Continues from yesterday's piece filed by someone known to me: Cosa Nostra’s activities include protection racketeering, arbitration of secret contracts between shady entities and the organisation and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions, where all three parties profit, including the mafiosi who claim considerable brokerage or commission fees. Among their other activities are participation in [...]
A study published in specialist academic journal Early Human Development measures the impact on the rate of boys born in a society living in the aftermath of the assassination of journalists. The study, authored by Thomas Calleja, measures changes in the ratio of births between boys and girls after Veronica Guerin was killed in Ireland [...]
If you haven’t watched The Laundromat yet, I highly recommend you do. It’s a film based on the Panama Papers starring Meryl Streep who dedicated her performance to Daphne Caruana Galizia, a journalist ‘killed while collecting Panama Papers information.’ This tribute was made before the arrest of Yorgen Fench whose offshore company 17 Black was [...]
The set is by Robert Agius. Read the report of the event here.
Adds video of statements: https://youtu.be/iv8L6GOElG0 The government put up pictures of exemplary women at the entrance of City Gate, role models each for generations of women who fill finally transform this country into a society where it does not matter if you're a woman or a man. We're a long way away from that [...]
I have not written anything about COVID-19. Dealing with disease is a science and seeking to contain its consequences involves the science of managing prejudice, sometimes mass hysteria. Polemicists are useful for politics or sport or culture. Anything beyond science is a distraction for medicine. So, I will not comment on whether I think the [...]
Sent in by someone known to me: The secret of a great success for what you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been found and because it was properly executed. – Honoré de Balzac A mafia state has been defined as a state system where the government is tied [...]
Monday 16th March, 2020: 6:30pm 29 months. 126 weeks. The assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia deprived a family of a wife, mother, sister and daughter. It also deprived us of her voice as an independent journalist, crucial to our fragile democracy and our right to know the truth. They tried to silence her to cover [...]
Former Times of Malta journalist Ivan Camilleri filed a judicial protest against his former employer demanding compensation for what he insists is his unlawful dismissal. Ivan Camilleri was dismissed on the same day that the directors of the company that owns the Times newspapers accused him of shoplifting and of tipping Yorgen Fenech off ahead [...]
Proceedings in the US trial against Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad being held in the Southern District of New York building in lower Manhattan have been suspended after presiding judge Alison Nathan was informed that the US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) had contacted one of the prospective jurors in the case about possible contagion of [...]
Two years ago, Tim Sebastian interviewed Chris Fearne who had the unenviable job of defending a government in denial about corruption in its ranks and about its failure to acknowledge its responsibility to ensure its critics were not blown up in car bombs. Much water has passed under the bridge since that interview. Joseph Muscat [...]
The photo of EC Malta flooding the media this week was, to put it mildly, shocking. I lived and worked in Malta for 12 years. For 9 of those, I taught English at EC Malta. The horror of that photo, with EC seemingly perched on the knife-edge of collapse, starkly sums up how far Malta [...]
Yesterday’s guest post by Vincent De Gaetano presented the all-important argument really. He was reacting to the death of Miriam Pace whose funeral is being celebrated today after she died when her house collapsed in a heap of rubble and rolled down a deep chasm at the construction site next door. The words ‘tragic’ and [...]
Ali Sadr’s Hashemi Nejad’s citizenship was brought up at his trial yesterday as the government presented a witness to explain how Ali Sadr obtained the citizenship of Saint Kitts and Nevis, a Caribbean island with a population of less than 60,000 people. St Kitts and Nevis was the jurisdiction where Henley & Partners launched their [...]
When on Monday afternoon, on returning from lecturing at the university, my wife told me that another building next to a construction site had collapsed and that a woman was still under the rubble, I felt the same anguish that I imagine my late mother must have felt every time she recounted how she had [...]
Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad’s defence lawyer Reid Weingarten gave his opening remarks on behalf of his client today at Ali Sadr’s trial for bank fraud and sanctions busting being held in the Manhattan courtroom of the Southern District of New York. Mr Weingarten introduced Ali Sadr to the jury saying he was born in 1980 [...]
The prosecutor’s opening statements are being heard at the New York trial of Ali Sadr Hashemi Nejad charged with bank fraud and busting US sanctions against Iran. The Assistant US Attorney explained that under US law it is illegal for an American bank to send US dollars to Iranian companies. But Ali Sadr set up [...]
Ian Borg, all haughty and la-di-da, went on Facebook to accuse people who draw bitter conclusions from the killing yesterday of Myriam Pace for no reason except that she lived near to yet another enormous and growing hole in the ground of exploiting the tragedy for votes. Speaking as someone who is often contradicted on [...]
MaltaToday’s report last Sunday about Joseph Muscat’s overtures to Yves Bouvier to set up a precious goods free port linked to the apron at the airport links to a recent series by Swiss journalist Antoine Hariri about Bouvier’s activities. Yves Bouvier was involved in two other airside vaults in Luxembourg and Singapore but both have [...]
