Yesterday the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee finalised a motion for the European Parliament's plenary that would call on the government to publish the Egrant inquiry in full and to stop the ignoble passport scheme. For brevity is the soul of wit, here's Roberta Metsola's intervention at the Committee meeting yesterday. https://www.facebook.com/roberta.metsola/videos/vb.406824526101449/2535209209853665/?type=2&theater

Now disgraced Andreina Fenech Farrugia, who until her suspension this morning was Director-General for Fisheries, was nominated in 2017 by the government to chair the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT). The Commission, based in Madrid, Spain, is set up by international treaty to promote limits on over-fishing for tuna and tuna-like [...]

13 February, 2019. 11:08. Adds video of David Casa's intervention. Watching Owen Bonnici and then Matthew Caruana Galizia field questions at the special tax evasion committee of the European Parliament yesterday was a spectacle in contrasts. I don’t think Owen Bonnici has much hope in reading a favourable review. But boy, that guy is really [...]

In record time the government acted on allegations of corruption this morning. A story published on a Spanish newspaper at 5 am this morning said Andreina Fenech Farrugia, until then Director General of the Fisheries Department, solicited bribes to allow “fish laundering”. That’s allowing a tuna company (the one we know of) to fatten more [...]

Spanish online news-site El Confidencial reported today that the Benemerita (the Spanish civil police) have intercepted phone conversations that “reveal that Malta’s Fisheries boss collaborated with a criminal network that illegally fished and commercialised tuna”. The report is based on a conversation on 20 June 2018 where the Director General of the Department of Fisheries [...]

It’s going to become every harder for our own government to remain silent over an increasingly hard line taken by Western countries against the penetration of Huawei technology in Europe. Malta is committed to a close partnership with Huawei and 5G technology here is being rolled out exclusively using Huawei technology. There are signs that [...]

The European Parliament's Special Committee on Financial Crimes, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance is holding a special session on Malta this afternoon. It will follow up on correspondence with the government about Konrad Mizzi and Keith Schembri discovered setting up money laundering vehicles in Panama and New Zealand and our institutions doing nothing about it. Justice [...]

Magistrate Joe Mifsud’s decision to acquit Anton Refalo of the charge of domestic violence after the police arraigned him for beating his 16-year-old son has some implications that need further discussion. Here’s one. Anton Refalo was not acquitted because the court felt he was justified in beating his son. Certainly, many people found the circumstances [...]

Raphael Vassallo consumed columns of yesterday’s Malta Today starting out by saying he would reply point by point to my ’13 reasons why’ free speech in Malta is threatened. As far as I can figure out he gives up at point 4. But that’s fine. You distil his argument and it’s quite simple. You’ve heard [...]

If you haven’t seen it yet, do read the in-depth feature in yesterday’s London The Sunday Times by Tony Allen-Mills about journalists killed in their line of duty. The article tells multiple stories of journalists and media workers who ended up killed, not all of them because they covered the stories in dangerous places like [...]

Repubblika has submitted formally to the European Commission a complaint on the breach of European laws by the Maltese authorities that are not enforcing anti-money laundering laws in respect of persons in power. The legal basis in EU law for Repubblika’s complaint is the following:  Breach of the provisions of Directive 2005/60/EC (AML3) as succeeded [...]

Labour MP and former Minister Anton Refalo has been acquitted by Magistrate Joe Mifsud from the charge of domestic violence after his son, whom he was accused to have beaten, refused to testify against his father. There were no other eye-witnesses to the incident except Anton Refalo's wife who also refused to testify. The Magistrate [...]

If you don't know what this is about here's an earlier post on the subject. Good one lads.

One TV asked the Great Leader for his top 10 desert island discs. You'd be tempted to groan 'who cares?' But this is Malta and nobody laughs at jokes about fawning Radio Moscow staff chasing Joseph's favourite recording of Tchaikovsky's sixth. Joseph Stalin that is. Our own Joseph's top 10 list includes 'Gimme Hope Jo'Anna' [...]

I do not presume to teach Patrick Dalli what makes good art. I don’t presume to teach that to anyone, frankly. I know what I like but it doesn’t mean I know why it’s good. I know what I can afford to spend which I accept has nothing to do with value. Times of Malta [...]

David Gatt The witness for the prosecution in the 2017 trial that acquitted former police inspector, now criminal lawyer, David Gatt, has published a letter he wrote to the police after David Gatt testified in his own defence, pointing out facts he believes should have led to Gatt’s conviction. At the time the court was [...]

ML AERIS sent this under the post about the daily grind of replacing protest symbols at the Great Siege Memorial because they're removed by State-employed, State-sponsored or State-mobilised thugs. Yesterday that State's lawyers argued I have no legal standing to argue this is a breach of the right of freedom of expression because I didn't [...]

Raphael Vassallo headlined his weekly column with this title: “‘Freedom of expression’ also means the freedom to talk out of your ass”. Never has a more appropriate heading been chosen for the article that would follow it. His main thrust is freedom of expression in Malta is a-ok and the moaners that complain it isn’t [...]

The Department of Information last night issued what must be, in the annals of its hallowed history, the most despicably iron-curtain piece of Newspeak ever to have been officially published by a government not bearing a hammer and a sickle on its badges. It took plenty of time to reach its point. There’s that classic [...]

Twenty-nine years ago a great Italian movie won the best foreign language film Academy award. It was Cinema Paradiso that had been made two years before by Giuseppe Tornatore. Twelve years later the director revisited that film and gave it the Director’s treatment. It told the story of a young boy who grew up in [...]