[Daphne – John, I can’t understand your way of thinking, either, so that makes two of us. Labour is not being prudent. Labour is storing up ammunition for use at a more opportune moment, rather than wasting it now. It is wholly incorrect to say that ‘mud-slinging’ – silly term – ‘always backfired’. Quite the contrary, it always worked for Labour. The ‘mud-slinging’ of 1996 was phenomenally successful when coupled with Vince Farrugia’s anti-VAT hysterics, and the ‘mud-slinging’ of 2008 did a pretty good job of eroding the Nationalist Party’s voter-base, too. ‘Mud-slinging’ doesn’t work for those who are defending their position, and so Labour was at a loss in 1998. And 2003 was a single-issue election. And no, in this case I think Labour is being irresponsible in not raising the issue in a direct way, which means without ‘mud-slinging’ or ulterior motives. If you’re happy living in a country where the non-estranged brother of a cabinet minister is hauled up for drug trafficking and the cabinet minister pretends he doesn’t know anything about it, even though both brothers do lots of business in Libya and the cabinet minister brother runs a Portomaso office especially for doing business with Libya, then fine. I’m not at all happy with the situation myself. Of course, you can argue that it would be much worse if he weren’t hauled up before the courts because that would mean he was being protected, but let me just wonder aloud about long these shenanigans have been going on, and what sort of relationship do the two have that the allegedly criminal brother feels he can behave like this even though his brother is a long-time cabinet minister. I say ‘even though’ when what I really want to say is ‘because’, given that this is how it’s coming across to people, and that’s just the problem. You might be naive about drug-trafficking. I’m not.]

[Daphne – Not at all. Labour is pants as always. Here am I, doing Labour’s job and pointing out the very things that Joseph Muscat should be saying, while he crusades with Astrid Vella against an underground museum. Labour should speak now or forever hold its peace. But I think that Labour is holding its peace now so as to have greater ammunition later, because in a campaign called Direzzjoni Success it’s not the present problem of having a minister with an allegedly drug-trafficking brother that concerns the party, but how this information can be used in an electoral campaign.]

Do you know Achmed, the Dead Terrorist?
Similar to a Muppet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwOL4rB-go

[Daphne – The answer to your quandary lies in your last sentence. It doesn’t take a gigantic leap of the imagination to realise that this is precisely how he sells himself, even if without his brother’s knowledge – especially, I would imagine, in Libya.]

[Daphne – Of course you can be prosecuted and convicted for your intentions. Conspiracy to commit a crime is just that. You can be prosecuted for plotting to rob a bank, prosecuted for planning a murder, prosecuted for organising a terrorist attack – even if all your plans fall through.]

[Daphne – It also has parallels with the Godfrey Ellul case: he imported cocaine but was convicted for smuggling emeralds, because he claimed that this is what he thought he was doing. His character witness in court, who said that Ellul would never do such a vile thing as import cocaine? Noel Arrigo, then a judge already.]