What the Labour Party did to some of its children (which is why they’re such bloody awful adults now)
Published:
January 31, 2013 at 8:11pm
This is a rare and unusual photograph of children in the Brigata Laburista, in their little red and white uniforms, on an official visit to Malta’s first red lesbian president (and then they say gays are discriminated against), Agatha Barbara.
Look closely at what they’ve all got in their hands: portraits of Labour prime minister KMB, Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici.
Well, what can I say? The brainwashing certainly worked. Look at the problems we’ve got now. These children would be around 40 years old today.
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Tghid Joseph Muscat kien wiehed minnhom?
Hmm. Around 40, with wife and offspring. Make that 2 children per couple. That’s the children in the photo times four.
In retrospect, modern European Malta was just a blip in our history. Our real identity is an atavistic, isolationist backwater.
Yes, 10 year olds, brainwashed for 30 years, promulgating at least 2 times, equates to a sorry, very scary bunch.
You say ‘backwater’, Baxxter? I say swamp water.
Keeping in theme – I still drive my family crazy singing this relic of anthropological interest from the 1980s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA6OWCZJurk
What utter crap. We used to call this festival ” QahbaTkanta” when we were nippers. We weren’t far wrong.
Hmm, 40 years old – the same age as our future PM then.
North Korea would be proud.
JAQQ!
Click on the photo to enlarge it and see if you recognise anyone.
These children were at that age when their grandparents took them to Mintoff’s mass meetings. They are now at that age when they probably take their grand children to Muscat’s mass meetings. History repeats itself.
It must be great for their CV.
Speaking of which, here’s Joseph’s:
1996-2004 A tool in the MLP Propaganda Machine (Super One and Maltastar)
2004-2008 Pressing Yes or No buttons in Brussels
2008-2013 Head of the MLP Propaganda (what we are witnessing now is a huge PR exercise, nothing more, nothing less)
2013-2017 Prime Minister (with no idea on what’s involved in running a country, no idea on foreign policy, in other words MALTA TAGHNA LKOLL GHAL GOL-HAJT)
(and then they say gays are discriminated against),
Are you kidding us? Do you mean to tell us that gays are not discriminated against in Malta? Whatever Barbara was, she was surely not an out-and-proud lesbian woman back then. Those where the times of “don’t ask don’t tell” in Malta.
[Daphne – You’re joking, right? So if Quentin Crisp didn’t tell people he was gay, you mean to say that meant he wasn’t overtly homosexual and nobody knew about it? Please. And that’s quite apart from the fact that she had a girlfriend.]
I agree with John. It makes a big difference whether one’s homosexuality is the unacknowledged elephant in the room or whether it is a truly known fact. Agatha Barbara may have been a tractor lesbian, but it was just everyone’s open secret and some people’s butt of a joke.
[Daphne – Oh, I think I see the logic there: discrimination is possible only when you TELL people you’re a lesbian and not when they find out for themselves through the simple expedient of noticing that you’re one hell of a butch dyke or screaming queen. So let’s see if I can follow through on that: if women don’t actually tell people they’re women, they can’t be discriminated against, because noticing that you’re a woman is not enough. You actually have to go up to people and say, ‘Hi, I’m a woman.’ God, what rubbish. I know one gay man of 57 who thinks he came out of the closet at 50, when everybody’d known he was gay for the previous 30 years or more.]
She did NOT have sexual relations with that woman.
Nice one!
God forbid that someone of homosexual orientation chooses to regard his/her sexuality as an unremarkable and private matter as most heterosexual individuals do.
I suppose you think they all ought to sport pride tattoos and continuously bore us with the details of their amazing life and special relationship like your Bible Belt Christians do, the difference being in the sort of Jesus some of them have in mind.
No I’m not joking. You took something and twisted it as you usually do. The fact that Barbara was president (whether lesbian or not) doesn’t mean that gays aren’t discriminated against.
[Daphne – It means exactly that, my dear. Malta was probably the first country in Europe (except that we were supposed to be in North Africa back then) with a homosexual head of state. We blazed the trail for Pink Power. No homosexuals were never discriminated against in Malta. Married women were. Homosexuals, no. The ony way a homosexual woman could get herself discriminated against in Malta was by marrying a man, and even then she would only be discriminated against for being a married woman and not for being a homosexual. Like many people whose thoughts and language are unclear, you confuse social prejudice with discrimination. Discrimination is a matter for the state. Social prejudice is a matter of culture. The state can legislate against discrimination re homosexuals, but it can’t stop parents throwing their 18-year-old son out of the house for telling them he’s gay. They have every right to do so, because it’s their house and he’s over 18.]
Labour: is-sahta ta’ Malta.
North Korea
What was the purpose of the Brigata Laburista? I am about their adult age now but I only have vague memories of them in a parade on telly and my mother tutting at the screen.
Speaking about brigades, Muscat’s visit to Junior College reminded me of Mao Tse Tung’s Little Red Book parades. The book signing, the ‘taghna lkoll’ chanting, the clapping. That’s the first thing that popped in my mind.
[Daphne – Well, what struck me first is how they were all, how can I put this, hopelessly uncool and unattractive? They may be in, but from where I’m sitting, they’re certainly not the in crowd. Says a lot. I won’t elaborate, though. It would be mean. But basically, Muscat seems to have attracted there the exact sort of person he was at sixth form.]
The purpose of the Brigata was to indoctrinate children into Mintoffianism. You will find that this mimicked what other socialist and communist regimes were doing at the time.
On watching the news, I actually used them as an example for my children when I noticed their (adverse) reaction: “make sure you pay attention in class, otherwise that’s where you’ll end up going to sixth form.”
Give me a tablet
No. You’re older than eight.
I just realised that I wrote MLTASRAT English there.
All that’s missing is a portrait of Mao in the background.
I am watching Mario de Marco and Manuel Mallia on Bondi+, talking about employment amongst other things.
Mallia has just said there is no work and people are approaching him to find them work.
Somebody should tell him that isn’t because there are no jobs going. It’s because some people think they have to go to politicians to get a comfortable one.
Malta has the highest level of EMPLOYMENT ever in its history. And right now, one of the lowest levels of unemployment in the whole of Europe.
How on earth can you stand that fat toad?
I just hate to see them wear a replica of my old college tie but there again Franco and Joseph wore it too unfortunately.
Aye, but look at it this way: there were some brilliant old boys, Fenech Adamis, Demarco, Daphne, and on and on.
A bad apple every so often does not a bad orchard make.
Mind you they had me as well.
What a sad and sorry sight.
Thank you God for making my parents blue (and reasonable).
I could have been one of those sick SOBs.
It can be two scenarios either you a full of hatred or else you are very sick, if it’s the first honestly don’t know what to say if you are the second seek help.
[Daphne – Quite frankly, it’s the children who were subjected to that, and the parents who subjected them to it, who must be sick and in need of help. Trouble is, they probably don’t know the damage they’ve done or had done to them with this Kim Il Sung behaviour.]
You have no freaky idea what you are talking about, those times were not the very best I agree 100% but to compare with the like of Kim II Sung you are out of track big big time and I know what I am talking about I have worked my way up the ladder and worked with guys from very strange and difficult countries like the Korea ,Zimbabwe, Venezuela and when you understand what these people had to go through than Malta under Minfoff and KMB was heaven I lived those years.
Please go tell Marlene !
If you feel Malta under Mintoff and KMB were heaven then your judgment is severely impaired. Mintoff and KMB were not so far off from similar dictators and the only thing that saved this country is that there was a strong opposition (and I would add a strong church) which opposed the socialist/communist ideology on various fronts.
Suffice it to say that in those days the Nationalist party had Richard Muscat transmitting from Sicily in exile just to be able to bring the voice of the opposition to the nation. Heaven my foot!
Which part of Malta did you live in in the 1970s and 1980s?
So did I Charlie. Obviously, being one of ‘tal-qalba’ u didn”t have to suffer half as much as the rest of us.
Perhaps, when the bowser arrived to fill the water tanks, you were one of the privileged families that got given any. It was somehow never our turn to be supplied with that commodity.
And obviously you were not a student out protesting against the ‘reforms’. Neither were you shot at, chased and beaten by thugs and police for attending a mass meeting.
The only thing that made us better than China or North Korea was the will to fight and resist the regime before it took a stronger hold. Had we acquiesced to the bullying and violence, we would have ended up just like them in no time at all.
Ask those who were beaten senseless at the police depot if it was heaven living at the time. Or those who were framed by the police. Or those who had their property requisitioned and given to Labour’s bazuzli for a pittance. Or who were denied an education.
If the mentality was not akin to that of Kim il Sung’s, why did Alex Sceberras Trigona, backed by KMB, turn to him to send his military to train ours?
Just look a good look at the picture. Could it have been taken ANYWHERE else in the free world?
Nice standards you’ve got there. I bet there were concentration camps that made others seem like a holiday resort if we come to that, I suppose you would have rather not ended up in one in the first place
Hugo Chavez, Mugabe, and Kim Il Sung have (or had) huge chunks of the population who idolize them and are brainwashed, just like Malta was a fertile ground for Mintoff and KMB (and today is a fertile ground for Muscat).
Likewise the dicators of the three countries you mentioned enabled (and still do in the case of Mugabe and Chavez) gangs of followers to beat fellow citizens who opposed their ‘great leaders’. Sounds familiar?
Compared to Korea, Zimbabwe, Venezuela etc Malta was indeed a heaven but that is no good reason why Mintoff and KMB were so hell-bent to reduce our Malta to the low level of those third world states. I was there too!
Apparently Charlie here was not in Malta or else he wasn’t picked upon by the regime.
Be that as it may, the mere fact that here was not as bad as North Korea or Zimbabwe does not change the fact that the situation here was awful, terrifying and lawless. And this is putting it mildly.
Charlie, you need help.
“Freaking”, not freaky Charlie. It’s no “freaking” idea.
Freaky would be, well, everything about the photo at the top of this post.
Zimbabwe? Now who mentioned that little paradise of late?
Ah yes, Marlene Mizzi. Why don’t you go and have a chat with her about that country. She seems very knowledgeable.
http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/01/poor-marlene-mizzi-feels-as-though-shes-living-in-zimbabwe/
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2013-01-31/news/watch-finance-minister-gives-proof-of-prof-scicluna-claims-782368772/
Miskin, Prof. Scicluna, jridna nemmnu li fil-kaz tal-FOI, xogholu kien li jaghmilha ta’ Segretarja. Ma nafx kif Joseph Muscat ma qabbadx lilu bhala Segretarja tal-Programm Elettorali, ghax kieku x’aktarx kien jilhaq jiktbu qabel Karmenu Vella.
While Tonio Fenech has handed over the documents asked of him, one still awaits the famous ten-year gas procurement agreement Konrad Mizzi promised us on TV.
Maybe we won’t get it, now that Konrad has mysteriously disappeared from the scene.
As usual, try confronting lejber with facts and they run away like scared hares.
I think we would be lucky to see Konrad Mizzi again on TV. Let alone the 10 year contract.
Jien nahseb li Karmenu Vella mhux ghadu ma kitbux il-programm elettorali, imma nesa fejn poggih.
Labour’s attempt at ripping off the Scouts?
Very far from any similarity, Ian. I know what being a scout means.
Discipline in scouting is based on cooperation and trust on all those around; in the Brigata it is the military type of indoctrination.
Scouts work together; tal-Brigata simply follow orders blindly.
One could go on, the list is endless
I didn’t immediately see Agatha there, I was partially blinded by the sea of red. Then I looked at the painting and saw what looked like a decapitated head at the bottom, only to realise that it was our own dearly departed president.
We certainly have a lot of rags-to-riches stories in Malta but none of them read like fairy-tales.
That life-size painting was NOT of Malta’s president, but of Louis XVI of France, if I remember correctly.
Of course it wasn’t, but Agatha’s head seems to be part of the painting at first glance, especially if you’re seeing red in more ways than one. You’d hardly draw the head of a portrait towards the bottom of your picture.
That is the Antoine Favray painting of Grand Master Pinto, painting mid-18th century not the Louis XV. It proclaims the grandness of the order and the grandmaster as its leader. It was so well recieved that many wanted a portrait similar to it. You can see it at the Grandmaster’s palace.
When I took a closer look, I realised it’s not the Favray portrait, but the Ambassadors Hall at the Presidential Palace.
Have you seen the so called teaser for the film on Dr Sant? Riveting….
http://vimeo.com/58614419
I have only seen a prick, there is no teaser.
I wonder whether the man who runs the PL club in Rabat was in the brigata too when he was a child – he is comparing the PN to Gaddafi.
Take a look for yourselves:
http://www.facebook.com/?sk=welcome#!/herbert.vassallo?fref=ts
“Belahtuh pajjiz 25 sena ara gadafi xi gralu ghax dim daqsek imexxi il pajjizu gi trab.”
Unbelievable. Mohh ta’ tigiega ukoll ahjar minn taghhom
Pshaw. They can’t even wear their beret properly. This is where the rot starts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_MYvpy9ijg
In the meantime economic figures for Malta are excellent.
http://www.economywatch.com/economic-statistics/country/Malta/
Here’s another interesting chart to play with and ponder upon:
Government debt as percent of GDP.
http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=ds22a34krhq5p_#!ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=gd_pc_gdp&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=country_group&idim=country_group:eu&idim=country:el:mt:de&ifdim=country_group&hl=en_US&dl=en_US&ind=false
I cannot see why you keep using Kim il Sung as a negative example whenever you wish to hammer home some point about how terrible Labour is or was.
I think this is a form of racism on your blog that is just as abhorrent as homophobia or modern day racism which you profess to despise.
It might be hard for you to actually believe this but the vast majority of North Koreans really do love and cherish the memory of their great leader Kim. Also the philosophy of ‘junce’ which loosely translates to ‘self reliance’ is something that is actually quite admirable in a nation.
I would and will put good money into North Korea when the time is right and the leadership in this country embraces capitalism, since clearly the ‘junce’ the nation has will pretty much gaurantee success.
[Daphne – You cannot possibly be serious.]
Lord Lucan must be another one of those Sliema liberals. What an utter tool.
[Daphne – Yes, I know. Going out has become extremely trying. The trouble is that they surround themselves with like-minded people and are never exposed to real grown-ups from the real world outside, so they don’t know what actual tools they are and how undeveloped their reasoning is. They receive comfort from the fact that their friends and associates think as they do, and instead of questioning the intellectual abilities and maturity of those friends and associates, they question everyone else.]
Seeing you are so enamoured of the People’s paradise of North Korea, why don’t you pack up and emigrate there? You can than have as much ‘junce’ as you wish.
The children in the photo do not seem a happy lot.
Just look at those crumpled oversize trouser legs meant to last until they grew up to become “suldati tal-azzar” on the rampage.
and the huge berets?
I was a Mintoffjana in the Cospicua Brigata but I will be voting PN, so will my children.
Some of the children were there because they were afraid. It was the time when I thought everyone was Labour until 1987, and I was totally surprised when even my best friends told me that they were Nationalist.
Tal-misthija dak ir-ritratt.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130201/local/kidney-donor-living-in-hope-a-year-after-appeal.455679
And screwed up their education too. See the article in the link.
“the Live Organ Transplant Advisory Committee stopped 20 potential donors, strangers of Mr Bartolo,”
Strangers of Mr. Bartolo?
“Kidney donor living in hope, a year after appeal”
He’s not a donor, he NEEDS a kidney!
You do understand that a huge proportion of the population were born and bred around the port areas of the island where people slept with their cousins and sometimes even sisters. This incestuous procreation has created what we have today scattered around many parts of Malta and what has now translated into a moviment. A moviment of people who are hungry for power and who desperately feel they need a slice of the cake.
A moviment whose past leaders signed secret arms deals with North Korea and became Libya’s whore for decades. A Moviment whose leaders gave us a green passport, written in Arabic in order to facilitate transitions for PLO terrorists planting bombs in Europe, using Malta as a half-way house. I distinctly remember walking into government departments and seeing Gaddafi’s photo hanging on the walls.
Yes regrettably, this is the breed we are voting in.
You may be voting them in. I certainly AM NOT.
That would be Lorna Vassallo.
Interesting thesis, this breeding-by-incest. But I’m afraid we’re hamstrung by our delusions of grandeur and will never understand some embarrassing truths (that we are but a speck of rock on the periphery of everything, with no cosmopolitan life etc. etc. )
I’m Maltese. God, what terrible way to live.
Some pro Labour Party supporters get hurt when you say that they are less intelligent then PN supporters.
Well, now the leader himself has said that they are a dumb lot and would not understand his election programme if presented. It seems that even those who went to university or other tertiary institutions agree with him since no one has protested.
“Labour to foot bill for operations carried out in private sector”
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/elections2013/Labour-to-foot-bill-for-operations-carried-out-in-private-sector-20130201
This is not an acceptable solution. Instead of addressing inefficiencies, I will be paying for those inefficiencies through my taxes. Unbelievable. The doctors surrounding the future PM in today’s press conference must have been happy indeed. Typical Labour!
Memories of a time when wearing red and white together infallibly elicited the comment “Qisek tal-brigata!”
Wearing blue on the other hand, especially in the form of my treasured Red Devil jacket, carried a warning from my mother to be careful “…ghax jahsbuk tal-gakketta blu u tispicca hazin”.
My daughter finds it hard to believe we used to live under such constant pressure, when the slightest perceived provocation could land one in hot water. What am I saying? Hot water.. that would have been a luxury.
Daphne
Can I have you e-mail address please – I know you have already published it a couple of times but cannot find it
Thanks
[Daphne – [email protected]]
Daphne, how can I get hold of a copy of that photo? I think I’m in the picture myself.
[Daphne – I have no idea. I think it came off the Rabat Partit Laburista website.]
Here’s the man who confronted Simon Busuttil pretending to be a hurt hunter with PN sympathies:
https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.portelli.37
Hi Daphne,
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/elections2013/Busuttil-encounters-angry-hunter-during-Paola-visit-20130201
It seems as if the Labour Party have taken another leaf out of the American political game – the Ambush.
It was clearly a well rehearsed put up job. And it was the the polished performance from ‘the hunter’ itself that exposes the fact that it was an ambush.
Kudos to Simon for keeping calm, and answering coherently.
Now will the PN respond in kind, and see how the Muscat crew like being jumped and given the third degree? Bet we won’t be seeing any grace under pressure from any of them.
Ara x’ghandna jigru madwarna. Dawn zgur li ta’ certu livell u intellettwal.
Ghax Mintoff lit-tfal itambru fuq it-tnabar kien jaghllimhom u mhux jibnilhom l-iskejjel godda u jifthilhom l-Universita’ berah sabiex jitaghlmu u jsiru nies u jaghmlu il-gid ghall-pajjiz.
Li tkun fil-brigata ghall-genituri Laburisti kienet xi haga li qisek irbaht xi borza ta’ studju. Ara kemm huma injoranti.
What double standards – his team’s kids & kis own daughters were educated at the best schools in the UK since the local system wasnt good enough for their own, the snobs.
These too are today around 40 (except for Yana) and they are looking forward to their daddy’s last shot in government to make a couple of millions, and security over all their generations’ pension.
Ah! The glory years of socialism…..no Japanese products allowed, no chocolate, airport looked like a stable, no water in the taps, electricity power cuts for three days, running shoes tat-tappijiet suwed, no videos, one brand of Television and only one station beaming out propaganda continousy, police attacks on Nationalist supporters and burning PN clubs, blackmail, false charges, frame-ups, Commissioner’s car used in murders inside police GHQ.
And Joseph being taken by his Nanna Mintoffjana Muscat to idolize the Salvatur ta’ Malta.
”You do understand that a huge proportion of the population were born and bred around the port areas of the island where people slept with their cousins and sometimes even sisters”
Lorna please note that the current leader of this power-hungry moviment is not from the inner harbour area but from Burmarrad, and even aristocratic Alfred Sant was not born and brought up around the harbour area.
So please don’t generalize.
Mill-banda l-ohra anqas tehodha bi kbira li dawn it-tfal kienu fil-brigata ghax dak iz-zmien jekk it-tfal tieghek ma’ jkunux parti mill-brigata ma’ kontx tidhol tahdem imkien tafux’ Allura bill-fors kellek taghmel hekk anke jekk ma’ tridx.
Dak ix-xoghol li kien haen ghidlu lil l’Avikat Manuel Mallia.
Issa m’hawnx xoghol Dr. Manuel Mallia? Ha nghidlek kemm qed tghid il-verita’.
Ftit taz- zmien ilu kelli l’ opportuinita’ li niltaqa’ ma persuna barranija li ghamlet investiment kbir gewwa Malta (ghax m’hawnx serhan tal-mohh u trankwillita’) u qed tiftah certi lukandi li kienu maghluqin. Qalli intkom gewwa Malta ghandkhom problema serja. U jien ovvjament staqsejtu x’inhi. Qalli ghax tant kemm hawn xoghol li l’impjegati ma’ jinterressomx li jitkeccew u mhux qed jibzghu ghal xoghom ghax jekk jispiccaw min xoghol l’ghada isibu iehor.
Dik hi ir-realta Dr. Manuel Mallia u dan mhux Malti.
Imma issa int la sirt Laburist ovvjament ikollok issir ukoll giddieb u disonest ghax inkella l’ebda Laburist ma’ jivvotalek.
Hi guys I will repeat again I agree 100 % that the years under Mintoff and KMB were not a bunch of roses but as some of you guys compare us with North Korea that is no go anyone that think what goes on in the likes of North Korea or China, Zimbabwe is what the general public hear you are big time wrong, maybe the likes of CIA and the MI5 knows a lot or can shed some light what goes on but working with people from these places teach you how lucky we are and we were at that time, and no I am not coming from a labour background in fact I never ever bothered to vote in any General Election I left my beloved country after the biggest ever mistake the Maltese people made by choosing to join the EU.
Charlie, if your country is so beloved why the hell did you leave? And since you left Malta which paradise did you choose to go to? Would be interesting to know.