https://youtu.be/2wMY5btv8Nk

https://youtu.be/3iJMdyZ4fN8

Here is a video of an event organised by Scottish PEN to mark the Day of the Imprisoned Writer (15th November). The speakers are Rebecca Vincent (Reporters Without Borders), Cat Lucas (English PEN), Leela Soma (Scottish PEN), Ricky Monahan Brown (Scottish PEN), and Lizzie Eldridge (Scottish PEN), who read from the work of Daphne Caruana Galizia. [...]

Photos by Darrin Zammit Lupi.

The press is reporting the response filed by the Malta Security Service to a claim by one of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s alleged assassins that his phone had been tapped illegally. The MSS is saying it wasn’t. That’s not what this is about. The MSS is being represented in court by a lawyer with a private [...]

Man, it’s Lord of the Flies out there. I barely look at Facebook anymore and I found it’s better for my health. I use an app attached to my blog to post stuff on Facebook because too many people still have the habit of only considering as news what comes up on their Facebook feed. [...]

Simon Mercieca probably thinks I avoid commenting on the more outrageous things he writes because the campaign of harassment headlined “Stop writing about Simon Mercieca (and Yorgen Fenech)” has convinced me not to. I avoid writing about the madness in his writing out of compassion, for him mostly. Sometimes though, I have to make an [...]

It turns out the EU Commission already clarified that someone in John Dalli’s situation does not enjoy immunity from prosecution for crimes he committed while serving as an employee of an EU institution. It did this 16 years ago when €60 million from the manufacturer of chewing tobacco wasn’t even a twinkle in Peppi tal-Imqaret’s [...]

What the fuck just happened in the court that should have heard charges against John Dalli? First, the disclaimer. The esoteric priestlike capabilities of warranted professionals are rightly respected by amateurs like me. If I’m going to ask for a doctor’s opinion about some ailment, I have no right to weigh years of medical training [...]

Weakness in attitude becomes weakness of character. - Albert Einstein That Robert Abela is a weakling is a known fact. He’s been prime minister for nearly two years now and his actions or rather his inactions and his preference for sitting on the fence prove just how puny he is. Our premier thinks that ignoring [...]

Some Practical suggestions for the Prime Minister about how to spend some of the National Budget: Maltese citizens do not need to travel free on buses. What we need are more buses – so that we do not have to wait twenty minutes or more for a bus to pass, usually ‘full up’. Get out [...]

There’s been a ghostly silence since the publication of the first part of this investigation on 23 September, the same month in which the AUM was supposed to have its license renewed. There’s been no further response from Clemson University, supposedly in charge of Quality Assurance services for the AUM as set out in the [...]

So, Alex Dalli “suspended himself” from the post of director of prisons. Funny this auto-suspension thing. It must be a uniquely Maltese concept. Not enough for us the textbook options of being fired (which Alex Dalli should have been) or suspended pending an investigation (which doesn’t seem to be the case here), or resigning, leaving [...]

The humour just writes itself. Angelo Gafà has just been awarded a medal for "long and efficient service". Technically the medal is awarded by the home minister. In practice he's awarded it to himself. It's a prestigious medal indeed when famously a recent awardee was Ian Abdilla the guy whose idea of fighting crime was [...]

From Times of Malta’s report of Bernard Grech’s comments today: “No one, and I repeat no one” in favour of abortion will be allowed to “remain in the party, or represent the party”, for as long as he is party leader, he said. That quote is an underlining emphasis on his earlier point that the [...]

Yesterday I reported on the introduction of a new tax law that allows people selling property to use the income from the sale to settle tax arrears, getting an exemption from paying tax on the sale itself. I criticised the measure as unfair because, among other things, it is designed around the needs of construction [...]

Politicians moving out of their offices to work for people they contracted or regulated as ministers behave unethically and if they find it impossible to restrain themselves from doing this there should be some inbuilt penalties that deter them or punish them. But this is not what Joseph Muscat did. He’d like us to think [...]

Yet another suicide has been ticked on the prison director’s unprecedented record today. Alex Dalli must feel so proud. The circumstances of the event are not known and I will not speculate on the details. I will just say that the fascist tyranny that runs our prison has no place in our democracy. Alex Dalli [...]

Repubblika's President Robert Aquilina visited the offices of the financial crime investigations department to draw their attention to reports on The Sunday Times of Malta on payments made to Joseph Muscat by VGH soon after his resignation as prime minister. This is Robert Aquilina's statement:

Like any other journalist who has asked the police questions not concerning their annual parade or PR exhibitions of their dog unit, I too got my share of standard replies like the one Times of Malta quoted this morning in response to its questions about Joseph Muscat. Are the police investigating Sunday’s revelations that Joseph [...]