Evarist Bartolo has taken his slithering, conniving, weaselly cunning to the foreign office exporting his particular brand of Maria l-Maws subterfuge and deceit and seeking to package it as diplomacy. Our country’s diplomacy. He’s picked up a standard racist troll’s taunt “daħħalhom id-dar tiegħek lis-suwed, ħelu” and sent it to the Pope. The argument is [...]
First, use the law to flout the law. Joseph Muscat’s government kept doing that all the time, pulling out legal loopholes and minor legal detail in order to suffocate the real intent of the law. They would say Jason Micallef and Tony Zarb were exercising “free speech” while they abused official power to intimidate and [...]
Sent in by someone I know who prefers to call themselves Archie Elle. By introducing an obligation to wear face masks the government has to face a free market mechanism from page one of the economic school book: demand and supply determine the price. Thus, if additional demand is created when supply is already short, [...]
The police department is beefing up its anti-financial crimes unit. The responsibilities of the unit are enormous. It is split in four sub-units: economic crimes, anti-money laundering, financial crimes analysis and blockchain analysis. Although we would never have a department bearing the name, because people might get the idea that we have a specific problem [...]
Continues from Part 1, linked here. In this article, I am writing on some of the key points highlighted in the second and third six-monthly reports of the Competent Person, together with my observations. These two reports were addressed to the Parliamentary Secretary for Financial Services and Digital Economy, on 24 March 2020, and 14 [...]
Do you remember Robert Abela saying migrants were not being rescued at sea at all because we needed to focus on Covid-19? Do you remember when that ‘policy’ changed to a determination not to bring anyone on shore in Malta even if they were saved, and that too was because we needed to focus on [...]
Robert Abela was reported to have spoken to the press as to what he gave in sworn testimony to a criminal inquiry into his conduct this morning. Criminal inquiries are supposed to be confidential affairs and witnesses are habitually cautioned they are not to state what they have testified in the inquiry. Even the fact [...]
If anyone else but the prime minister was in a gathering like this in Republic Street this morning, they'd be facing a hefty fine for organising a public event in spite of the pandemic instructions. And the journalists present would be fined for attending the gathering. There isn't a mask in sight though the prime [...]
Alarmphone published a detailed report which shows in detail in what ways, and how often, Alarm Phone sought to mobilise rescue by alerting the Maltese authorities. "In total, Alarm Phone reached out to RCC Malta 42 times: 34 times via the phone, though getting through only 11 times (mostly without receiving any information), and eight [...]
Italian NGO Mediterranea this morning wrote to Malta’s government saying it has been carefully following the case of a wooden boat in distress with approximately 90 people on board, reported to all concerned authorities by the organization Alarm Phone - Watch The Med in position 34° 37' N - 12° 27' E at 22:35 CEST [...]
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 [...]
Neville Gafà is about as smart as he looks. And as honest. I very much doubt that his sudden attack of acute sincerity was the result of some damascene illumination. His decision to out the prime minister and charge him with ordering an illegal push-back of migrants to Libya (read Newsbook’s report from last night, [...]
The Maltese-owned but Libyan-flagged Mae Yemenja left Malta’s Grand Harbour yesterday evening around the same time that a Maltese plane flew over the estimated location of a dinghy with around 60 migrants aboard in the Malta search and rescue area. NGO Alarm Phone this morning raised the alert about the boat saying the AFM control [...]
I thought I should perhaps write something about Mario Philip Azzopardi. He’s the guy with the Herr Doktor Mengele eyes who trawls the net for women to insult with sexually offensive terms and to inflict verbal violence that would cause a melee in the mud to pause in gaunt embarrassment. It would be legitimate for [...]