Ian Borg, Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Capital Projects has a thing for TV and reporters’ cameras. He calls a press conference every alternate day to inaugurate some project or other. He has become a TV figure wearing the famous bright yellow vest and hard hat. I will watch out for his safety shoes next [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: “'The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped,' Hubert Humphrey [...]
From the get-go Joseph Muscat expressed displeasure at the questions asked during the year the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder inquiry has been in business, often trying to blame the family’s lawyers but having no qualms about roping in the judges as well. In some cases, he was particularly concerned about the quality of the witnesses [...]
The reaction of many good people to the judgement that held that It-Torċa had not libelled Pia Zammit was to be expected. Likewise, I stand with Pia, it need hardly be said. I was going to add ‘and some not so good ones’ or use ‘assorted luvvies’ instead of ‘many good people’, but hey, I [...]
While Joseph Muscat the physical person was testifying in the public inquiry this morning, Joseph Muscat the online persona was publishing Facebook posts furiously discrediting he same inquiry he was testifying to. Lovin Malta compared the “unhinged” posts to Donald Trump’s surreal tweetoramas. Matthew Caruana Galizia, rightly, thought Joseph Muscat “must have hired someone” to [...]
Joseph Muscat is facing the inquiry he himself set up to look into the state’s role in the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. But the man still walks around fully expecting to be the centre of gravity. He sought from the outset to turn the tables on the inquiry, putting the trial on trial as [...]
Whoever thought that would be a good idea (from his point of view) is either him or someone who never had a conversation with him. Or they never read the report of my interview with him which would have warned them the man would provide the worst possible recommendation for himself. Prison directors are not [...]
Today’s court decision denying Pia Zammit’s libel suit against it-Torċa appears to be predicated on the idea that taking an acting role in ‘Allo! ‘Allo! is controversial for being flippant about the holocaust or Nazism. This is a blindingly misguided reading of the play. No one should be able to emerge from watching ‘Allo! ‘Allo! [...]
It must have been a very short interview that Times of Malta had with Minister Byron Camilleri. They asked him to react to a court decision by Magistrate Victor Asciak who ordered the immediate release of four migrants who had been languishing in unlawful detention for 166 days. A similar decision was taken [...]
Brussels sources told this website that Robert Abela’s government is raising objections to the adoption of a permanent fund for journalists conducting investigations across member states' borders. The fund is being set up in the wake of the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia in Malta. The initiative is part of an EU-wide effort to help [...]
A court decision yesterday should rightly lead to Ian Borg’s resignation. He won’t resign and what’s more he’s arrogant enough to think, even to himself, that he doesn’t have to. But the court’s decision yesterday in a case in which he was a witness, certifies him as a character entirely unsuitable for public life. Read [...]
There’s so much that is wrong with Silvio Debono’s attitude at the inquiry yesterday. To begin with, there’s the notion of suing the dead, which the most powerful people in the land, with access to the greatest financial resources, to consultants of every hue, and to expense on their own image and public relations that [...]
Politicians who claim credit for the achievements of science cause as much harm to the objective credibility of science, as those who altogether deny its veracity. To be fair I don’t think many people take Robert Abela’s bluster seriously. He hasn’t quite charmed supporters of the Labour Party yet. They take his bullishness with a [...]
The story of police wiretaps of a mafioso accountant laundering billions for the ‘Ndrangheta, one of the biggest and most dangerous crime syndicates in the world, should hopefully chill some people here into a realisation of what we’re dealing with. Around the time that Matthew Caruana Galizia first hit this sceptical, uncomprehending island with the [...]
‘Due to the fast-changing pace of the political landscape, the fortunes of a politician or political group can change drastically just in the course of a single week.’ - Attributed to Harold Wilson, 1964. The new incomplete ‘important artery’ in Gozo’s road network, inaugurated with much pageantry by the Prime Minister about a fortnight ago [...]
The following is the ninth and final part of a series first published in Italian as a concluding chapter of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Un Omicidio di Stato (Strade Blu Mondadori, 2020), the Italian edition of Murder on the Malta Express: Who Killed Daphne Caruana Galizia(MidSea Books, 2019 and Silvertail Books, 2019). Hurry Up and Kill Her (Part 9) [...]
The following is the eighth part of a series first published in Italian as a concluding chapter of Daphne Caruana Galizia, Un Omicidio di Stato (Strade Blu Mondadori, 2020), the Italian edition of Murder on the Malta Express: Who Killed Daphne Caruana Galizia(MidSea Books, 2019 and Silvertail Books, 2019). Hurry Up and Kill Her (Part 8) When he [...]
I’ve written about Simon Mercieca on this blog a few times and I worry that I end up promoting the hallucinations of a lunatic simply by flattering them with a response. I could go on about the lies he is perpetrating. He would not call them lies. He would call them alternative facts, relegating reality [...]
I couldn’t miss the sight of Konrad Mizzi repeating the line ‘I will not reply’ several hundred times as he’s asked questions that have been chasing him for 7 years. Let him know then that this is the rest of his life – behind bars or outside them, in parliament’s dunces’ corner or wherever he [...]
