And…here we go. Who needs the European Union when we can have China, with which we have SO much in common
Times of Malta reports:
Malta and China have signed a cultural agreement which will see China involved in several cultural projects in Malta.
Parliamentary Secretary Jose’ Herrera, who has just returned from Beijing, said the agreement would provide for cultural exchanges, preservation and conservation of cultural heritage, audio-visual productions, local council projects and projects coordinated through V-18.
Dr Herrera said the projects would run between this year and 2018.
As a child of the 1970s, I can tell you (and many of my readers will find themselves nodding in agreement) that this has some really bad echoes of the cultural agreements with Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, with which we grew up.
Colonisation through ‘culture’, that’s what it’s called. And because so many people in these benighted islands are really, really ignorant, they don’t even see what’s happening, or that this is all a mix of insidious and overt propaganda.
Why exactly do we need the Chinese communist dictatorship to preserve and conserve OUR cultural heritage, when we have a wealth of European Union funds for that purpose?
More to the point, why would a communist dictatorship that systematically and deliberately destroyed all of its cultural heritage so that there would be no links to the past now feel the need to preserve and conserve the cultural heritage of a Mediterranean island?
The Chinese communist dictatorship is going to pay for projects to celebrate Valletta 2018, is it? LOVELY. Valletta, European Capital of Culture 2018 – funded by Chairman Mao’s political children.
If I were 20 years old, I would pack a suitcase and leave. There really is no cure, I now realise, to the Maltese propensity to press the self-destruct button while cheering with brain-dead delight.
Good luck, Malta.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140122/local/malta-signs-cultural-agreement-with-china.503658#.Ut_vKMukqSM
Exactly my thoughts when I read this nice piece of news. And I remember the 70s very vividly.
‘There really is no cure, I now realise, to the Maltese propensity to press the self-destruct button while cheering with brain-dead delight’. You couldn’t have said it better.
Yes, Daphne. Got Switzerland, Canada or the UK available. In deep discussion with my daughter and her Australian/Maltese husband as to which would be best for my two Maltese grandchildren.
Any suggestions, before I decide? You saved me many years ago. Any advice now?
I don’t think UK citizenship is possible in this case. It cannot be passed on to your grandchildren unless they were born in the UK.
It’s probably too late to pack a suitcase and leave in time to get a permanent residency permit somewhere civilized.
I take it that by ‘in time’ you mean ‘before Europe and the rest of the democratic world, who currently accept Maltese citizens as respectable and trustworthy ones, close their doors to us – because of the sale of citizenship scam.’
Exactly. It seems very likely that that will happen, which would be my worst nightmare.
It is not legally, technically, practically or culturally possible for China to fund V18.
What we’re talking about here is the substitution of V18 with a fake verson financed by the People’s Republic.
Without a director, V18 is doomed to fail. Wayne Marshall was removed from his post and not replaced.
Jason Micallef thinks Wayne Marshall is incompetent.
Enough said.
Why China, indeed? To my mind, the reason is quite clear – because the Malta Labour Party, aka the government, will be re-configuring its position with the European Union with a possible detachment if not an outright disconnection from it in the pipeline.
You can bet that not too many boat people will come to Malta’s shores as soon as they get wind of the chance that Malta might opt out of the EU and cuddle up to the Chinese.
I’m in my 20s and planning my escape. God knows how I am going to get used to the European winters.
They are nothing to the Maltese Winter of Discontent.
Insulated and centrally heated houses are a lot more comfortable to be in at winter time than being in a typical Maltese house in Malta in winter, even if the temperature is 30 degrees below zero C outside in these northern countries.
Deja vu. Never dreamt I would be living the past so early into this administration.
For fairness’ sake, a Chinese Cultural Centre was opened in Valletta around 2004.
[Daphne – Exactly how do you compare the opening of a Chinese Cultural Centre, which is entirely normal, with the funding of major cultural and heritage projects, which is not?]
As Malta’s former (non-resident) ambassador to China I confirm what Li Ching Chao has said. One of the most outstanding cultural cooperation activities was the exhibition of the terracotta army when it came to Europe. The garden in Santa Lucia was another. All this was under a PN government.
I ask, what is new under this latest agreement?
Let us keep cultural agreement to what it has been so far.
The garden in Santa Lucia was not “cooperation”. Not in any way, shape or form. The whole thing was shipped to Malta lock, stock and barrel and built by Chinese workers under the direction of Chinese supervisors using Chinese tools and Chinese materials, all under Chinese Aid To Developing Countries.
How is that “cooperation”?
And developing country? Malta?
The PN government merely perpetuated what Joseph Muscat calls “ninzel gharkubtejja”, probably thinking it was just a harmless garden.
You, as a former diplomat, should know that it sends a different message altogether – that China has a free run of Malta, and that Malta is a poor little nation, feeding from China’s benevolent hand.
Now we can all see what we’ve come to.
I wrote about the operation of two instances of cultural cooperation. I do not see how either the terracotta army exhibition or the garden in Santa Lucia could be described as anything but harmless.
The fact that China provided all the input in setting up the garden does not render it harmful, unless you are aware that there are some hidden explosives or spying devices there.
I get a sense that we are going to have our own 10 years of Cultural Revolution. We already have our own version of Mao Zedong leading the government.
Mintoff – himself a keen fan of Mao – must be happy admiring his “orphan” as he leads us to the totalitarian state which Mintoff would himself have created were it not for the result of the 1981 elections.
If we really must strengthen cultural ties with the Far East then at least let it be Japan not tacky China.