When writing about the conservation of Dom Mintoff’s “modernist traditional” Ħal Tarxien villa yesterday I thought we can take some comfort that his house will stay on while everything around will be converted into the bog standard apartment blocks that are covering the country. Not quite as it turns out. Dom Mintoff’s villa is zoned [...]
Statement by #occupyjustice: Seventeen women clad in black stood on the steps of Castille, the office of Malta’s Prime Minister, holding cards reading “Who Owns 17 Black?” to mark seven months since the assassination of the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. The protest, carried out by #Occupyjustice activists, was in clear reference to the mystery client [...]
Earlier today I wrote that ‘ironic’ no longer works for what is happening around us. If you’re around my age you remember Jagged Little Pill. “Mr Play It Safe was afraid to fly/ He packed his suitcase and kissed his kids good-bye/ He waited his whole damn life to take that flight/ And as the [...]
Nexia BT’s Karl Cini has today written to his clients reminding them of their legal obligation to declare to the authorities the beneficial ownership of the companies they own or control. You’d have to wonder what he thought the readers of his emails would think when they got an email from the man best known [...]
Joseph Muscat and his gang are hiding behind magisterial inquiries to assure the world allegations of crimes they are involved in are being investigated and if there’s anything to the allegations, prosecution would follow. Nothing could be further from the truth. In Malta Magistrates do not do police work. They are not detectives. They do [...]
South Australia is improving its whistleblower protection laws protecting public officers from any consequences should they decide to go public with the information they have if no action is taken on an internal complaint they would have filed. So basically if a state employee knows of any wrongdoing and after blowing the whistle internally feels [...]
This morning in front of his office. #Reżistenza. Photo for Reuters by Darrin Zammit Lupi. Here is the statement by #Reżistenza: The Emperor is Naked Turning Maltese citizenship into a commodity betrays its fundamental worth and few would be ready to purchase it were it not for the access it provides to the EU. The undermining [...]
The talk that Malta Today reports on that Magistrate Anthony Vella is on the short list for promotion to judgeship reached me as well. You never know if these snippets of chatter are coming from the same sources and you can never be sure of their accuracy because at this stage these would be ideas [...]
Kristina Chetcuti on The Sunday Times is providing a public service not unlike Giovanni Bonello's series on institutionalised ignorance of our constitution. Her series is a handbook of clear precis of the convoluted mess Konrad Mizzi, Keith Schembri and "someone more important than them" have set up to cover up the crimes they have committed. [...]
We're approaching the 16th of the month and Labour's spinmeisters are getting ready to neutralise any show of dissent or protest that is a monthly occurrence since Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed. No need to call the police, MEPA and the crane contractors because those are already standing by. When protesters set up banners in [...]
Don’t you for a minute think that Alfred Sant forgot Ali Sadr’s name on Xarabank last Friday. He used that mock innocent trick throughout the decades of his political career and it’s a confidence trickster’s way of disarming his victims into thinking he must be genuine. Alfred Sant knows very well who Ali Sadr is. [...]
Blaming the losses from the Azerbaijan gas procurement deal on a hedging agreement to ensure pricing stability, as the prime minister did yesterday, is like blaming a sharp knife for a mortal stab wound. Both Joseph Muscat and his predecessor Alfred Sant screamed blue murder whenever a hedge on fuel procurement for our energy needs [...]
We have reached the 7-month mark since Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed. We are entering summer. Not one of the many vigils or protests or stories in the international press or any of the documentaries has had the effect of moving any single government official to assume some responsibility. Not one of the stories Daphne [...]
From my article in The Sunday Times today: "It started escalating when the suspicion of corruption at the highest level of government was confirmed by Daphne Caruana Galizia’s stories and then the Panama Papers. The toxicity, the tension and the poisoned environment have only got worse and in the last six months they have spun [...]
My piece in May's MONEY Magazine. Economists are optimistic when nobody else is. There is something Buddhist in the forecasting of the performance of an economy at least in so far as cycles and the alternation between ups and downs are concerned. But there is no eschatology in economics, not since Marx went out of [...]
The wife of Pilatus Bank owner and indicted bank fraud Ali Sadr acquired a permit to split a large waterfront apartment at 182, Tower Road, Sliema. Ali Sadr's wife, Yasemin Aral, acquired a permit to split half of the apartment where the bank's CEO Hamidreza Ghanbari lives so she can settle in Malta. The permit [...]
The Castille-mandated campaign driven by mouthpieces Josef Caruana, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and others on the supposed existence of a laptop that Daphne Caruana Galizia used before her death and that, they argue, is being hidden from investigators in order to cover up information on the crime is now being seen for what it is. This [...]
The author of this piece, known to me, reacted to this poster circulated by a quango set up by the President that will be discussing something called 'a feminist approach to rule of law'. Not in my name I was intrigued to learn of a forthcoming event organised by the President’s Foundation for Social Wellbeing [...]
The Gaming Authority’s reply to the Investigative Reporting Project (Italy)’s report on mafia infiltration into Malta’s gaming industry (carried by La Repubblica and the Times of Malta) was written by two authors. At least that’s my analysis of the clashing style that is immediately noticeable in their statement even on a first reading. Read the MGA [...]
