https://youtu.be/M3AoNnJbKhg

https://youtu.be/3KSqrM-pkwc

From my article in The Sunday Times today: " The swell of anger in the public mood is palpable, perhaps even more obviously than the anger after Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed and the government insisted that the arrests of three hitmen were all the authorities needed to do. The fact is that the Sofia [...]

If he was the king of an absolute monarchy, the optics would be bad. If he was an oil sheik who both owns and runs a country, a princeling of a tax-dodging microstate, a colonel of a tinpot junta in Central America, a drug lord holding court in downtown Medellin, Robert Abela’s behaviour this week [...]

I’m not sure the family of Jean Paul Sofia had spent much time in Parliament’s Strangers Gallery before Wednesday. But that night they looked like they owned the place. I would normally feel queasy about people shouting down at Parliamentarians. It would make me think with some distaste of deadly episodes from the French Revolution. [...]

Cartoon by Ġorġ Mallia. First published in The Third Siege of Malta (2021). Alex Dalli, who ran the civil prisons like a gulag and resorted to psychological torture and intimidation as a matter of course while prisoners under his watch committed suicide in unprecedented numbers, has lost libel suits filed against journalists who [...]

There are tinges of culture-war polarisation in the internet battle over a drag act during pride week at a children’s event in Valletta. There’s blessing in disagreements but intolerance is a curse. Hard right conservatives – who are far more in number than their extremism might suggest – express concern that children seeing a man [...]

There’s no shame in begging if you are in desperate need. The shame must lie with people who need to be begged to stop allowing the conditions in which begging is necessary. Jean Paul Sofia’s mother spent the day outside Parliament yesterday collecting signatures to persuade the prime minister to order an inquiry to find [...]

The Malta Film Commission Facebook page has a new profile. Is the Commission diversifying genres or have they replaced the Commissioner with someone more resourceful?  

https://www.change.org/p/petition-to-members-of-parliament-to-support-a-public-enquiry-on-the-death-of-jean-paul

Times of Malta works out how much fines the Financial Intelligence Agency has raised over the last several months. It comes to an average of around €360,000 every month. The report also says there are 17 court cases filed against the FIAU by people it has fined, all making the same complaint. The complaint is [...]

Robert Abela’s behaviour in the Jean Paul Sofia case would be worryingly childish if it weren’t worryingly corrupt. Parliament debated a motion yesterday asking for an inquiry to establish if the government had done less than it should have to avoid Mr Sofia’s untimely death. An inquiry would act independently (of anyone, not just the [...]

The European Commission’s rule of law report on Malta finds very slow progress on its recommendations for reform. It is especially scathing on the government’s failure the improve the working environment of journalists. “While the media reform process launched following the publication of the report of the Daphne Caruana Galizia public inquiry is still ongoing, [...]

They don’t make racists like they used to anymore. In the good old days, home-grown, genuine article racists wouldn’t mince words about their prejudice, and would justify to anyone prepared to listen and to anyone not prepared to listen, their cruelty and their willingness to discriminate with what they seemed to genuinely believe was their [...]

Photo: Matthew Mirabelli/AFP  I have decided to file a libel suit against Simon Mercieca. On his blog he folded into a smattering of half-truths a bunch of lies about my time as a government employee before the 2013 general elections. I have never, before now, had to defend myself from accusations of corruption, [...]

The putrefaction of Labour 2013 stifles the air. These would be heady days of excitement for the promise of change for the better if such a promise existed. It doesn’t. For better or worse there is little to look forward to. What happens after the fall is in the mist. What is happening now, before [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "Many people never cared for local councils. They dismissed them as petty and parochial and beneath their daily concerns. It is in the shadow of that indifference that Joseph Muscat and Robert Abela hollowed them out, leaving little more than flags and glorified local clerks working as [...]

Anġlu Farrugia, that erstwhile hollow waste of space famous mostly for incurable ignorance masquerading, poorly, as a speech impediment, has effectively neutralised the law providing for the self-policing of the political class. He’s broken it to the point that it can’t be used unless it’s rewritten. There’s a Commissioner for Standards in Public Life who [...]

So, Joseph Muscat was riled yesterday, poked by incessant questions from the chairman of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee, Darren Carabott, insisting he would not be made a parrot, which is exquisitely ironic given the recent revelation that he was billing a parrot trading company more than ten grand a month for a slice of his [...]

They say people should never be allowed to see how sausages are made. And laws. The making of laws is a queasy business. The ongoing debate in Europe about a media freedom law has gotten ugly and has come up on a disturbing juncture. The original draft of the European Commission proposed strict rules against [...]