The title is plagiarised. ‘The March of Folly’ is a book by the American historian Barbara Tuchman. It examines how historical governments and administrations insisted on pursuing policies that were clearly contrary to their self-interest. The leaders of Troy; the Renaissance Popes whose ostentatiousness led to the Protestant Schism and Reformation; British policy in the [...]

Sent in by a reader. Some think of Chris Fearne as a saviour of the Maltese race. It must be the fact that our expectations of Labour politicians are so low, that their best politicians rank high in the mindset of some. For those of us who know what standards mean, Chris Fearne is a total failure. [...]

I’d cheer journalists that feel they need to defy authorities who attempt to punish them for not doctoring their reporting the way the authorities would like them to. But Norma Saliba, who heads the national TV newsroom, is no journalist. She is a propagandist of the Labour Party placed there precisely because she is a [...]

When the PN lurched to the right after the 2017 elections, many of its veteran voters (I say many, not most) complained they could not recognise their party anymore. They often spoke in terms of feeling orphaned. But their political “parent” had not died. It had walked away from its more moderate politics and abandoned [...]

This is not a review of Mark Montebello’s biography of Dom Mintoff. And the first reason it isn’t is that I haven’t read the book. I know from personal experience that there are many people willing to review my books without bothering to leaf through them, and I know just what sort of disservice that [...]

Jason Azzopardi asked Robert Abela how much money the prime minister’s office spent on public relations and communications consultants since Labour came to power in 2013. The details follow: 2013: €8,000 2014: €49,000 2015: €99,509 2016: €109,614 2017: €124,917 2018: €197,697 2019: €234,636 2020: €126,936 2021: €98,796 All of the money spent since 2015 amounts [...]

When the Standards Commissioner agreed with Repubblika that newspaper adverts taken out by Carmelo Abela to promote nothing but himself were unethical and a waste of public money, the minister’s Cabinet colleagues said there were no rules that explicitly said he couldn’t do it. The Commissioner issued rules that said that as a minimum if [...]

Documentary evidence in possession of law enforcement authorities shows that Pilatus Bank was part of the layering infrastructure used to funnel funds into Yorgen Fenech’s Dubai company 17 Black, identified by Nexia BT as a “target client” for Panama companies the firm set up for Keith Schembri and Konrad Mizzi. This morning the Daphne Caruana [...]

I want to share with you this video blog by Peppi Azzopardi reacting to the news that a young woman who attempted suicide in prison died a few days after she was hospitalised for her self-inflicted wounds. The irony is her death will not be listed as a ‘prison death’ by the self-satisfied keepers of [...]

Robert Abela couldn’t go ahead and bring Rosianne Cutajar back into the cabinet after her “temporary resignation”. He would have if he could have. But her “temporary resignation” happened because George Hyzler had started his investigation. She seemed to be convinced she’d be cleared. She wasn’t and the yellow card became red. To her apparent [...]

The Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation published evidence today linking 17 Black with the notorious Azerbaijani "Laundromat" used systemically by the Ilham Aliyev regime for bribery and corruption. The Foundation said this morning that "new information suggests that payments transferred to 17 Black’s account at Noor Bank in Dubai originate from the “Azerbaijani Laundromat,” a network [...]

At 6 pm this evening, Repubblika’s President Robert Aquilina will be speaking to journalists. He’ll be sending a warning to Parliamentarians in the building behind him that quite enough time has passed for the country to act on the apparently untouchable among them who get away with all sorts of crime without any apparent consequence. [...]

From my article in The Sunday Times today: "And now, after the FATF’s greylisting, the ruling party that drove us here is rightly expecting to be confirmed in power for another five years of this rapid backsliding of the economic, and, therefore, social, environmental and political viability of this country. They’re not forcing us to [...]

I wasn’t in the room for the proceedings of Robert Abela’s meeting with social partners at the MCESD this week. We know he told them the government needs their help to clamp down on tax evasion. If it had been any other time the remark would have gone down unobserved or unremarked. After all, whether [...]

I’m full of sympathy for the cause of artists and performers who have been unable to earn a living throughout the covid pandemic and are still not allowed to perform in front of an audience of a reasonably economically viable scale. I share their frustration that some of the instructions by the health authorities about [...]

This one also goes out to the chest-beating patriots who think this would be paradise if only there weren’t any black people. Visual evidence has been published by search and rescue NGOs that shows the Libyan coast guard trained, and aboard infrastructure paid for, by the European Union ram a raft with migrants on board [...]

Maybe this one is for the chest-beating patriots who think this would be paradise if only there weren’t any black people. Two architects are found guilty by a court for not doing their job properly and causing as a result the death of a woman. It was hard enough in a place like this where [...]

When I refer to O&N (One & Net) I refer in very broad terms to all bodies and strategies which contribute to the outward faces of Malta’s major political parties. It is no secret that O&N continually fail the electorate by undermining its capacity to make informed choices about its own future. What might be [...]

Sent in by Gaius. Everyone needs someone qualified to assist them in a legal matter at some point in their life. One may require having their interests defended in Court, or they may require simple advice on a particular legal point. Whatever it may be, they rely on the qualifications and the professional standards of [...]

The title is borrowed from Mark Twain. Last Wednesday, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) published its decision to grey-list Malta, thus putting it on the same scale as Zimbabwe, Syria, Uganda and Sudan. Malta is the first member state of the European Union to be added to the money-laundering grey-list which could cause serious [...]