Photo: Newsbook It’s like one of those dinners in a Luis Buñuel film. If you’ve watched them, you know what I mean, and if you haven’t you won’t get it if I explain it. This election campaign will be as easy for Labour to win as it is easy for a hand to [...]
The US Congress will consider a cross-party legislative initiative introduced jointly by Republican Congressman Burgess Owens and Democrat Congressman Steve Cohen that would ban countries that sell their citizenship, such as Malta, from the program that allows their citizens to enter the US without applying for a visa. Malta joined the United States’ visa waiver [...]
The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic has provided a very succinct, very clear list of principles for European governments on how to take care of people running away from war in Ukraine. This will be useful to those who thought it would be a good idea to block Ukrainians from coming [...]
There's no rhyme or reason in hatred. It is indiscriminate and perhaps most sadly of all, incurable. Pia Zammit and I yesterday stuck a poster by Ġorġ Mallia of Vladimir Putin's bloodied hands to our office sign. We said we stood by Ukraine. I'd like to think most people should have no reason to disagree. [...]
The Commissioner for Children has asked political parties several times to keep children out of political campaigning. Children have a right to participate in a political process if they have views they wish to express. But they also have a right not to be used by political parties as cute endorses reading from a script [...]
NGOs Repubblika, The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation, SOS Malta, and PEN Malta have published recommendations on securing press freedom and enhancing the protection of journalists on the back of conclusions by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Public Inquiry drawn up by a three-judge panel last year. The recommendations were sent today to Judge Michael Mallia who [...]
Please don’t absolve Robert Abela on grounds of incompetence or pathological stupidity. Today’s U-turn on selling Maltese citizenship to Russian oligarchs while their patron Vladimir Putin flouts international law and kills thousands of Ukrainian innocent civilians, is not the result of some intellectual inhibition that prevents our prime minister from having the shortest of foresights. [...]
John Sweeney is covering the war in Ukraine as a freelance journalist. Follow his reporting on his Twitter account @johnsweeneyroar. Independent journalists do not get a salary. They depend on what their readers choose to donate to cover their cost and earn a living. Support all independent journalists. You can support John Sweeney by donating [...]
Labour has taken offence at Bernard Grech's clumsy quip that he would designate the footprint of the Labour Party's headquarters as "outside development zone" if he was prime minister. I won't bother to defend the joke, such as it is. Though I did find Ian Borg's hell fire and brimstone reaction as rather comical. Here's [...]
Photo: Miguela Xuereb (Newsbook) It was, I suppose, only a matter of time. A few days ago, Labour ran a campaign video that featured me as a cause of division in the PN. Now I’ve been upgraded to a billboard, alone in a row of 10 men not contesting the next general elections, [...]
The representative on media freedom for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe told the government they must conduct “transparent consultations with the Committee of Media Experts, civil society, media and other national and international key actors … prior to the discussion and adoption of this important legislation by the Parliament.” Tereso Ribeiro was [...]
There are always undercurrents and different views within a political party, especially one the size of our two parties that aspire (and in Labour’s case now consistently win) more than half of all the votes cast in the country. That’s more than any political party in any other European democracy. There are and will always [...]
Scroll down for a statement by Repubblika issued this morning: Repubblika is calling Maltese people of good-will to show their solidarity with the victims of the war in Ukraine by participating in a symbolic action called for tomorrow Wednesday 2nd March 2022. Repubblika is disappointed with the attitude of the government, which is resorting to [...]
Russia has been fighting an information war on democracy for a decade and because of the traitors in our midst who have bound themselves to the tyrannies intent on breaking up Europe and the democratic world, they've been given free access to our culture and our way of life and the power to undermine it [...]
A member of Robert Abela's security detail is seen in this photo wearing a mask issued to him by the government, showing Malta's coat of arms. U ija. Tfettieq. It is symbolic of a deeper malaise which has not started since Labour took office, which I personally was to an extent guilty of when I [...]
The European Court of Human Rights dismissed a complaint from Yorgen Fenech, who is awaiting trial for killing Daphne Caruana Galizia. Yorgen Fenech complained his fundamental rights were breached when he was kept in pre-trial detention during the covid pandemic. Yorgen Fenech claimed he was especially vulnerable for having one kidney and should have been [...]
Keith Schembri and Brian Tonna (remember them?) categorically denied the allegation that €1o0,000 the latter deposited in a Pilatus Bank account in the name of the former was payment of kickbacks paid by three Russian buyers of Maltese citizenship. They said the money was the repayment of a personal loan. While the police and [...]
Accepting Robert Abela’s behaviour in his profession is unacceptable. There’s a line that Joseph Muscat, apparently without irony, had a habit of echoing: “those who do not fight corruption are corrupt”. I regret he is right. Which means that Labour Party MPs, the party leadership, party employees, and all those (likely a considerable majority of [...]
I often express disgust on this blog at hero worship of politicians. I think it’s undignified and undemocratic and often based purely on loyalty to colour rather than the expression of preference for policy or even management style. But in this moment of crisis when the peace we took for granted on the European continent [...]
Look at this screenshot from Facebook. Scroll down for the explainer unless you don't see my point in the picture before I even make it and follow that up with despair and moving on to the next reminder of, as the Maltese idiom puts it, what sort of people Christ died for. Still don't see [...]