Ian Borg, former Roads Strongman – sorry, I mean former Roads Minister – has now been handed the one-way ticket to political oblivion: the Foreign Ministry. But he ought not despair, as he’s been given a golden opportunity to apply his well-honed skill of running roughshod over anybody who stands in his way: he can bring us back all the artefacts stolen and looted by our former colonial masters.
I hope Minister Borg, who’s young and full of willpower, devotes his energies to claim Malta’s rights under Article 11 (2) of the United Nations’ 2007 Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples:
States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms, which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs.
In 2019, The Guardian published an article, entitled ‘British Museum is world’s largest receiver of stolen goods, says QC’, in which it was argued that “encyclopaedic museums” such as the British Museum, the Louvre in Paris and the Metropolitan in New York “lock up the precious legacy of other lands, stolen from their people by wars of aggression, theft and duplicity”.
The article quoted a human-rights lawyer (the heading’s “QC”) arguing that “Politicians may make more or less sincere apologies for the crimes of their former empires, but the only way now available to redress them is to return the spoils of the rape of Egypt and China and the destruction of African and Asian and South American societies... We cannot right historical wrongs – but we can no longer, without shame, profit from them.”
Among Giovanni Bonello’s writings, one finds an essay in which the former human-rights judge enumerates the artefacts looted from Malta by British colonial officials. These precious treasures, which should be on display in our museums not in Britain, were taken away from the Maltese “without their free, prior and informed consent”.
While the invasion of Ukraine is drawing more attention to the importance of sovereignty in today’s world, we Maltese should think about what sovereignty means to us. Only a few days ago, Malta “celebrated” Freedom Day, when our tiny country regained sovereignty over her entire territory. Minister Borg has the duty to exercise that sovereignty and officially ask for the return of looted treasures.
Let me quote a few examples mentioned by Judge Bonello, to help Dr Borg orientate himself:
silver looted from Malta’s palaces, now found in the Clerkenwell Museum, London;
a collection of Italian Majolica pharmacy jars, with armorial bearings of various Grand Masters from the 16th and 17th centuries, now in the Clerkenwell Museum, London;
a large cabinet in ebony, with a tortoise-shell centre cupboard, displaying the coat-of-arms of Grand Master Nicolas Cotoner, now in the Clerkenwell Museum, London;
a richly carved chest with the coat-of-arms of Grand Master La Cassiere, from the Grand Master’s bedroom in the Palace, Valletta, now in the Clerkenwell Museum, London;
the magnificent Ximenes Cannon, now in the British collections;
the Wignacourt Culverin, 1607, now in the Royal Armouries, Leeds;
the priceless Grand Masters’ Lectionary made for Grand Master L’Isle Adam, showing an unrecorded portrait of that head of the Order in prayer before St John the Baptist, formerly in the Palace and now in the British Library;
16th-century breastplates of the knights of the Order, now in the Clerkenwell Museum, London;
etc.
Minister Borg might wish to enlist the help of his colleague, Culture Minister Owen Bonnici. On second thoughts, though, given the obvious difference in levels of competence, I think Minister Borg would be wiser to go for it all by himself.
The Ombdusman
I have the greatest admiration for the Ombudsman’s Office. I think this is one of the best institutions the country has, and it is a great pity if its role is either misunderstood or not understood at all.
The country desperately needs the Office of the Ombudsmen. Because – despite all the hype – Malta is still culturally underdeveloped. I’m not referring to “culture” as understood in the context of the ministry assigned to Owen Bonnici, that is to say, the arts in all their manifestations and artefacts from the past.
Small parenthesis: Dr Bonnici’s appointment to the Culture Ministry confirms what I wrote a couple of weeks before the elections, namely that Robert Abela has to resign himself to Dr Bonnici’s presence in his Cabinet. It is abundantly clear that Dr Abela would happily do without Owen Bonnici. I can imagine the Prime Minister, sitting at the Cabinet table, looking first at Clyde Caruana (say), evidently an analytical mind, and then at Owen Bonnici, who would probably be nodding at whatever comes out of the Prime Minister’s mouth. I can imagine the Prime Minister comparing these two ministers and shaking his head. Who can blame him? Dr Bonnici is that kind of person who could very easily (and cheerfully) state that something was “unanimously praised by everyone”, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, let’s return to the Ombudsman. What I mean by “culturally underdeveloped” is that in this Country we lack the culture of the respect due to the citizen. Politics – that is to say, public administration – is not understood as service to the citizen, but as a means to climb up the ladders while evading the snakes. Malta is truly developed only when it comes to serving those foreigners perceived as adding value to the economy. Everybody else – from third-world foreigners to the Maltese themselves – are treated with sufferance.
My take is that this mentality is a legacy (eredità not legat in Maltese) of colonial times, when the British could only tolerate the native, civilian population of the fortress colony.
I think the Ombudsman has a crucial role to play in emancipating the Maltese from the lingering colonial mindset.
I cannot but salute this important Office, and urge all the officials working there not to give up, despite the ignorance they have to contend with. They are sowing the seeds but probably will never enjoy the fruits of the trees that will grow from them. But our children and our children’s children will.
So, I appeal to the people at the Ombudsman’s Office to soldier on, for future generations, regardless of Malta being Silly Lilliput.
My Personal Video Library ()
Death on the Nile (2022) is a cinematic re-adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1937 detective novel of the same name. “Re-adaptation” because this isn’t the first film based on this novel – there’s a 1978 version which is way better, more fun and more authentic.
It’s the story of the murder of a newly-wed, very wealthy woman, that takes place on a steamboat on the river Nile in the late 1930s, and how the mystery is solved by the Belgian moustachioed detective Hercule Poirot whose huge ego is buttressed by his extraordinary powers of observation and superhuman ability to join the dots.
This year’s version being a Woke-era adaptation, it’s overly preoccupied with racism – and it sucks.
Despite what this Woke fantasy portrays, the late 1930s were not the golden age of interracial conviviality. Interracial relationships were practically unheard of – almost all US states actually had laws banning interracial marriages! Indians – from the subcontinent, though the same could be said about Native Americans – were not treated as equals! There wasn’t white politeness toward the races perceived as inferior, but condescension at best and outright racial hatred at worst. This movie is replete with Woke nonsense – Woke ideology hurled at an unsuspecting past!
In one scene, two of the protagonists engage in “dirty dancing”, in public… without raising a furore! There were no public displays of affection in the 1930s, let alone sensuous dancing! Was the script-writer high on weed when he wrote this movie?
And then, the macho character created by Agatha Christie – Hercule Poirot (it’s no coincidence his name is “Hercule”… Hercules was Greek mythology’s strongest and most macho demigod) – is emasculated… reduced to a cry-baby clearly in need of psychotherapy. Perhaps this is normal for the younger generations of our times, who have been traumatised by their parents’ divorces, by their mothers openly aborting their siblings, by their parents mercy-killing their own parents, by their universities insisting on “safe spaces”, and by all the other manifestations of excessive narcissism that keeps one and all caged in their teenage years forever. But this was not the mentality of the inter-war years!
In those years, TIME Magazine twice portrayed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as Man of the Year… for his “remarkable self-control, rare judgment, and the efficient application of his ideas to solve existing problems”. Yes, alpha-males were idolised in those years, and ordinary men had to conform to the high standards set by public figures such as Mussolini, and Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco.
(For those who see more than there actually is, I’m praising neither Mussolini nor Franco here: I’m merely stating a historical fact. Expressing a fact does not mean one agrees (or disagrees) with it. Facts are facts; judgments are judgments.)
In 1938, TIME Magazine proclaimed – incredible but true! – Adolf Hitler as Man of the Year! Hitler was another strongman. In those years, if you were tough and nasty toward minorities, you earned the accolade of “Man of the Year”.
Keep in mind that Hitler was banking on the West’s non-interference in his plans for Eastern Europe because of the West’s nasty attitude toward its own minorities… coloured people, homosexuals, disabled people... The 1930s were not some Woke Golden Age. Those were years when hatred was institutionalised.
Meaning that all the Woke-ness in the 2022 adaptation of this 1930s Poirot novel is not only historically incorrect. It’s also a disservice to all those who, like yours truly, despise racism. Why?
Because most people do not read history books. Most people think that films are historically accurate. Just remember that iconic scene from The Sopranos, when two moronic Mafiosi are hounding a former Soviet commando (too complicated to explain why – watch the series):
Christopher Moltisanti: Russians? They’re not all bad.
Paulie ‘Walnuts’ Gualtieri: How ’bout the Cuban Missile Crisis? Cocksuckers flew four nuclear missiles into Cuba, pointed them right at us.
Christopher Moltisanti: That was real? I saw that movie, I thought it was bullshit.
Yes, that’s how many people get to know their “history” – through movies, and conflating cinema with history and history with cinema.
So if you portray the 1930s as the Interracial Golden Age – when it patently was not – then people will ask themselves the only possible question: if things were so nice in the past, why all this present fuss on racism?
History should not be re-written to reflect current values.
Woke-ness shares a lot with the ten plagues God sent on Pharaoh’s Egypt.