No one today thinks our institutions are working well

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2017-12-18T22:25:31+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 22:25|

I don't think there's design in the current chaos in court in the prosecution of three alleged hired assassins accused of killing Daphne Caruana Galizia. I don't think they have a planned strategy to go through all Magistrates until the time limit to indict them expires and they can walk free. I don't think Magistrates [...]

Labour candidate’s husband alleged to have helped Russia spread propaganda in the West

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2017-12-18T21:29:32+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 21:29|

Read this article in The Guardian today. It's about Kevin Ellul Bonici, husband of Labour candidate Sharon Ellul Bonnici and her replacement on Nigel Farage's staff in the European Parliament. He had been in trouble for distributing Russian propaganda with MEPs delivering books slandering the President of Lithuania, a critic of Vladimir Putin. Now he [...]

Third time lucky?

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2017-12-18T16:44:04+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 16:44|

Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit will be presiding on the third attempt to start the compilation of evidence against the three men accused of executing the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Maybe this is the right time. We live in hope. One will expect the lawyers for the accused to remind Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit that [...]

Two magistrates later

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2017-12-18T13:23:38+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 12:13|

A second Magistrate has today recused herself from hearing the compilation of evidence against the three persons accused of executing the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. Today is the thirteenth day of a 30-day limit of time within which a Magistrate must decide there is a prima facie case against them. If that does not [...]

STAR COMMENT: Mit-tajjeb għall-aħjar

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2017-12-18T08:43:09+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 08:43|

I had to bring up here a comment sent by Spa in the comments board of another post. Well, not quite a comment. It's an image: a scan of a comic-strip-style propaganda tool for a Lorry Sant election campaign from 1976 or 1981, I'm not sure which. Quite apart from the iron curtain absurdity of [...]

Hesse Parliament remembers Daphne Caruana Galizia and other journalists killed in the line of duty

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2017-12-18T08:54:17+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 08:35|

The Hesseschen Landtag, the parliament of the German Federal State of Hesse, is honouring journalists who were killed or arrested because of their work with an exhibition of portraits of the journalists. You can view the portraits on the official exhibition website here. Speaking, in German, to Frankfurter Rundschau, Christopher Plass who sits on the [...]

The breakdown of a political marriage

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2017-12-18T08:23:45+01:00Mon, 18th Dec '17, 08:23|

Far be it from me to tell people in an unhappy marriage to stay in it. And the PD-PN alliance, so promising when first announced, had become unhappy after the election result. There are crises marriages do not survive and the humbling defeat of June 2017 was such a crisis. As with all divorces, the [...]

German journalists award Daphne Caruana Galizia with the Prize for Investigative Journalism

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2017-12-16T21:33:05+01:00Sat, 16th Dec '17, 21:33|

Daphne Caruana Galizia has been awarded an honorary Deutscher Reporterpreis for Investigative Journalism by Reporter-Forum in Berlin, Germany. The presentation took place at an awards ceremony this week attended by over 300 reporters and editors from German newspapers like Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Suddeutsche Zeitung and others. In his laudatory speech for Daphne [...]

#occupyjustice statement on today’s activity

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2017-12-16T21:51:47+01:00Sat, 16th Dec '17, 21:28|

Two months to the day when the journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was brutally assassinated by a car bomb, #occupyjustice activists organized a Mass at the chapel in Bidnija, just up the road from where the bomb that killed her went off. The Mass was open to the public and was also attended by members of [...]

TGI Iced Buns Day

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2017-12-16T09:10:45+01:00Sat, 16th Dec '17, 09:10|

Chris Cardona needs to keep his friends close. He has just confirmed his colleague Helena Dalli’s son Luke to chair the Copyright Board. We know that Luke’s mummy wants to be sure her boys are nicely set up on government sinecures. But it helps having a little extra on the side. This complements the other [...]

Two months

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2017-12-18T12:13:10+01:00Sat, 16th Dec '17, 08:01|

I met your family these last two months. I met your sons: smart, strapping, strong and silent. You have left a legacy of industriousness and courage which is as rare as yours was. It is a cliché to say you must be proud. But talking to someone who has been dead for two months is [...]

G Farrugia Calleja: Feeding time at the zoo

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2017-12-15T19:32:49+01:00Fri, 15th Dec '17, 19:32|

As Victor Calleja reminded us in a Facebook post, Chris Fearne was touted as one of the best Labour had to offer - so much so, when you think about it, that he seems to have been positioned to take up the reins when Joseph Muscat went off to bigger and better things. Well, that [...]

Skewering Chris Fearne’s fatal purity

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2017-12-15T09:22:54+01:00Fri, 15th Dec '17, 09:22|

Tim Sebastian made mince meat of Chris Fearne but he was only the sous chef. This recipe was cooked by the prime cook, Joseph Muscat. When Chris Fearne was elected deputy leader in July I wrote a piece for The Sunday Times giving reasons why Chris Fearne's election was a nightmare scenario for Joseph Muscat. [...]

Party funding and incest

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2017-12-14T14:44:11+01:00Thu, 14th Dec '17, 14:44|

The political parties are celebrating record collections in their Christmas charity telethons. Because in this amateur democracy of mediocrity and shadiness, our political parties are funded through ‘donations’ paid at TV events: embarrassing orgies of grotesque mutual congratulations. I have no idea how anyone might manage to sit through these things to watch them as [...]

Withdrawing justices

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2017-12-14T15:07:07+01:00Thu, 14th Dec '17, 14:08|

14:06 Updated with a correction. The three men accused of homicide in the case of the assassination to kill Daphne Caruana Galizia instructed their legal aid to ask the Magistrate presiding over the compilation of the evidence against them to recuse herself. She agreed. Twenty years ago Magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech was in the same [...]

Medals galore!

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2017-12-14T10:48:52+01:00Thu, 14th Dec '17, 09:36|

It was medal giving day again in Valletta and the campaign of diluting the value of recognition by ridiculing the process continued. It has reached a point where few people care anymore. Giving Joe Debono Grech a medal for his service to the republic is so mind boggling that it elicits little more than a [...]

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