Another major investigation in The Daphne Project has been published today after research conducted by an Italian investigative team and published in La Repubblica and the Times of Malta. It provides details into fuel smuggling: how a cooperative between Libyan militias, Italian mafiosi and Maltese ship owners ran a business stealing oil from the Libyan [...]
Health warning. This is a long one. You don’t have to tell me it is. I know. I wrote it. If you have some time, here goes. The insidious character of the power that has taken hold of Malta is extremely easy to underestimate. Comparisons have been made with pre-war fascism and these are not [...]
The Panama Gang’s behaviour in court is truly appalling. Even the Mafia, at least in the romantic depictions of it, distinguishes between soldiers and civilians. The way they are getting their lawyers to harass Peter Caruana Galizia out of some perverse sense of vindictive revenge for the death of his wife would disgust the Mafia [...]
Here's Konrad Mizzi with Josef Vincenti. He'd want to be seen with him because Mr Vincenti is a bit of a tough guy. Here he is on Facebook some time ago. And here he is partying on Sunday at the great socialist gathering of workers' solidarity. https://www.facebook.com/jos.vin.35/videos/224151815023668/ One would hope that Mr Vincenti did not [...]
The term ‘parliamentary privilege’ is a misnomer or at least it would be if the meaning of ‘privilege’ is understood within the narrow meaning given it by common conversation. This is not some perk given to MPs allowing them to badmouth people with impunity. It is a protection inherited from the civil rights revolution of [...]
Normally 'The Socialist' is not my first read in the morning but the radical publication has the right to claim some ownership of May Day and to express indignation when the holiest day of the left is desecrated. Heading reads "Malta: right-wing Labour leader's Panama Papers insult to May Day". Yep. Though admittedly just about [...]
As first reported in the Wall Street Journal and subsequently in this The Guardian report, both Cambridge Analytica and one of its holding companies SCL Elections, are winding down in the US and the UK. The companies are in terminal agony still protesting their innocence: that their methods have always been ethical and unimpeachable. But [...]
The new EU budget presented today by Commission President Jean Claude Juncker comes with a new caveat that funding, particularly cohesion funds that Member States use to fund infrastructural and development projects, will only be granted to Member States that can demonstrate compliance with rule of law. An editorial in Le Monde this morning anticipated [...]
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Valletta's sister European Capital of Culture 2018 is teaching a lesson to the philistine failed gardeners running Valletta's program on what a self-respecting city should do when a journalist is killed. Leeuwarden has changed its cultural calendar to screen the film "Daphne: The Execution" by Carlo Bonini and Giuliano Foschini first screened in Malta a [...]
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Why does Malta's Brussels embassy need a full-time photographer assigned to it? Normally you'd think it wouldn't. But you would make an exception for the 6-month rotating Presidency when the calendar of photo-ops is busier than usual and hiring in freelancers might prove more expensive than giving someone a 6-month contract. That is what Dar [...]
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Some months ago I discussed at some length that chilling phrase ‘Pulizija Laburist’. With time it’s acquiring an even more ominous meaning. Toni Abela, then Deputy Leader of the Partit Laburista, knew of drug trafficking from a property of the party. To avoid embarrassment he sought a “pulizija Laburist” to cover the matter up. That [...]
The story of billionnaire Christopher Chandler and the news from the UK Parliament yesterday that Chandler was allegedly connected to Russian espionage might seem like a cold war spy story the Maltese can watch from their safe neutral distance. But it is not. Christopher Chandler is Maltese. So rephrase that headline in your head now. [...]
Around a fifth of this website's readership is from outside Malta. Most of those readers are Maltese people who made a home elsewhere. Their affection for the home country is tied to the memories of when they left it and they read of what is happening here now with a mix of fascination, horror, guilt, [...]
By Andrew Borg-Cardona (I M Beck as was): Of late, I have been tending to ignore Martin Scicluna, octogenarian columnist with the Times. His pieces spew forth an opinion that is so self-serving that annoyance sets in quickly, which is not conducive to my well-being. The man has a right to his opinion and to [...]
