lil Ghedafi jwarrab iltaqghu mieghu fl- ahhar snin fuq xoghol statali.
Mr. Musumeci, were you too busy to follow Maltese and international news in recent years?
“Fl ahhar snin” Gheddafi had renounced his terrorist past and pledged to help the civilized world to fight terrorism .As a result, he had the years-long embargo against his country lifted. It then became business as usual with him by the majority of countries in the world, including Malta.
How about posting cryptic messages re the goverments (Including Mintoff’s and KMB’s) who had very close relations with the man, years ago (MHUX FL AHHAR SNIN) when he was the world enemy no 1?
The world and the Libjan people would have been well and truly rid of the mad dog, more then 25 years ago, had not a certain ZERO found fit to tip him off on the special delivery being sent to him by air with compliments of Mr Ronald Reagan.
I am surprised that there is anyone left who takes any notice of this spineless poltician – one who abandoned his family at that most crucial time of the birth of the child.
For someone to be credible in the poltical sphere, he has to act in a credible and responsible manner in his private life.
@Frans
Lovely, now that you’re out in the open, don’t you think we owe ‘hutna il-Libjani’ something other than that feeble excuse of a statement, issued by the shadow minister for foreign affairs, yesterday?
May I ask whether individual rights are ever part of your equation?
Your instinctive apology for Mintoff’s Labour in a post-Gaddafi Mediterranean indicates why Labour is now the only dinosaur left.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/world/gaddafi-malta%E2%80%99s-part-in-his-downfall
Is this another tall tale meant to make people believe that the neutrality clause in our constitution has been deliberately and knowingly breached?
It’s just Maltatoday desperate for a dramatic headline. Next thing you know it’ll be RAID ON GHADDAFI’S COMPOUND LAUNCHED FROM MALTA.
And don’t you just love the “plainclothes logistical officers from NATO”. There is no NATO army, and therefore no “NATO officers”, logistical or otherwise.
Those officers would belong to their national armies.
As for “plainclothes”, duh, every embassy worth its salt has an intelligence officer or two, ostensibly working as a diplomat, in a suit or in plain clothes.
It’s just that Malta was too insignificant to merit the attention of any intelligence agency.
If some Western agency sent a couple of officers to Malta to have a chat in a Portomaso café with Libyan dissidents/whiners/eleventh-hour-Ghaddafi-haters, that’s hardly anything to write home about.
Then there are the dinghies. Oh dear. And “blitzkrieg”. Jesus. A couple of Toyota technicals with zonked-out students firing AKs into the air now qualifies as blitzkrieg.
Now for the “command centre in Malta”. Dear Maltatoday, if I send an email to my mates, from my laptop, with a time and venue for a meeting, is my bedroom a “command centre”? Because that’s just about the extent of it. Malta was hardly the Panshir Valley.
Of course everyone was a Partisan or Résistant after 8th May 1945. Malta is now teeming with “dissidents”.
Baxxter, you disappoint.
“Malta was too insignificant to merit the attention of any intelligence agency.”
Not so. Ask Gaddafi when you meet him.
I was just pointing out that Malta isn’t exactly Casablanca. Maltastar is seeing spies round every corner.
Megrahi worked for Libya’s intelligence agency. He also ‘worked’ for Libyan Arab airlines.
More recently, the movements of Libyans in Malta were reported to some rais. I’m not saying who, where or when because I promised not to.
Malta itself wasn’t the target. Libyans were.
Just for the record, I don’t work for Maltastar.
And that makes Malta a major HQ?
Look, Stagno-Navarra is desperate for some major story. The truth is Malta did jack shit in the military campaign. Dinghies, radios and tinned food. Yeah right. Now I know why Borg Pisani’s mission was a total shambles.
Che centra major HQ?
Baxxter, I replied to your comment about no intelligency agency being interested in Malta. Who mentioned the Malta Today article?
You did. I didn’t.
The story has to be told from the beginning to be understandable. When Mintoff became Prime Minister in 1971, at Gaddafi’s behest he started dismantling Malta’s defences based on the Nato alliance.
He not only threw Nato out and started a demonising propaganda campaign against the western alliance (the echoes of which are still believed by the Labour Party faithful) but, most important of all, dismantled the radar at Madliena Fort which controlled the air space to as far south as Chad.
A couple of days after that, Gaddafi attacked Chad.
These are the facts that the Maltese people have to know.
We were a client nation (and I would dare to say a sort of colony, a minor proof of which was the imposition of the Arabic language) at the mercy of Ghaddafi, a situation brought about wilfully by the Mintoff regime.
I sincerely hope that the facts will at long last be brought to light through diplomatic and other documents.
It has to be made very clear that Gaddafi was not helping Malta because help was needed because of extraneous circumstances, but because Mintoff cut Malta off from the west at the behest of Gaddafi and made us completely dependent on his hand-outs.
So much for ‘Malta first and foremost’ rally call.
I beg to disagree on the point you make about the compulsory learning of the Arabic langauge.
One of my (very few) disappointments in life is that of not having had the opportunity to learn Arabic — the source of the Maltese language I love so well. Maybe the primary reason why Maltese do so badly in Maltese at school is the fact that we have this aversion to anything Arabic, when the foundations of our mother tongue are so deeply rooted in this ancient language.
I’m not ashamed to say that I used to be really envious of students three or four years younger who studied the language.
Indeed, every cloud has its silver lining.
The bone of contention here is not the teaching of Arabic at school but the COMPULSORY teaching of Arabic to Maltese children to please Gaddafi.
Without an ‘O’ level in it, you couldn’t take your studies further, unless you could afford to study abroad. I don’t see any silver linings there, only some serious Gaddafi butt-licking, as unsavoury as that image might be.
I beg to disagree with everything you say. It’s like saying that in order to speak English properly you’d have to learn Proto-Germanic and Latin.
If proper Maltese requires a knowledge of Classical Arabic, then really we should ditch this bad joke of a language and stick to English.
My comment was a strictly personal observation based on my own very personal experience. Please respect my opinion as I understand and respect yours.
However, since I earn a living in the publishing industry thanks to my expertise in ‘this bad joke of a language’, I feel that your take on the subject is at best amateurish and at worst quite stupid.
Of course, in order to be able to speak proper English you don’t have to learn German and Latin. But I’m sure you agree that to be a professional user of the English language, you must at least appreciate that knowledge of these subjects helps.
The same applies to many ‘professional’ singers boasting of a ‘good’ voice who have no idea of the elements of music, or of so-called athletes who do not bother to gain any knowledge of human anatomy and dietetics.
As to ‘ditching’ Maltese and ‘sticking to English’ — keep on dreaming, Baxxter.
A reminder:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/17/newsid_2488000/2488369.stm
This is a historic moment for Malta as well.
As I see Libyans enter Gaddafi’s compound and tear down the pictures and monuments of this tyrant, I cannot help remember how Gaddafi was etched into my childhood memories by Labour.
Libyans are our neighbours and should be close friends but not on the terms dictated by Mintoff and Gaddafi.
Do you remember how Mintoff donated half of Paola Hill and Ta’ Giorni to Gaddafi?
Do you remember how we were forced to learn Arabic and were given copybooks with the green Gaddafi flag printed on them, how the Green book was freely distributed in state schools, and how much we were told we should be grateful to Gaddafi for giving us the money for social services and to build Ta’ Qali stadium?
Mintoff, Labour and GADDAFI were bedfellows, buddies in sin and no statement of denial will make us forget this.
You could have defied the rules, since you were not FORCED to learn Arabic (unless, perhaps, you attended a state school), although you had less options for further education had you not taken it up.
At the school I attended, Arabic was optional, with classes being held outside normal school hours. I opted not to study it and was definittely not encouraged by my parents to do so, either.
Having 15 O-levels (and the necessary A-levels) with very good grades would not be sufficient to ensure a place at university unless you attended a state school. Private school pupils getting into university would have been possible by their “earning” the infamous “20 points” as a pupil-worker (which was another name for an underpaid slave, working regular hours for a mere 65 Euros A MONTH, when the average person earned around six times as much for the same input and for doing the same job).
We were not forced to learn Arabic but if one wanted to further his/her studies at university, an O-level certificate in Arabic was compulsory to have irrespective of the course chosen.
Oh, for God’s sake!
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/world/gaddafi-malta%E2%80%99s-part-in-his-downfall
Simon Busuttil’s opinion piece on today’s timesofmalta.com is very much on a similar vein. http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110824/opinion/Why-Gaddafi-reminds-me-of-Labour.381608
An ardent Mintoffjana welcomed back into Joey’s skip still runs the school on Paola hill.
At the start of the crisis in Libja, it was reported in the national media that there were some Libyans in Malta claiming that the centre at Paola was run by Gaddafi stooges.
Isn’t that the school that engaged the services of Edward Montebello, part time Super One cameraman, fan of the Eurovision song contest, and nemesis (he thinks) of PBS chairman Joe Mizzi?
Its amazing how one chain is connected to another – or maybe it’s pure coincidence? The ex-PN counciller from Qormi who a few months ago was publicly welcomed into Joey’s skip is known to have strong connections with whoever is in charge of that school too.
Viva il-handouts ta’ Gheddafi.
There have been reports in the Italian press linking Gaddafi to the Bologna train station bombing, the possible motive being Malta’s signing of the first financial protocol with Italy.
If this is verified, it just goes to show how territorial he was when it came to Malta, and what Mintoff’s myopic foreign policy really achieved.
Then there’s Ustica, another mystery right on our doorstep. A Libyan Mig was found charred in Sicily a few weeks later. An Air Malta plane was on the same route only a few minutes away.
‘la storia siamo noi’ had a programme on this very issue.
The gist of it was that the French downed a newly purchased Mig over Italy as it was on its way to Libya with other Migs.
The Ustica plane was a French error as they were almost on the same flight path. The Bologna bombing was Gaddafi’s thank you to Italy for letting the French (NATO) destroy his precious Mig.
http://www.lastoriasiamonoi.rai.it/puntata.aspx?id=197
You shouldn’t talk about Malta giving people blow-jobs.
As a liberal you should realise that’s the sort of thing that should be kept secret, and it’s none of your business.
There is an article on today’s edition of L-Orizzont. It is about tourism, and it states that Malta’s tourism figures went down because of the Libya conflict. I found the article out of synch and context, it seems to imply that we would have been better off without the conflict.
It is very disturbing to know that what is being projected as liberal and progressive still has an inherent evil within and still loves the tyrant.
Well, that’s a sea change from the clever clogs attitude they exhibited when Egypt erupted.
Hadn’t the Great Leader chastised Malta for not exploiting the opportunity to divert tourists to Malta? Arab Spring and democracy be damned, of course. This is Labour we’re talking about.
To hell with tourism.
Now that Ghaddafi is out of the way, we’re going to strike oil and all our worries will be over.
Oil for Malta, and Malta for the Maltese!
Keep on dreaming
Mr Borg
How difficult is it for you not to recognise sarcasm when it’s staring you in the face?
Joseph A. Borg
Thanks, missed that.
Clarifies a lot of things on Ustica, but not everything about Bologna.
The man, with his Lafico, was partially in control of Italy as well.