“Quand j’entends, par exemple, madame Taubira dire qu’elle n’est pas au courant (du fond du dossier), elle nous prend pour des blaireaux. – Gilbert Collard. One hot issue in French politics right now is that of Sarkozy’s tapped phone. It turns out that...

The upcoming French municipal elections have unearthed a huge problem. In many municipalities there is a dearth of candidates, particularly for the post of Mayor. In the Gironde area 45% of the smaller communes are still without a candidate – and it does not stop there. The main reason...

The only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government strong enough to protect the interests of the people, and a people strong enough and well enough informed to maintain its sovereign control over the government. – Franklin D. Roosevelt spread the word:TweetEmailPrintMoreLike...

The Supreme Court building in New York sports a quote spread along its facade. Attributed to George Washington it states “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government”. There are many other quips in similar vein that can be formed into a digest of...

Back in 1992, Vaclav Havel was the President of a reborn Czechoslovakia. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Iron Curtain was still fresh in recent memory and Havel’s new republic was making its way towards the ideal of “Western Democracy”. Fukuyama might be...

The works of a psychopath in Mosta (whether direct or through a hired hand) have tickled the curiosity of the Maltese public. It does not take much for anything to get onto the media these days (as I discovered to my chagrin thanks to a what I thought would be an innocuous Eurovisionjoke...

Criticising the workings of a government or an opposition is what this blog has done with consistent regularity. No matter who was in “power” the line taken from these pages has always been consistent. Also, very consistently, this blog has always managed to ruffle some feathers in...

Minister Mallia will in all probability not resign. He went on record during the “secret” negotiations regarding the IIP scheme that should a residency requirement be included then he would resign from his ministerial position. We are not supposed to know about it  because the...

The Russians had an interesting expression while under the communist rule. They would say that even the past is unpredictable – because it kept getting rewritten in order to better fit the needs of whoever was in power at some particular moment. I was reminded of this when I read about...

In the beginning was the Rome Treaty. 60 odd years down the line the visions that helped forge together that agreement need some new PR. The first steps of European integration were built on the idea that if the main strategic resources were pooled together (coal, steel, atomic energy) and if...

Inevitably, the shift of the “Citizenship for Sale” controversy to the European Parliament has brought along with it a severe case of tabloid-itis to the Maltese discussion fora and social media. The British tabloid press is hugely responsible for a variety of EU myths and thrives...

In an article entitled “Sharing explicit selfies without consent may be made illegal“, the Times reports that Social Dialogue Minister Helena Dalli has reacted to the current furore on selfies. Minister Dalli is quoted as saying that “the sharing of explicit material without...