Malta

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An interesting article from the Maltese comrade. I know less than zero
about Malta, but have had one very positive experience with the only
Maltese-American I ever met in my life.

In April of 1968 I had started my first programming job at Metropolitan
Life Insurance company in NYC. Everybody on the football-field sized
floor--programmers, clerks, secretaries, etc.--reported to John Falzon, a
Vice President who was about 13 slots higher than me on the organizational
chart. All I knew about him is that he was universally admired by the
employees--sort of an anomaly in the corporate world--and that he was Maltese.

In the fall of that year, I received a postcard at my desk that everybody
had heard about it. Gossip spreads like wildfire in a place like Met Life.
It was an unsigned invitation to come to the weekly branch meeting of the
Socialist Workers Party where we would discuss how to overthrow the
capitalist system. Years later when I received my FBI files under the
Freedom of Information Act, I discovered that the postcard had been sent by
the FBI office in NYC as part of Cointelpro, a J. Edgar Hoover plan to
destroy the left.

Within 10 minutes of getting the postcard, Falzon's secretary called me on
the phone and said that he wanted to speak with me immediately. I was sure
that I was going to lose my job. I went to his office and sat down opposite
him. He said that Met Life values the privacy and civil liberties of all
its employees. If I ever received another postcard like that, I should
inform him right away and he would make sure that the identify of the
sender found out immediately. And if that person turned out to be a Met
Life employee, he would be fired on the spot. So I have always had good
associations with the Maltese people on the basis of that one encounter.



Louis Proyect

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