The US’s National Public Radio published on New Year’s Eve a link to important international stories from 2018 that readers and listeners may have missed in “the year’s relentless news cycle”. Some stories are too important to just walk away from even when Donald Trump is putting into question the deepest mores of western liberal [...]
Then Foreign Minister George Vella visiting the Emir of Kuwait al-Sabah in 2015 There was a time when in Kuwait they knew about Malta because that was where the UN General Assembly President who argued for international intervention after Iraq invaded and occupied their country was from. The Arab Times — a Kuwaiti English language [...]
Rob Porter with Donald Trump. Picture: Reuters. Donald Trump’s White House is not a model of civic virtue and accountable public administration. You’ll be forgiven if you’ve forgotten this episode from almost a year ago. It’s one of so many. David Sorensen resigned his job as a speechwriter at the White House after his wife [...]
You would want to assume it’s just an accident. But just when PN script-writers are trying to dispel the suspicion they are in the thrall of Labour and are seeking to imitate it instead of defeating it, Adrian Delia is given a speech for the new year headlining a Labour Party slogan. True, no one [...]
Sincere thanks to and admiration for the soldiers manning the boats who rescued 180 people from near certain death out at sea today. The soldiers have better boats than the migrants but the forecast storms are a danger to everyone. This New Year’s Eve another 49 rescued people and the crew who picked them up [...]
Konrad Mizzi has failed in his bid to stop the Court of Criminal Appeal from hearing his own appeal from a lower court’s decision to order a criminal inquiry into his affairs in the Panama Papers pending a Constitutional Court’s decision on his own claim that his human rights have been breached by the government [...]
A Repubblika statement issued today: Repubblika believes that persons serving in a public roles should behave in a way that sets a positive example to citizens of Malta and Gozo. Persons in such roles should live their lives according to highest behavioral standards. Our country deserves as much. Repubblika notes how the behavior of a politician or a public [...]
In June 2017 Simon Busuttil decided he would no longer serve as PN leader. History will analyse that decision and its consequences but it's still too close to make a judgement on it. It just is. That week I wrote an article in The Sunday Times about the qualities I wished to see in the [...]
US Legal experts cited by a specialist security website believe a company defying a subpoena in the probe on Russian interference in the US Presidential elections is Maltese. The company lost its case in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals and is now taking its case to the US Supreme Court. However the identity [...]
How does Adrian Delia deal with accusations by his own wife that he’s a bully? By going on a radio station he only has access to because of his job and bullies anyone daring to speak about it. It’s not the first time the man was in a corner and put on the foaming at [...]
Look at the rank hypocrisy. On New Years’ Day last year Joe Mikallef splashed this Net News report on how Mario Tonna’s wife filed a police report on 28th December 2017 accusing her husband of head butting her. Mario Tonna was Assistant Commissioner of Police. Mario Tonna’s wife’s police report found its way to Joe [...]
On the evening of Christmas you read on this blog that on Christmas Eve Adrian Delia filed in court an urgent request to see his children after 11 weeks during which he saw one of his children once when she asked to see him. Over the next two days you read on this blog that [...]
Lorna Vassallo is not some prominent star in the Labour Party firmament. Though she does seem to think she deserves to be more important than she is. Relying on her opinion of herself, we should measure her perverse tribute to Karin Grech in this Facebook post of hers from this morning as mainstream Labour Party [...]
I broadly agree with this insider's guest view about what should be happening next in the PN. Except that I think all the people in this picture have a responsibility, vested in them by election to their post, to move to act. People are right: Adrian Delia was elected to his post. So were Robert [...]
It is time for Adrian Delia to do some serious thinking. He is not likely to be told this by his advisors. It has long become clear that basic common sense has abandoned the corridors of PN HQ for some time and has been replaced with a siege mentality and the warped understanding of reality [...]
Thirty-two people rescued from drowning and their 22 rescuers have spent Christmas bobbing in the Mediterranean. Malta, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany shut their doors to them too busy basting their turkeys. This is a statement issued today by Sea-Watch hoping the rescued migrants can see in the new year on land. Five countries [...]
Air Malta, now flush with money as a result of Konrad Mizzi's able stewardship, made a donation to l-Istrina yesterday. But the amount in text and in digits does not match. Not too reassuring that an airline has less than 20/20 vision.
It happens every year like heartburn after too much roast goose. We wallow in the afterglow of our own generosity, smug with satisfaction at the millions raised at l-Istrina for the Community Chest Fund to be able to compensate for the shortfall in State responsibilities. Let us assume €7 million are enough to bridge those [...]
Robert Musumeci is rarely limpid in his writings. Inevitably it’s as muddled as his thinking. His conflicted loyalties layered on his convoluted verbosity condition his output. But he was having one of his momentary lapses of clarity when he tweeted his description of critics of the leader of the Nationalist Party: they’re ‘Enemies of the [...]
There must be reasons why this is happening over Christmas Adrian Delia took his separation proceedings to a controlled interview on a Christmas TV special because he felt it would win him brownie points: not in the separation proceedings themselves one would imagine, but in his effort to ingratiate himself with voters. At any other [...]