What’s the fuss about? It’s only a bit of pillaging and a couple of pitchforks.
The Labour Party website, Maltastar, invented a story about how the Minister of Health’s wife went to his office and had a screaming row with him because he’d taken a pay-cut and they didn’t have enough money to do up their ‘farmhouse’.
(Din tal-farmhouse il-vera ddejjaqni. ‘Where do you live?’ ‘In a house of kerickter.’ Maaa, jaqq, xi dwejjaq.)
The Health Minister, a reserved sort of chap, was understandably horrified and kicked up a fuss. He couldn’t understand how they could do something like that.
Maybe, despite being a really good psychiatrist, he hasn’t yet worked out just what a horrid, nasty little snake that Evarist ‘Maria l-Maws’ Bartolo is, and he’s now in charge of Maltastar so expect worse.
Maltastar’s response was not an apology, but a justification:
“It is very very interesting that the OPM and Minister Cassar have kicked up such a fuss about what might be dismissed as trivial political gossip.”
Trivial political gossip, eh? Telling the nation that a government minister’s wife screamed his office down because he took a pay-cut, without a shred of evidence, and exposing the two of them to scorn and insults, is ‘trivial gossip’.
You know, as though news sites owned by the government-in-waiting are in the business of gossip, trivial or otherwise.
But then God forbid anyone should discuss the changing amount of hair on the Dear Leader’s head, or wonder what in heaven’s name he was thinking of when he called his children Etoile and Soleil (well, with a wife like that, what do you expect), and the Labour beetles go nuts spitting about venom and hatred and poison and what-have-you.
Din sieheb tal-parokka ta’ Sant, the big elephant in the room that nobody was allowed to talk about, as though it’s normal to have a prime minister who wears a black wig in his 50s.
This is the thing about Labour. It’s all right for them to trample over their enemies with an extensive arsenal of lies, slander and viciousness.
But heaven forfend anyone should speak the truth about them, if they don’t like that truth, because they go nuts and redouble their assaults and inventions.
This is because politics in Malta is at root a class war, whatever the fancy gloss that’s put on it. The political descendants of the ‘shoeless ones’ still believe they have the right and duty to regard their enemies as not quite human, to compensate for all the privileges they’ve arrogated to themselves.
The metaphor still holds: when the shoeless ones finally get their hands on the privileged ones, they can sack their homes, steal their stuff, pillory them in the streets and guillotine their heads without trial. Because they deserve it. You know, for the privileges the shoeless ones think they have when they don’t deserve it, and when the shoeless ones want those privileges for themselves.
Material wealth, jobs, career opportunities, education, whacking great houses, cars that cost as much as a flat and plenty of overseas travel have made not a blind bit of difference to all this. The ‘shoeless ones’ now live lives that the privileged ones could never even have dreamt of three decades ago, but they still feel shoeless.
And this gives them a sense of entitlement about applying a completely different set of rules to their enemies, the privileged ones (who are nothing of the sort by now), whose homes they would sack and whose heads they would guillotine if they could.
But if the privileged ones do the same to the shoeless ones, that’s different. Then cries of horror and universal protest are in order.
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Fur-coat-clothed Descamisados.
Just observe how presenters/reporters like Peppi Azzopardi tiptoe around Joseph Muscat/Franco Debono and repeatedly justify (excuse) themselves for asking one or two tough questions, lest they be accused of being biased against Labour.
On the other hand, Peppi is tougher with PN representatives to prove that he is not biased.
It might be intentional or the constant attacks have conditioned himself to act this way.
Few journalists/talk show hosts have the stamina to go through a full persecution by the Labour Party machine, and consequently treat that party with velvet gloves. Given that Labour will be in power soon, deep down, most reporters are aware that the crude vindictiveness and violence out there is real and ready to go on the rampage.
The ‘shoeless ones’ always wait for manna from heaven or a deus ex machina to resolve their problems without lifting a finger or making the slightest effort.
They paint themselves as the ‘batut’ while they burn their earnings on mobiles, cigarettes, gaming, tattooing and expensive hobbies (horses, dogs, cars, hunting and bird trapping).
Ironically they elect people they normally envy and expect their rival party ministers in government to earn the same miserable wage that they do for their seven to four five day week job.
In the past few years we have also seen semi-literate people armed with PCs mirroring the envy/stupidity on the comment-boards which the ’shoeless ones’ talk about in public places.
Here’s one example:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111214/local/hsbc-to-phase-out-six-branches.398346
“Victor Vella
Dec 15th 2011, 09:04
People be informed that the bank HSBC lost millions of monies in the bank scam that happened a few years ago.As usual the burden has to be carried by employees. Now everybody has to thank the incompetency of this Government who sold the Mid Med with peanuts by an innocent man who is now showing himself as the victim of the Christmas lamb offered on the altar of sacrifice. The Maltese Bank only aim was to serve the people of Malta and not the people of Malta serving the bank. Everybody now will feel the invisible hand that this government passed to foreign capitalistic regimes with the aim to fill to the brim their pockets and leaving the Maltese suffering their shortcomings. HSBC comes up to boast that it makes billions of money as net profits while of course do not give a damn of the employees that are going to suffer the highhandedness of this ruthless regime.That is happening also at Air Malta where employees are being threatened by a series of meetings organized by foreign big pockets gluttonous new rulers of Malta that either they take the schemes or else they will loose everything lock, stock and barrel. The same will happen to HSBC employees . If the Nationalists regime is in opposition it could boycott both Air Malta and HSBC from using their services as they used in the 80`s to regain power. This is the difference from an incompetent regime PN to a party of solutions offered by the LP. The LP tries to find solutions while this ruthless regime find ways to fill up its pockets to the brim by taking from the people`s money 600€16c a week and the oppressed took a paltry 166c a week and now are also loosing their dignity and jobs. Today the victims are Air Malta employees and HSBC workers, for tomorrow there are others in the queue to meet the same irresponsible force of a PN regime destiny of hatred.
Mr Vella here thinks that he’s living in the Sant years where the PL has ’solutions’, for any problem under the sun.
Ben Harper
Dec 15th 2011, 08:20
Viva GonziPN. Under a labour government the bank would be nationalised to safeguard jobs and improve service.
Mr Harper wants another bank takeover.He’s not a shareholder.
Here’s another example:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120103/local/skyparks-business-centre-to-be-completed-this-year.400904
Charles Massa
Jan 3rd, 18:33
L Airport inbena fit taxxi tal Maltin, issa l profitti qed imorru f idejn il barrani.
For Mr Massa , MIA shareholders are “barranin”!
Nationalist governments have done their utmost to unearth the deep roots of the class hatred so wittingly inseminated and reinforced by that odious Mintoff.
The creation and distribution of wealth and the ever increasing number of tertiary educated population is part of a Nationalist strategy to reduce class differences and breed a healthier balance.
Malta is lucky it is doing this with the tremendous financial help and support of the EU. A fact which is unparalleled in our history.
The prospects are good.
The only problem remains the Old Labour mentality which will resurface and do untold harm to our island should it be elected to office.
Labour Party = Natural habitat of a person with a whole forest of chips on his shoulder.
Or better still, il-partit tal-lanzit.
I dont know what you are so surprised about. The strategy since Joseph has been elected is to dig dirt about ANYONE who opposes the MLP.
The media is then used to destroy the reputation of the person involved. By media, I mean the Jaqq! media like Maltastar, L-Orizzont and Maltastar.
Some people and businesses have been really badly affected. Internet searches on a new contact tend to bring up the most recent and widely read rubbish, even when the person is exonerated.
I know for a fact that Malta Today withholds from its online server corrections, replies under the ‘right of reply’ law, ‘not guilty’ verdicts and libel judgements. This is so that maximum damage is inflicted.
Unfortunately they have an able ally. They have a Police Commissioer who does not have the balls not to prosecute when it’s obvious that there is no case. They also have had a succession of attorney generals, one who is now Chief Justice, who prefer to let the courts decide when they have a magistrate’s opinion that there is no case.
And lastly, they have a Minister of Police who is just too weak and not fit for purpose controlling the police. I can never agree with Franco, but on this fact he is spot on.
In my opinion, the MLP has succeeded in getting rid of enemies and shutting them up. That failing can only be attributed to the Prime Minister, and his advisers, one of whom, I am afraid to say, should know better.
I still fervently believe that this is a small failure on the back of a largely successful government, but it’s going to cost the PN many votes. It had better start doing something now. Many of these were valid foot-soldiers.
Then the MLP speaks of venom. This has ben the strategy all along.
Saviour and the various editors of L-Orizzont are the real criminals yet very few have had the guts to take them to court, partly because the court itself cannot be trusted. Not with the quality of some magistrates you may land in front of.
But will they understand what is written here? Or are they eagerly waiting to be told that a cruise liner has been arranged for them in summer?
We can change the classic’s title to “A Tale of Two Parties”. Dickens would have found fertile ground and inspiration for a new novel, based on the starving masses of the PL who are struggling to get their rights back.
Why, we even have a dictator here in Malta, an oligarch, no less.
I ask, did anyone point a gun at anyone else in the polling booth and dictate how to vote? You’d think this is Burundi.
It seems that in Australia, Andrew Wilkes has taken his cue from Franco Debono and is giving “the treatment” to his prime minister Julia Gillard.
The difference is that he is not from her party, but from the coalition, but still a one-seat-majority minority-government (excuse the hyphens, but without them it might appear to be an oxymoron).
Andrew Wilkes’s issue is gaming laws.
Lanqas jafu jisthu dawn in-nies. Dammit, I think you’re right. Politics in Malta is, at root, a class war. Makes for a nice quote, that.
100% right.
The description of the have-nots’ attitude toward the haves, even when the have-nots suddenly acquire possessions, is more than spot-on. It’s a snapshot of reality.
In Maltese we have that wonderful saying, min kien b’s*rmu barra libes qalziet u h*ra fih.
OOPS! Forgot the link…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16664844
It’s interesting what’s coming out about Debono. See what BFA had to say on Radju Malta.
Which is why they restrict the middle class solely to its monetary capabilities.
The perversion is when unsustainable use of resources is adopted as an integral part of the manifesto, a fundamental right.
And when a family therapist declares we’re poorer now than in 1971, the grotesque becomes the norm, the middle class is reduced to ‘nix mangiari’ and to hell with social emancipation.
What would Franco Debono do?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16664844
What has happened to Wenzu Mintoff?
Maltastar is a real disgrace to the Engish language. Is it true that it is managed by the future Minister of Education?
Yes.
Franco debono ressaq private member’s bill. X’jigifieri?
[Daphne – L-istess bhalma ghamel Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, meta ressaq private member’s bill dwar ligi tad-divorzju.]
Not to be outdone, prima donna Jeffery was quick to pop up and share the limelight with Franco:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120121/local/jpo-to-support-debono-s-party-financing-motion.403253
Jesmint jonqos ifaqqa issa u jkunu qieshom “”Me and You and a Dog Named Boo”.
Somebody who follows your blog has asked another of your ardent followers if s/he thinks the story about Franco’s cock-fighting when he was still a kid is true or not. The latter smiled and said that it was all invented by you or by whom sent you the information and you just believed it.
My response to it is this. If through this blog you are trying to make Franco Debono see the light, would you invent something about him that he knows is 100% untrue which would lead him to give no importance to your blog?
[Daphne – The person who sent me the information on the cock-fight is somebody who grew up in the same village at the same time, and who also sent me several other highly accurate (I checked them out) details of his family life, personal circumstances and so on, which I have no intention of getting into because I find that sort of thing de trop.]
http://andrewazzopardi.org/2012/01/20/dr-franco-debono-in-2009-listen/
Ghamilt ekk….tkellimt ekk….ijja jien…jien…
This morning it is being reported that Franco went to the Parliament and presented a Private Members Bill on party financing.
What a screwball.
This man can’t make up his mind whether to bring down the government or keep his seat in Parliament for another year.
He is playing outrageous games with peoples’ lives and taking the country for a ride. Too much power in the hands of a single man.
[Daphne – He should have done that at the outset, as Jeffrey PO did with the divorce bill.]
I agree with you re the farmhouse comment. Only in Malta just to make sure they feel important and superior.
Varist was, is and will remain an anarchist sancoulottes, no matter how genteel and soft spoken he may sound. Types like Joe Debono Grech are the what-you-see-is-what-you-get sort of fellow. Not so with sly, slimey, slithery, underhand Varist.
On timesofmalta.com’s comments board:
Alan Dingli
Today, 15:15
For JPO and Franco to debate this motion Parliament cannot be dissolved next week!
Both JPO and Franco declared they will not contest next general election.
Anyone heard Franco’s outburst this morning on Manuel Micallef’s ONE radio show?
At one time, Manuel was trying hard to say “thank you Franco” and switch him off, but Franco kept going on and on and on and on and on.
I did not listen to the show, but did he say anything new other than “jien tghidx kemm batejt,” “jien tlajt fil-hames distrett flok Helen D’amato u Louis Galea,” “jien top student,” “Malta hija oligarkija,” “hemm bzonn insahhu id-demokrazija,” “il-ligi tal-finanzjament tal-partiti hija importanti ghax jien ghamilt it-tezi tieghi fuqha,” u “ir-rizultat tieghi tal-Form 2c juri min vera jien”?
So what’s new? Ma’ Nancy ta’ World Marketing jonqsu jidher.