More anti-Americanism

Writing about the attempt to resurrect the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Evarist Bartolo returns (January 5) to his “signature tune” of blaming all ills in the world on the US. Churchill actually predicted the post-WWII cold war, which Stalin initiated, and Gorbachev warned early on that Putin would be responsible for another cold war.

Stalin and Putin’s Russia, a dangerous despotic dictatorship, has always had this obsession of “loss of Empire”, which had dire consequences for some Eastern European nations and, now, for Ukraine. Putin’s autocracy couldn’t stomach the fact that majority sentiment in Ukraine had changed from remaining under Russian influence to joining the Western European democracies.

Police officers and residents inspect damage outside a destroyed high-rise building following a Russian missile attack in central Kyiv, on January 3 amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Photo: Anatolii Stepanov/AFP

Bartolo, like other anti-Western voices, blames the Ukraine war on NATO and not on Putin’s obsession with “making Russia great again”. Bartolo is sounding like the narrative of 1970s and 1980s Labour Malta, when our “enemies” were the US and Europe. And if his party had had its way we wouldn’t be an EU member. Perhaps his party thought the EU parliament and commission might be a hindrance to their vision for Malta’s future.

Nations have to apply to join NATO – they are not coerced to join this defensive alliance against the enemies of free people. Bartolo ought to accept what the Baltic and Scandinavian states think of “Mother Russia” and why they chose to join NATO. Freedom, like good health, is mostly appreciated when one loses it.

Fr Dionysius Mintoff, still delivering a lunchtime radio “thought for the day”, recently told the story of the Russian who applied to emigrate – he was called for an interview and asked whether he did have a job, accommodation, enough food, access to medical attention, etc. When he answered “yes” to all these questions, he was then asked why he still wanted to emigrate. He said he wanted to go somewhere where he could grumble and speak his mind.

Bartolo also blames the US for the militarism and high military spending around the world. The dictum of Rome’s army, the superpower of the then known world, was “if you want peace, prepare for war”.

Nothing has changed in this regard in the last 2,000 years  but the dangerous divide between free and autocratic states is now ever so crystal clear to those not bent on moulding misinformation into political theories.

Albert Cilia-Vincenti – Attard

E-scooters ban

With the appointment of Chris Bonnet as new transport minister and as operators of e-scooters will be approaching him for revoking the March deadline for the ban of such scooters, let us hope that once the government announced the ban things remain as decided.

Let the Maltese public feel safer in their residential areas without the nuisance these scooters have caused.

Michael Vella – Sliema