Blogs
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We need an inquiry into dangerous foreign influences in Malta
We urgently need a full-scale magisterial inquiry. Its central terms of reference are to find out what on earth the Pakistanis and Bangladeshis ever did to Adrian Delia. One of our foremost leaders clearly knows something about the dangers of...
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Life is not a football match
In his speech at the opening of the forensic year at the Law Courts, Chief Justice Joseph Azzopardi chastised lawyers who open "unnecessary" constitutional cases, going so far as to recommend their disbarment. He further said that final court...
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Muscat's progressive thinking
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat's address to the United Nations Assembly gave food for thought, for reasons that go beyond the statesmanship qualities that many have praised. As relevant as the leitmotifs of "cooperation", "dialogue" and "unity" may...
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Leave that child alone
'Parental alienation' was first defined by Dr Richard Gardner as a syndrome in which one parent (the alienating parent) teaches the child to reject the other parent (the target parent) via conscious and subconscious techniques like...
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Who benefits most?
It just doesn’t read right, look right or feel right. Linking a holiday in one of Kenya’s top resorts with doing voluntary work with ‘kids in need’ locally while teaching them hygiene, tree planting, tailoring and construction, is clearly...
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Where modernity has never been
While the debacle over the so-called Pembroke Towers unfolds, and where crowds and opinions have been literally bussed in, residents have no choice but confront powerful developers, while environmentalists are countered by the vested and political...
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When dreams become nightmares
I had a dream. It started badly. A woman was being beaten. A man was hovering over her, swinging his fists left, right and centre. She cried. She screamed. Neighbours, disturbed yet again by the noise, called the police. In a matter of minutes,...
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One more femicide too many
Last Saturday, Malta woke up to yet another murder of a woman, Lourdes Agius from Paola. She was 35. Her partner was arrested on suspicion, and the usual comments ensued. Apart from the shock of yet another victim of domestic abuse, on social...
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Why don’t you drag out the bullies instead?
The scenes of police forcibly dragging out activists from the Planning Authority’s offices is a stark reminder of the way ‘democracy’ turns its guns on the wrong target in this peculiar country of ours. The activists’ only crime was that they...
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The growth delusion
‘I wish you wouldn’t squeeze so,’ said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. ‘I can hardly breathe.’ ‘I can’t help it’, said Alice very meekly: ‘I’m growing.’ ‘You’ve no right to grow here’ said the Dormouse ‘Don’t talk nonsense’ said Alice...
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No to Brexit, yes to Dexit
When the Brits decided to pull out of the EU they obviously, even if most perversely, thought it was the right decision. The Brits, those old Empire-lovers, sang their hurrahs and said sod off to all those confused and confusing...
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Us migrants
Having worked and lived across Britain and the Unites States for just over 27 years, I have moved between England and Scotland, from the East Coast to the Midwest, while I was never inclined to regard myself as an emigrant, and less so as a...
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That M word
I could write about a humanitarian disaster, slavery or human trafficking and get zero response. But, mention the M word and the balloon goes up as noisy and spectacular as fireworks on a festa night. Maltese politics aside, no subject seems as...
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Let's address the elephant in the room
The dominant (indeed overwhelming) story pumped out in many media outlets and certainly on social media is that the ‘migration reality’ is totally one-sided. ‘They’ arrive (invade) in huge numbers, ‘they’ turn up here ‘illegally’ (even though no...
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Our world in 90 seconds
It took less than 90 seconds to graphically reveal the horrific underbelly of globalisation and of ‘modern’ consumerism and business. In April 2013, the Rana Plaza building in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed, killing 1,134 people and injuring an...
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The online hate mob
I'm an animal lover. I own two Persian cats which I sometimes treat like spoilt brats. I'm an advocate against any forms of animal cruelty. But when I see mass hysteria in reaction to incidents of animal cruelty (especially those spawned from fake...
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'I can take it... but stop attacking the vulnerable'
And it is time to blog again. Why, after months of silence? These last few months have been a tough personal journey for me. One that took me to places where I questioned my dedication to advocacy, as I often felt that nothing will change. I laid...
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'I used my fatness as a joke until I decided enough was enough'
There’s been a lot of talk about bullying recently. For many of us, maybe because of our appearance, bullying was part of growing up. But the fact there has always been some form of bullying doesn't make it justifiable. And in today’s world, with...
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Egrant and politicians' children
As a social scientist I know that missing data is as relevant as the available data, because what is unsaid has a lot to say about what is and is not valued. Recommendations on ‘the’ way forward further to magisterial inquiry on Egrant are no...
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When all bets are off
Some time ago, when the Panama papers revealed two Maltese names which happened to be PEPs, or politically exposed persons, political opinion quickly exerted pressure on Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to force them out of government. Yet, Muscat did...
