It’s Saturday morning in Luxembourg City and I’m readying for another session of keyboard bashing. The ritual includes the thick espresso lungo and a quick read through of the grapevine to see whether I’ve missed any last minute oddities coming from the island. Sure enough, even though...

Last Thursday’s UN Resolution 1973/11 did more than just belatedly clear the Libyan air of the one-sided aerial assaults by Gaddafi’s troops. The resolution also cleared the air of a lingering suspicion that the scheming Colonel had managed to get away with hypnotising the international...

There is a German expression “Einmal ist keinmal” which translates to “once does not count” or “once is nothing”. If something happens only once then it might as well not have happened at all. Milan Kundera’s “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is an examination of human...

“To men fighting for their lives day by day in the foulest of physical conditions it was nauseating to read, day after day, the lying official communiqués in the Press.” I came across this quote in a book by BBC journalist John Simpson (Unreliable Sources, Macmillan 2010) that is turning...

“What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalisation of Western liberal democracy as the final form of...

So the Rais is definitely out and has rushed off to a caravanserai off Sharm el-Sheikh. Thirty years have passed since Sadat’s assassination (and Mubarak’s rise to power), 59 since Nasser’s 1952 revolution and 92 since the first Egyptian revolution (of the modern era) of 1919....

Much as I respect Chris Said and his work, I cannot help thinking that the whole “let’s build a tunnel from Malta to Gozo” is the latest in a series of red herrings commissioned specifically by Gonzi’s PN. Ever since the hullabaloo about the Coupé Convertible Opera House subsided,...

Last Thursday I flew to Malta from Brussels on an Air Malta flight. Having braved the trials and tribulations of the Brussels ring and having risked being stuck in the suburb of Zaventem (GPS alternative routes are not always fortunate), I enjoyed the comfort of a flight and meal on our oft...

Almost 20 years have passed since I used to hitch rides to the university in the evening to attend a series of lectures by Professor Oliver Friggieri. If my memory serves me right, the lectures were about creative writing in Maltese but in actual fact they served as a real eye opener that went...

Hermes the classical Greek God − and not the modern sartorial homonym − had “messenger of the Gods” as his main job description. Clad in nowt but his birthday suit, and often depicted with wingèd limbs, his main business was supposed to be that of the transmission of information among...

Between viruses and price hikes, I get the feeling that many people are approaching this period of resolutions and promises with a dampened spirit and weak will. The manner by which we calculate the passage of time has always meant that sometime around the period of 25 December (the ancient...

To those who have already broken their New Year resolution. To those who are still holding on. To those who are determined to save on electricity bills. To those who are reading this in the comfort of an electric stove. To those who will wait until the Three Kings have come before starting to...