LONG READ: Alexander Dalli, the Wrath of God

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2020-09-04T22:20:31+02:00Wed, 2nd Sep '20, 12:26|

(This might be one of the longest pieces on this blog, which is not notorious for the brevity of its wit. So keep this one for when you have the time for it. I trust you'll find it's worth your effort). I walked up to the prison door in the blazing sun of yesterday afternoon. [...]

Just visiting

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2020-09-02T11:41:50+02:00Wed, 2nd Sep '20, 11:41|

After much struggle and toil, I was given the opportunity to visit the prison and ask its director some questions. It wasn’t easy. I wrote to then minister Michael Farrugia 5 times in November, never getting a proper answer. Then when it looked like the government was floundering, I waited for the change. In February [...]

GUEST POST: Pecunia Dirige Nos

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2020-08-31T18:58:08+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 18:57|

The police have lost all that they had gained. They had won over the respect and the support of the Maltese people. The people used to look up to them, the criminal used to worry about the police; nowadays it is like everything has turned topsy-turvy. – Beppe Fenech Adami A recent Eurobarometer survey that [...]

José Herrera should pay for his own indulgence

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2020-08-31T18:40:03+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 18:40|

If a public official, or anyone serving the state and the community with their work, is in any danger it is the duty of the state to protect them. No government minister, no journalist, no judge, no social worker, no divorce attorney, no prosecutor, no teacher, no nurse should be allowed to face physical violence [...]

The Miranda warning

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2020-08-31T17:31:51+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 17:31|

Photo: Ivan Martin for Times of Malta. Everyone charged with a crime is innocent until proven guilty. Anyone suspected of a crime, mentioned by others as having committed a crime, asked for an alibi to avoid being charged with a crime: all are presumed to be innocent. No one gets to be punished [...]

Solved you say

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2020-08-31T16:34:19+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 16:34|

It’s not easy being the murder squad at the police. The eyes of the country are on you all the time and most people watch real-life police work and expect nicely wrapped up parcels of logic: the sort that is served in a 45 minute procedural about an impossibly chiseled cop who, with his faithful [...]

Canned milk

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2020-08-31T15:28:22+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 15:28|

I’m not the first to write about the man charged in court for stealing a can of tuna to fend off starvation. All sorts of very valid points have been made. Firstly, the point about our authorities being strong with the weak. While Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi continue to run around without the inconvenience [...]

Corrupt minds

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2020-08-31T15:24:01+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 15:01|

On TV, Robert Arrigo “offered his post as Deputy Leader” of the PN to Bernard Grech if Bernard Grech were to withdraw his challenge for Adrian Delia’s leadership post. Did Robert Arrigo think he’s negotiating players and their performance at his old football club? The Deputy Leadership of the Nationalist Party is a position Robert [...]

Stealing from the poor

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2020-08-31T12:37:21+02:00Mon, 31st Aug '20, 12:37|

Labour troll Georgina Cardona is causing a stir on Facebook saying that Repubblika is on the list of beneficiaries of funds from the Community Chest Fund and l-Istrina. She publishes some sort of list Repubblika is part of but the document, whatever it is, is clearly not a list of CCF/Istrina beneficiaries. This is a [...]

Majesty

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2020-08-30T11:06:17+02:00Sun, 30th Aug '20, 09:48|

George Vella’s excuses don’t cut it. He says he doesn’t think he is above the Freedom of Information Act. And yet he contradicts the basic tenet of that law by saying that by default all letters to the president’s office should be treated as confidential. Not even the president of Malta has the authority to [...]

THE SUNDAY TIMES: The lives of others

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2020-08-30T08:52:16+02:00Sun, 30th Aug '20, 08:52|

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "The fact that we can’t have a referendum to back out of our international legal obligation to rescue people at risk of drowning in our waters is not the most important answer to give those campaigning for one. Racists, for so they are, will project that as [...]

NGOs call for serious investigation on threats from Neville Gafà

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2020-08-27T16:16:39+02:00Thu, 27th Aug '20, 16:16|

European press freedom NGOs are urging the governments of Malta and Italy to investigate properly threats Neville Gafà, former gofer in Joseph Muscat’s office, openly sent to Italian Avvenire report Nello Scavo over Twitter. The NGOs, part of the Media Freedom Rapid Response project co-funded by the European Commission, said that “the Maltese government's request [...]

“Sadly true”

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2020-08-27T15:51:43+02:00Thu, 27th Aug '20, 15:51|

Bit of a detail considering all that’s coming out of court today, but Keith Arnaud, chief investigator in the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder, remarked while testifying that the leaks of WhatsApp messages between Leader of Opposition Adrian Delia and murder suspect Yorgen Fenech were entirely accurate. Leaks came in two batches. In July, Times of [...]

Mexxi. Mexxi. Mexxi.

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2020-08-27T15:36:34+02:00Thu, 27th Aug '20, 15:36|

The police told the court today that at the time of his arrest Yorgen Fenech told them Keith Schembri got him to organise the killing of Daphne Caruana Galizia. It was a conversation that had been going on for some time before Keith Schembri gave him the nod: Mexxi. Mexxi. Mexxi. Proceed, said three times [...]

UPDATED: ‘Most wanted’ US army fugitive told a Maltese government board he was an army vet; presented fraudulent university degrees

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2020-09-09T18:08:43+02:00Thu, 27th Aug '20, 11:43|

Updated. 09.09.2020 at 18:08 US District Court for Western Oklahoma There’s more to the story of Nazzareno Mifsud who is wanted by the US authorities to answer for charges of sexual molestation of children in 1986 and 1987. He is currently waiting for a decision by a Maltese court on a request by [...]

Scrutiny they should expect

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2020-08-27T08:05:36+02:00Thu, 27th Aug '20, 08:05|

  There was a bit of a scene on the Gozo channel ferry yesterday. A couple of enforcement agents fined two women for not wearing masks while they were sitting at table. A debate ensued – it wasn’t quite as calm as that Oxford Union description suggests – about the nuances of mask-wearing regulations. Does [...]

GUEST POST: The concert of fragile destinies

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2020-08-26T11:40:46+02:00Wed, 26th Aug '20, 11:40|

A parable that speaks volumes on the people of Malta’s individual and collective human and political behaviour; it metaphorically landscapes our islands’ fragile destinies across all sectors of society and the polity. All this will be further compounded by socio-economic problems unless we all, as an equal yet heterogeneous people, resign ourselves to begin “living [...]

What do they say about us?

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2020-08-26T11:25:15+02:00Wed, 26th Aug '20, 11:25|

Here’s one for all the racists saying that the arrest of a man of Albanian origins for the double murder in Sliema ‘proves’ that migration is a ‘problem’. Obviously there are various shades of this. Some write describing migrants living here as if they were a marauding horde using the language of monks describing Vikings [...]

Too soon

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2020-08-26T10:24:53+02:00Wed, 26th Aug '20, 10:24|

It took a while before I stopped catching myself typing in the link to Daphne’s website to look for her take on yet another absurd development in the catalogue of disgusting scandals that followed her killing. Almost all of those scandals emerged because of her investigations, or were at least predicted by them. The rest [...]

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