This note wasn’t written by a native speaker of Italian
Malta Today has published a note which it claims must have been written by Giovanni Kessler, the OLAF chief, because it is signed ‘Dr GK’.
The note says:
Cari Amici, Dobbiamo incontriamo questa settimana o la prossima. Fatemi sapere, ma il meeting e urgente.
That was definitely not written by anyone who is fluent in Italian, let alone by somebody who is a native speaker of the language, as his mother tongue, because it treats ‘incontrare’ as an intransitive verb when it is transitive and requires and object.
A fluent speaker of Italian, still more a native speaker, would say “dobbiamo incontrarci”, and would not even know to say “dobbiamo incontriamo” because it is an alien construct, a literal translation of the English ‘we have to meet (each other)”.
Or rather, I would say that it is a literal translation of the Maltese “ghandna bzonn niltaqghu (ma’ xulxin)”.
In English (and probably also Maltese, but I don’t dare suggest anything), ‘meet’ is transitive too, but the object has come to be understood over time and so is unspoken.
If the person who wrote that translated it from English rather than Maltese, then he or she doesn’t know much English either.
There’s another dead give-away: a man who starts a note with ‘Cara Amici’ will not sign it ‘Dr’ GK, but G, or at most, GK.
That note is a fraud.
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Have you seen what Saviour Balzan wrote to Giovanni Kessler?
What arrogance. And how dare he speak in our name?
“Here in Malta we are scandalised by your disdain for democratic structures, namely the Europarliamentarians who have called on you to resign. We are surprised, to say the least, at your arrogance in refusing to resign. Never has the EU suffered such a downward spiral in ethical standards.”
Why bother? John Dalli will never get prosecuted.
Not to hammer it in, but were 36,000 voters right about this too?
What does Malta Today want to prove with that note?
Whoever wrote this, as Delboy would say, is a plonker.
Maltese. “Ma il meeting e urgente” is something else an Italian would never say or write. He would say “perche” or “visto che” definitely not “ma”. It does not make any sense in Itslian.
It makes sense in Maltese: ghiduli, imma l-meeting urgenti.
You can see what sort of person wrote that. His surname wasn’t Kessler.
I have just gone through dozens of emails I received from Italian colleagues in the last year or so. In all cases they use Dott. or Dott.ssa rather than Dr. Someone who signs with initials but includes his ‘dottorat’ . . . that’s very Maltese.
And why should Amici and Dobbiamo start with capital letters? Moreover, I would expect Kessler to have an Italian keyboard so he would write è not e. Is he as illiterate as the average Labour elve?
No rocket science here: an Italian would never use Dr which is simply the English contraction of Doctor.
Il-Lahwa Dafni,x-hinu jitlef Varist,ibqa certa li kieku jaf bit -talenti li ghandek biex taghmel translation tajba mit taljan ghall l-ingliz, jara kif jaghmel u jaghtik it-tmexxijja ta l-universita tal-qroqqa taht idejk.zgur li din tkun hatra ta malta taghna ilkoll u ma jgerger hadd wara il-hatra tal kritika l-ohra mariza hux??
mhux fair hux bniedma inteligenti bhalek tibqa b-xejn ara Lou u Mariza hadu.
[Daphne – Rambo, li kieku kont imxennqa ghal xi kariga mal-gvern jew tal-gvern, ma tahsibx li kont nsaqsi ghaliha u nohodha taht il-gvernijiet tal-PN u ma noqghox nistenna sa kemm jitla Joseph? Wara kollox, kif shabek il-Laburisti stess jghidulek, jien kont midhla sew tal-gvern tal-PN, mhux hekk? U kont mhallsa mil-partit, bhal Marisa, mhux hekk jghidu ukoll? Nahseb il-problema (wahda minn fost hafna) li ghandek hija li tahseb li kullhadd huwa ddisprat ghal xi kariga ‘importanti’ biex ihoss li sar xi haga jew li lahaq. Dawk li twieldu diga mlahhqin ma jahsbux l-istess. Meta jiehdu kariga bhal din, jaghmluha biex jifthu ‘channels’ ta’ kuntatt mal-poter/gvern, jew biex izommuhom miftuhin, haga li fiha jien m’ghandi ebda interess. Issa mur tella l-ispjegazzjoni tieghi fuq Facebook, forsi l-‘friends’ tieghek jifmuha.]
Ara int ma tantx tidher li ghandek talenti ghax lanqas il-Malti ma ghandek il-hila tikteb sewwa, Rambo.
Prosit, Daphne, risposta cara, diretta u onesta. Naturalment l-ispizjar milli jkollu jtik u fuq blogs ohra Laburisti qed jghidu l-istess kliem ta’ Rambo, b’mohh ta’ tigiega.
And Kessler would know that amici is not a proper noun and that it shouldn’t start with a capital letter.
Italians would use Dott. never Dr.
Only a Maltese hamallu would use Dr. when signing his name to an informal note or even a formal letter – cif the many instances of persons signing themselves as Mr. on the comments boards on on line newspapers.
This amateurish note must share the same origin as the doctored emails ‘revealed’ in connection with the oil scandal in the lead-up to the last general election.
I have no idea who could have written this.
One thing is certain though.
It was NOT written by an Italian law graduate from the University of Bologna.
I would not have written such a mess myself.
I am just fluent in spoken and written Italian but I am certainly not a graduate in laws from The University of Bologna.
Dr Who? Dr does not exist in Italian.
Apart from the flagrant mistakes, ” MA” is a literal translation of the Maltese imma.
In Italian we would have said pero’.
And yet you are not considering the fact that Kessler is from Trent (in Sued Tirol) and that the note could have been written in a hurry …
[Daphne – You have got to be joking. Native speakers do not suddenly begin writing like semi-strangers to the language because they’re writing in a hurry.I write a thousand words per 30 minutes (write, not transcribe) and I don’t suddenly begin thinking in Franco Debono’s English because of that. Are you going to suddenly start speaking poor Maltese because you’re speaking it quickly?]
When one texts in a hurry from his Black-thingy, one leaves out capital letters, like Frankie Tabone does, not adds them in.
My first impression when I heard Kessler speak was ‘what beautiful Italian he has’. I immediately noticed this because, as strange as it may sound, it is very rare for an Italian to have good Italian, even a person of his calibre. This is due to the many dialectal and other linguistic influences which are foreign to Florentine (now called Modern Italian).
In fact, the Italians with the best Italian tend to be those who are bilingual, hence Tiroleans and Friulans for example, whose native languages – German, Ladin or Furlan – don’t tend to be mixed and confused with Modern Italian when speaking. This is because their native languages are considerably different to Italian. The same cannot be said for Veneti or Neapolitans for example, who notoriously have terrible Italian due to their inability to discern whether a given word or used syntax is from their native tongues or from Italian.
For this reason Min Weber, I do not buy into your theory. There are many other things wrong with the note, but I will leave this for those who studied ‘Italianistica’ to shed light on all of this.
Terrible Italian. I can confirm the appalling, and literally translated, language used here.
Even the syntax is wrong in the last sentence.
The register is all over the place too, from teenage texting to meeting which is posh and pretentious.
Thought Johnny Cash was dead and buried. Forgot that zombies can rise from the dead, with a little help from their friends.
Johnny was known to get rhythm when he got the blues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roug4qG7qCY
Amici is normally a word reserved for persons outside work and who are friends in one’s private life. “I miei amici.” Denotes informality.
If this email refers to work colleagues or business friends, they are referred to as “colleghi,” without being too formal, otherwise it becomes “Eggregi signori.”
He wouldn’t use amici since he is not a parish priest organising an outing for youths, but an EU official.
Anybody who trusts Malta Today should have his/her head examined.
For Malta’s credibility’s sake it is time to blow the Dalli & Saviour Balzan relationship out of the water. Far too many people are being misled by Malta Today and it’s RedDalli agenda.
When I saw that message in the papers I remember thinking that whoever wrote it needed some lessons in Italian.
At the time I was only skimming though, and I didn’t realize that the note was purported to have been written by Kessler himself.
If that’s the case then it is screamingly obvious that that note is a forgery. And a bad one at that.
In addition to the valid points in the article, I daresay that a native Italian speaker would not have used the word “meeting”. “Riunione” or “convegno” would have been the natural words to use. Perhaps even “incontro”, depending on the context, but never “meeting”.
I would also say that the note was not written by a native English speaker either. In my experience, when most English speakers have bothered to learn a language well enough to write that note, they make it a point not to fall back to using English, especially in written communication.
Maltese speakers who are more familiar with English than Italian will readily do that however.
What is it with Maltatoday and fake emails anyway? These people have really scraped the barrel and then some.
Imagine the laughs at the depot when Johnny Cash hurried in and told them he had some top notch evidence.
Che porcheria!
U mhux xorta, l-aqwa li nhawdu l-borma. GK mhux Gayle Kimberley wkoll? Dik ghax ghandha tikteb bit-Taljan?
Were it not tragically hypocritical, Balzan’s comment below from his response to Kessler should elicit a few laughs.
“I take pride in being part of the free press which respects the judicial concept where one is presumed innocent until found guilty.”
Who gave Balzan this much coveted freedom? Mintoff, KMB, Sant, Joseph tal-Fejsbuk? No, it was Fenech Adami’s true leadership that took us out of the abyss that was the police state we had pre-1987, and then continued by Gonzi.
If I had one thing to reproach to Gonzi was that he should have paid more attention to the “felul” which then became a malignant growth which were only cut off when the disease had progressed too far. Yet, in retrospect, Gonzi was busy keeping the country afloat (actually thriving) while the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Libya were brewing to the South, and the economies of Europe were going to hell in the North.
Yet, the “switchers” thought it was time for change and now we have a PM which is more interested in staging dramatically set-up conferences in the doorway at Castille than doing any governing. Ah, life was so much easier as a Super 1 hack!
In the first 100 days we have see everything but the “meritocracy” which was the buzz word in the brilliantly staged campaign.
I challenge anyone to show us one single appointment or action which the government has taken in these 100 days that was based on meritocracy or a good policy decision.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/dalligate/OLAF-chief-denies-involvement-in-secret-chats-MaltaToday-replies-20130621
Balzan tries but he’s a complete give away.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/dalligate/Kesslergate-Secret-chats-revealed-20130619
“Former police commissioner John Rizzo was in possession of evidence of online chats and email exchanges, which ALLEGEDLY …”
“Among the persons who discussed Dalli in the secret chats, one person…” now Balzan treats alleged correspondence as fact. I think Balzan made a legal slip here.This should have read “Among the persons who ALLEGEDLY discussed Dalli in the secret chats, one person…”
“Replying to Kessler’s letter, Managing Editor Saviour Balzan said MaltaToday always resorted to reporting facts, including the fact that the Maltese Police Commissioner stated that if he had acted in the way Kessler did, he would have been kicked out of his job.
The Police Commissioner said this in an interview on German TV.”
Reporting an opinion or comment does not mean that the Police Commissioner proved some fact.
How can the brain of the CHIEF of Malta Today be so stupidly muddled?
Barroso could have never accepted someone who was implicated (knowingly or unknowingly) in the snus scandal. People would have thought that Barroso had his finger in the pie.
I note that at first Dalli resigned because he did not know what facts Barroso had in his hand.One thing’s for sure that Dalli knew and met frequently with the people involved in this scandal. Public perception dictated that Dalli should resign until everything clears.
The case against Dalli’s friend ,Silvio Zammit continues.
If Dalli insists that he is so innocent why did he resign in the first place? Was he afraid that by doing so he would lose all the benefits which he is still enjoying. Or was he afraid of being found guilty and be sacked and will lose everything.
[Daphne – Resignation has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. This is the point which underpins the entire debate, and which Maltese people consummately fail to understand. One resigns when holding onto one’s position brings that position, and/or the organisation as a whole, into difficulties and perhaps disrepute. The accusations alone are enough to tarnish that position, and in Dalli’s case, there was more. It is just not done for an EU Commissioner to consort with tools like Silvio Zammit and to conduct meetings at his kiosk. How hard is this to understand? There are resignation matters, and there are criminal offences. The two are separate and distinct and you don’t need the latter for the former.]
Definitely not written by an Italian.
Balzan is another c*nt (so many, so many).
Someone gave Dalli some chat logs which he gave to the police which Balzan has in his possession.
Why not leak them like he leaked the (minus 2 pages) OLAF report?
Because they aren’t real, that’s why not.
Please consider this when you think about Dalli.
On 5th July last year, OLAF investigators interviewed Silvio Zammit at his restaurant in Sliema, as a ‘person concerned’, or what we might call a ‘suspect’.
The next day, 6th July, John Dalli telephoned Zammit and they spoke for 15 minutes – a quarter of an hour.
John Dalli is asking us to believe that at no time during this chat did they talk about the OLAF interview that Silvio Zammit had undergone the day before.
Do you believe him?
Muscat obviously does.
[Daphne – I don’t think Muscat believes him. Perhaps here it is more a matter of knowing the truth and not really caring about what the implications are.]
But Kessler and Barroso didn’t and that, among other reasons, is why they asked Dalli to resign.
There are lots of other bits of the investigation in the OLAF report that will lead you to ask other questions if you bother to read it.
I know now to assume everything in Malta Today is lying bullsh*t until proven otherwise.
If Muscat has some crucial evidence about Dalli , he will keep it for a rainy day. Dalli has to work hard for his new master.
SB is this what you understand by investigative journalism? No wonder few care to read Malta Today.
The comment by Mr. Antoine Vella is so true. Whoever knows a little about Italy and the Italians know that they use the word Dott. or better still “Dottore” but rarely or never “Dr”. The term “Dr.” is so Maltese.
Of course I am not saying that the journalists concerned did any wrong doing. Everybody is presumed innocent until proved guilty. But that does not mean that I do not have my serious doubts that this so called alleged conversation between Kessler and OPM is a complete fraud.
Indeed, that was not written by a native Italian speaker. But who said Giovanni Kessler is a native Italian speaker?
Kessler sounds like a German surname. There are German speakers in the Trentino Alto Adige region of Italy. Their Italian is quite unsatisfactory. I have seen roads signs spelt wrongly in Italian in that region.
Interestingly, the nouns in the message above are capitalized, e.g., Cari Amici…just like in German (Liebe Freunde)!
[Daphne – Oh indeed, random, there are hopelessly uneducated people everywhere, including in Malta, where people are constantly exposed to English yet still speak pidgin. But Giovanni Kessler is not uneducated, is he. If these mistakes are immediately noticeable to Maltese people who are exposed to Italian only through school and the television, then it stands to reason that an educated Italian, even if he grew up in Trentino, would never make them. He doesn’t actually live in Trentino does he.]
He studied law at the University of Bologna and was a prosecutor in the Italian courts for several years. Do you seriously believe that he wrote this…or that he doesn’t speak Italian as a native?
There is another Dr. GK in the picture by the way.
Just confirmed. Giovanni Kessler is from the Trentino. His mother language is German, but he also speaks Italian.
Think of him as one of the many Maltese who write a sentence or two in English (not their native tongue) and mess up the grammar, diction etc..
[Daphne – Oh don’t be ridiculous. Honestly. A person of that level of education, raised in northern Italy, does not ‘mess up’ his Italian or make mistakes that are pointed out by Maltese people with an O-level knowledge of the language. The ‘many Maltese who write a sentence or two in English’ and mess up the grammar (there is no diction in writing) are by definition uneducated. Kessler is anything but. Don’t scrape the bottom of the barrel. It makes you look desperate – and idiotic.]
Have a look at Kessler’s bio: http://ec.europa.eu/anti_fraud/about-us/organisation/senior-management/cv/kessler_en.htm
If he doesn’t know how to speak and write proper Italian, then I don’t know who does.
random, I am Maltese and live in Malta and my mother tongues are English and Maltese, but I would never make that silly mistake of writing “dobbiamo incontriamo”.
Furthermore, over the years I have received much correspondence from Italian people, both through work and privately, and I can assure you that that note was NOT written by anyone who has ever been in close contact with Italy or the Italian language.
You are truly scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Kessler would have communicated in English with Maltese people.
Why would an EU high ranking official risk his good reputation/standing by writing in bad grammar?
The fraudster who has written this note has never studied Italian and just used a translation software.
@ random
Let’s for argument’s sake assume that Kessler can’t string together a grammatically correct sentence in his own language (or one learned later in life) even if his life depended on it.
So why would a person (and a German to boot) in his position write in a language in which he is not proficient, and leave himself open to ridicule? This isn’t some Burmurrad hick we’re talking about, trying to impress Maltese electors with his abilities, but Giovanni Kessler, OLAF investigator.
Is Italian his mother tongue? Wikipaedia mentions his involvement in promoting the European region of Tyrol, a subject usually of interest to Tyrolians, i.e. Teutons – and Kessler is a Germanic name, of course. I think he’s probably bi-lingual.
In German all nouns start with a capital letter, of course and German native-speakers, especially beginners, often do this when writing in other languages. However, ‘Kessler’ wrote ‘settimana’ with a small ‘s’ and ‘meeting’ with a small ‘m’.
I’m not saying whether the note is genuine or not. I don’t have enough info to judge.
[Daphne – Tim, bilingual people speak both languages fluently as you well know. And if he was brought up speaking both German and Italian, that means he’s a native speaker of both and not onlyt bilingual, just as, say, I am native speaker of both Maltese and English, which is why, despite popular perception to the contrary, I don’t use ‘Sliema English’ or literal translations from one language into the other.]
Very obviously a Google translation.
One would hardly say ‘cari amici’ but rather. Gentilissimi amici if on very close terms.
‘Ci dobbiamo incontrare’ would be correct Italian
‘Meeting’ is hardly used by an Italian but rather ‘riunione’ or ‘incontro’ are the most common terms.
As for ‘Dr’ Antoine is so very right. It is never used by an Italian.
Whoever wrote it is so illiterate that a simple line in Italian is beyond his/her capabilities. This surely rules out Kessler or Kimberly.
Saviour Balzan is so biased that he ignores this fact. Either that or he’s stupid beyond redemption but I doubt that.
Saviour Balzan’s reply to Giovanni Kessler is inappropriate and very worrying.
What right does Balzan have to reply on behalf of all Maltese especially after he himself messed up this whole issue?
I for one think that Dalli is not innocent in this case.
If he were innocent, he would not have used spurious ‘psycho-social’ excuses to stay away from Malta and police investigation/trial until Muscat was elected prime minister, after a campaign which he himself actively participated in.
I do not feel comfortable with the declaration and comments of the police commissioner especially after Muscat, in true socialist regime style, decided to remove all three investigating officers.
I do not think we have yet come to the end of this saga. Only time will tell. Let us just hope that the truth will finally surface and he who did wrong will finally pay his dues.
Besides, Saviour Balzan has not understood the investigative role of Kessler.
Balzan continuously makes the mistake that this was a criminal investigation, which it was not. Kessler, acting for OLAF, an entity of the EU with no judicial or prosecution powers, had a duty to carry out a number of fact finding tasks, which he did, and to report on them.
If in this process, Kessler found elements of “circumstantial evidence” which he regarded, famously, as “unambiguous”, he had a duty to report them.
Kessler’s role was not that of investigating for the prosecution or for the criminal court. He investigated for administrative purposes, and in fact, his report, which was confidential, went to the President of the Commission and was not made public except by Malta Today itself.
The questions which Kessler was trying to resolve can probably be summarised as:
Was there any evidence of any link, or communication, between Dalli and Silvio Zammit/Gayle Kimberley?
Was there any evidence of meetings between Dalli and Zammit/Gayle Kimberley?
Was there any evidence between those links and meetings and the snus allegations?
Of course, should the Head of OLAF be removed, the cannon will then turn onto Barroso. This is the ultimate target, let us not fool ourselves.
Kessler does not sign Dr/Dott or whatever in official correspondence (see Kessler’s letter to MT), let alone private conversations “between friends”.
According to Jurgen Balzan’s report, the “Cari Amici” note was written by “L.O.U.I.S”, not “Dr.GK”.
So why did Malta Today not give us a few of “Dr.GK”‘s own chat excerpts, rather than pick and choose someone else’s “Italian” lines and mention another member in the chat signing “Dr.GK” to try to implicate Kessler?
Given that these transcripts came from John Dalli, it’s more than probable that there is nothing in them transcripts which would tie Kessler with those chats, otherwise we would have been regaled with a special Malta Today edition with headline-sized print covering the whole of the front page, and not this contortionist’s act to try and make a connection.
Reflecting on the opening salvo in Balzan’s reply to Kessler (“I am amused, to say the least, that you accuse us of insinuations when throughout your public declaration and investigations you sought to base your accusations on circumstantial evidence.”), it’s not difficult to see where Balzan is coming from.
That’s not “free press”, Mr Balzan, as you harp on about. That’s IRRESPONSIBLE press.
Maybe be the same fraudster who signed AG?
Well done, Daphne. On another note, why is it that all that Malta Today seem to be concerned with is Dalligate, Olafgate etc? It`s as if whatever else is going on in Malta is suddenly of no news value?
Well it seems that they cannot find anything wrong with the present PL government, and they have run out of arguments relating to the last PN government.
Malta today has a vested interest in Dalli, and vice versa.
Sarebbe possibile avere questa presunta nota di G.Kessler,
Sul sito web di Malta Today non riesco a trovarla.
Grazie!
Eccoci !
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/dalligate/Kesslergate-Secret-chats-revealed-20130619
He might be a native speaker but even native speakers can make ridiculous grammatical mistakes, especially in informal settings. Just look at the Maltese Facebook statuses by our politicians.
[Daphne – The average Maltese person is uneducated, even those with university degrees. Maltese politicians are neither an example of education nor of eloquence.]
Although Italians are using the word ‘meeting’ I find the use of this word in this sentence out of place, ‘reunione’ is still used in business circles.
Its riunione in Italian, reunione in Spanish.
Thanks David, like Kessler, Italian is not my forte.
Silent partnership, perhaps?
For those who are in doubt whether Kessler can speak fluent Italian, this is the Olaf press briefing given by Kessler in October 2012 regarding the resignation of John Dalli.
Go to 20:25 when an Italian journalist asks a question in Italian and Kessler replies in perfect Italian (at 22:20).
http://ec.europa.eu/avservices/video/player.cfm?ref=89025
It is glaringly apparent from Kessler’s accent and manner of speaking that his primary language is Italian and not German.
The most telling differentiator is his inability to pronounce the “h” sound, but apart from that most definite clue, his accent is most definitely Italian.
I sat for my Italian O level 31 years ago but managed to notice that “Dobbiamo incontriamo” was wrong.
If this chat was so urgent it would have been in commanding Italian “Dobbiamo incontrarci”
Not to piss on your argument here, Watson, but if Kessler has such poor command of Italian, as you suggest, why would he write to his multinational OLAF colleagues in Italian?
Moriarty has made a common mistake among criminal masterminds here. He went one step too far. Kessler is Italian, thought he, so I’ll make up a fake note in Italian, because if I faked it in English no one would believe it came from Kessler.
I think I shall have to dip into my Persian slipper for some refreshment after this.
You sent me checking on Google about Moriarty.
This post is based on a misleading premise as according to the Malta Today report, this Italian phrase was written or stated by soemone called L.O.U.I.S. to someone else called G.K. who maybe Dottor or Kessler or Doctor Kimberley.
Bilingual persons rarely speak both languages perfectly. We know that in Malta many who usually speak Maltese speak bad English and the opposite is also true.
An Italian friend told me that the Italians who live near Austria usually speak German and speak bad Italian. Naturally one can still find Italians from this region who speak perfect Italian. as may be the case with Dottor Kessler.
[Daphne – ‘An Italian friend told me’. I hate to be cheeky, but would that be the same Italian friend who led you to expect a national parliament house in Barcelona and Strasbourg? The only people who speak languages perfectly are educated people, irrespective of whether they are bilingual or not, David. You can speak one language and speak it atrociously. Malta is full of them – many tens of thousands of the inarticulate and the ungrammatical, with a vocabulary of 100 words.]
This has nothing to do with speaking perfect Italian. Whoever writes “dobbiamo incontriamo” is a dunce.
I was not just speaking of national parliaments. The Strasbourg one is supernational while the Barcelona one is that of Catalunya. There is no “Italian connnection”.
[Daphne – It is national parliaments that are the attraction, David, and which have a particular symbolism, and then only when they are architecturally significant.]
Supranational or international. Super is for supermarkets.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/supernational
Poor Kessler, to have his language skills questioned by us in this way. Saviour Balzan has a lot to answer for, not least doing his utmost to lead the contra faction currently expressing themselves in Brussels and Spain down the wrong path on a Google search or Twitter retweets on the matter.
A newspaper is meant to carry more weight than a blog, but perhaps it may be pertinent to point out, for the sake of foreign visitors to this focal point, that in Malta it is only this blog that is trustworthy when it comes to political reporting and that Saviour Balzan is just a lackey of the Labour Party and toes their line.
They don’t give up. They keep lying till you believe them.
Italians are very proud of their language. That is a fact. That note is scam. It has to be malta today all over again.
Well it comes down to this .. who bankrolled Malta Today? How has that newspaper, with relatively little income from advertising, managed to survive financially?
Who has the money and the motivation and most to gain from Malta Today? Whose agenda has Malta Today promoted? Why was it so hell bent on destroying Gonzi and certain individuals, and so keen to stay away from criticising others?