Malta Diary   The world plays the fiddle as the Mediterranean burns and Malta remains in the eye of the raging inferno

ALBERT FENECH

 

e/mail – salina46af@gmail.com

 

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/jerome.fenech

 

My Blog: https://myreachingout.wixsite.com/myblog.

 

How magnificent and magnanimous of millionaire actor Richard Gere to condescend to pay a visit to an NGO “rescue” vessel stranded in the midst of the Mediterranean Sea with a load of suffering immigrants with nowhere to go and not wanted by anybody.

 

He took a load of publicity pictures and videos, ladled some soup, cuddled a few black children and, expressed dismay that nothing was being done before mounting his chopper and flying back to one of his many luxury villas to settle down by the pool and console himself with a few g and ts.

As Internal Affairs Minister Matteo Salvini rightly pointed out, at no stage did Gere offer to relocate or re-house any of the immigrants in one of his spacious villas and apartments.

 

He left that for others to deal with and sort out. 

Now Matteo Salvini may not be everybody’s cup of tea. He is a controversial individual who does not mince his words – these mainly being that Italian ports are to remain permanently closed to any further immigrant arrivals.

 

“Enough is enough” is how he puts it.

The European Union, born as The Common Market of six European countries and later expanded to become a “Union” (don’t laugh please) must be one of the most useless appendages ever created by humanity.

 

No wonder Britain is falling over itself to leave!

Its smallest European Member State is Malta. Now, I remember well from my schooldays, bullies went around in gangs.  They did not bully the physically stronger boys nor the older boys. No, they picked on the weaker, quieter and less physically endowed smaller boys – and they bullied them, beat them and stole money off them.

 

Malta joined the EU 15 years ago and it would be misguiding to say that it has experienced no benefits. Over the last six years, Malta has made its most from the benefits of EU Funds as well as adopting and adhering to various directives on the environment, climate change, sorting out of refuse etc. It has also honoured its financial dues proportionate to size and number of population and has strived to follow the dictatorship from Brussels.

However, matters are reaching an impasse now. The EU is being exposed for the useless appendage it is. I do not like to air politics on a site that is devoted to travel and leisure, but politics are part and parcel of everyday life in every Member state and cannot be divorced from daily reality.

 

Sadly the EU is not the only useless appendage – it is in the same bracket with the United Nations.

The year is 2019; many years ago man landed on the moon. Since then, the sophistication of an electronic world that develops minute-by-minute ensures that if a mosquito takes off in Siberia and lands on the White House in Washington it will be tracked and monitored and probably destroyed.

 

Great stuff – yet, and yet absolutely nothing has been done to quell the invasion of many, many immigrants into Europe, and much worse, the death of many thousands in the most cruel of circumstances.  

The EU’s reaction throughout many years has been to make a lot of noise but not to actually do anything. The latest reading is that nobody is prepared to do anything about the 500 or so immigrants currently as I write stranded on two boats for the last 14 days. The EU’s latest bleat is that as nobody wants them, then Malta must show its “humane character” and take them in.

 

Not Italy of course, or any other EU country because they are too large to be bullied. The EU’s sole alternative is to bully Malta and make Malta feel it is the guilty party.

So, the EU’s smallest country Malta, has over the years taken in 15,000 immigrants of which approximately 10,000 have remained much to the ire and chagrin of the Maltese people.

 

Some choose to class this as “racism”. It is not. It is reality. Malta is small and already vastly over-populated. To maintain its economy it requires the services of skilled technical people but sadly the vast majority of immigrants are unskilled, mainly illiterate, have language barrier difficulties and end up in labouring jobs like collecting refuse and working as cleaners.

All those that bleat about “the humanitarian aspect” fail to answer the question – why are these people coming anyway? The vast majority are not from war-torn situations but aspire for a “better life”.

 

All very well indeed, but because I do not have a swimming pool and a large garden with an airy gazebo do I invade owners that do have and insist I have “a right” to be there for “humanitarian reasons”?

To top it all during the week some nit-witted demonstrators saw fit to scrawl insults on the wall of the Maltese Consulate in Madrid, inciting Malta to open its ports and take the immigrants in.

 

Great – don’t do as I do but do as I tell you to do.

 

The whole saga is a disgusting blot on the EU and the UN. The conditions the immigrants are undergoing are frightful. They are being robbed, kidnapped and exploited in Libya. They pay frightful sums of money to be loaded on boats and are then abandoned at sea – and now nobody wants them because enough is enough.

 

This week’s story in Malta made people sick. A dinghy that was left to drift in mid-sea with 15 persons on board, including a pregnant woman, ran out of food and water and they had to resort to drinking sea water. Only one miraculously survived and was hauled to safety by a Maltese helicopter from Malta’s Armed Forces. Later he described how he had seen his companions dying one by one and having to dump their bodies overboard because of the smell of decomposition in the blazing heat.

 

Why are EU and UN satellites not tracking Libya and Libyan waters 24/7? Why has the EU/UN not established a joint naval fleet to patrol the frontiers of Libyan territorial waters 24/7 and to take immediate action against Libyan criminal human traffickers?

 

As for many African countries – they do not care a stuff. Their philosophy seems to be the more people leave the country, the better.

 

The Mediterranean is burning and like Nero playing the fiddle as Rome burnt, the world continues to fiddle and let the Mediterranean burn and in the eye of the raging inferno is little Malta trying to cope against all odds.

 

ALBERT FENECH

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MALTESE SAYING

“The dawn indicates the day ahead”

Will the day be a good one or a bad one –  dawn will indicate the day that lies ahead.

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