oh come one, Andrew. Why don't you come down from your melodramatic cloud.
There were 20 proposals, some were good, others need some clarification. No need to pour any heart out.
If anything the first 6 proposals call for an imporvement on the detention centre and the dignity of the migrant and more practical measure for integration.
soon, enough people like you and James debono will go on and call the PL an extremist right-wing party ... forgetting who has been running the show for the past 7 years and what kind of a process of de-humanization goes on in the centre. Did you for instance hear JPO on Bondi+ ... if not, you should.
However, I still have to hear anyone call for an investigation of the detention. sure enough they will be found in breach of human rights.
The Left has so far talked in a vacuum, and the result has always been a defeat ... not just in malta but in the rest of Europe too.
Even though with some reservation, the proposals were good, int he sense that they address the concerns of the Maltese, while respecting the dignity of the immigrant as a human being and not as a 2nd class being in a supposedly Catholic country.
First of all I do not care who has been running the show and neither about JPO. We know that the former has lost all sense of direction and that the latter is a desperate person pursuing desperate agendas. My concern is with the LP. Secondly there could have been 19 well-reasoned, sane and dignified points. But 1 rotten apple spoils the whole lot. It is that rotten apple which I have identified and which is the sole cause of concern. It is that rotten apple which gives the impression that Labour has gone totally astray from its political purpose. I myself have identified as a dilemma the juggling of two opposing schools of thought: popular concern and international socialism. In my opinion, the latter should have prevailed but it did not.
Robert O. Paxton defines the 'F' word as follows:
a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity
How many times have we heard all that talk about invasion; having the social and moral fabric of the country under threat; that migrants bring nothing but disease and crime; that Maltese citizens are being treated as second class and inferior to migrants; and the growing cause to save Malta from illegal immigrants? I would also throw the Church-sponsored battle against secularism and liberalism in this category.
in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites
Azzjoni Nazzjonali - Mintoffjani - Kampanja ghall- Helsien Nazzjonali: whose agenda has taken Labour by storm. It seems that Muscat had no other choice but to submit to this relentless lobby. It may have solidified his popularity with the traditional elite and the ignorant but it destroyed the Moviment tal-Progressivi in the process. Shame.
abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.
I'm sure that as a nation we would never reach this stage, even if we could. But toying around with the suspension of international obligations is coming close. It is an extremely dangerous game to play. For it gives the impression that international laws such as the SOLAS, SAR and Geneva Conventions are a threat to the State. If you are who I think you are I'm sure you know what the latter conventions are about. You would know that suspending these would contradict all the first 6 proposals which you said called for improvement on the detention centres and the dignity of the migrant and more practical measure for integration. But you may say to me - Muscat never mentioned these obligations. He did not. He merely mentioned 'international obligations' without elaborating. But I cannot see what other obligations he was talking about.
On a strategic level the whole issue is also stifled with obscurity. The impression I am given is that Labour could not come up with anything new and fresh but it had to revert back to the colonial past when l-interess nazzjonali and Malta l-ewwel u qabel kollox were the continuous sunrise and sunset of Labour's ideology. At the time it made sense but today I'm sorry to say - it does not, at least not for me. Where is the progress? Who are those un-named and hidden persons formulating this strategy? Do you think that this will lure the hearts and minds of my generation?
I do not think that I am living in a melodramatic cloud. I am a lefty and a dreamer. I remind you that Muscat once said that 'meta l-partit holom, rebah'. Unfortunately, my dreams are inconsistent with the new-found euphoria of 70's socialism. Those dreams have already been dreamt. It's good to take the rhetoric out of the vacuum, but not like this. I could have packed my bags and left. Instead I chose to voice my concern. Take it as you wish - after all I am only one of the handful of people in the party who believes in international socialism, hardly a worry for Labour's electoral future.
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