The government will never admit it but we’re in a bind of their making. Malta has squandered its diplomatic credentials and we are now kicking migrants as if they are to blame for Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela. Another 90 migrants are presently taking in water from the sea in our search and rescue area. [...]

UPDATED at 08:44. See below for details of the 'rescue' operation. A wooden boat carrying 90 migrants is presently within Maltese territorial waters. Reports from the location say the boat is in a precarious state with a real risk of toppling over. The passengers include at least one pregnant woman and some children. Alarm Phone [...]

Prime Minister Robert Abela spoke fully expecting anyone to be surprised by insisting Malta is only obliged to coordinate a rescue in its waters, not necessarily to use state-owned assets to do so. Of course, that’s true. Anything that is available and nearest at hand should be turned around to save lives at sea. But [...]

There’s talk of Covid-19 accelerating trends and making them the new normal. Pre-Covid we already had ministers shifting their engagement with the public away from meetings with the press favouring instead unmediated propaganda on social media. Konrad Mizzi made it his blatant policy of only inviting to his press events “journalists” on the government’s payroll. [...]

Charles Caruana Carabez is the ombudsman responsible to rule on issues arising out of educational institutions, including the university. He is paid to be the defender of citizens against faceless and unfeeling bureaucracy, of rules that aren’t thought through, of undesired consequences of policy. He rights wrongs. He is a caped hero for our times. [...]

However problematic this penning on the high seas is bound to prove, it is an alternative to Option One the government went for over the Easter weekend. Presumably inspired by Christ’s sacrifice, Option One was ‘let them drown’. The government blamed the crossing on the migrants who should have changed their travel plans like everyone [...]

Last night a Captain Morgan tourist boat was equipped with mattresses that can be carried by one person four at a time and sent out to meet the now notorious Mae Yemenja, the Maltese-owned Libyan-flagged fishing trawler that was the scene of the crime for an illegal push-back to Libya of some 50 migrants and [...]