Tripoli, 26 October 2014:

TV and radio stations broadcasting to Libya to be set up in Malta according to Omar Al-Guweri, the head of the Media and Culture Authority. He was part of the delegation to Malta last week led by Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni for talks with the Maltese government and UN Special Representative Bernardino Leon as well as with the US Ambassador Deborah Jones.

Guwairi told the Libya Herald he signed a number of media agreements with the Maltese Minister for Home Affairs and National Security, Emmanuel Mallia, among them one to reactivate a radio station in Malta, closed since the revolution. There was also agreement to open an office for the state-owned Wataniya TV channel on the island.

Its Tripoli broadcasting offices have been taken over by Libya Dawn but it has now started rebroadcasting from Tobruk.

“We have a very good media facility in Malta but unfortunately it has been neglected,” Guwairi said of the radio station.

Malta and Libya had also agreed, he added, to ease the process for Libyan journalists to go to Malta. Likewise, he was looking to Maltese reporters to go to Libya to cover the news there.

“We have invited Malta to send its press to visit the government in Beida and the parliament in Tobruk, to give them the opportunity to observe their work,” he said, adding that the whole world was welcome to go and see what was happening.

The Media and Culture Authority replaced the ministries of information and culture in the recent cabinet reshuffle. It was one of a number of authorities set up following the HoR’s demand that the government contain just ten ministries.

Read more: http://www.libyaherald.com/2014/10/26/libyan-government-signs-media-agreements-with-malta/#ixzz3HI5gxGPl

Some faction’s probably pledged allegiance to Da3sh and taken up the brand name.

And Islamic police too.

Not just an Islamic radio station: Islamic courts, ministries of education and “Islamic services” (sic), a finance department, and they’ve shut down institutions they consider unislamic.

Combine this with boat loads of illegal migrant males with unknown provenance or even identity verification, coming in monthly and accepted willy-nilly as a matter of blind routine and the Maltese people have voted themselves in a lit powder-keg with a short fuse with all the players on cue for the action to start.

This is a very poor gambling choice Mr Jo, with very bad odds.

If Muscat thinks he is one of the big boys, he should take a quick trip to Libya and negotiate directly with the militias in charge in Tripoli.

They might even give him the opportunity to sign an MOU on Libya’s oil at cheap prices, given that they seem to be in control of it. Kurt Farrugia can orchestrate some photo sessions to dazzle the media.

I’ve been trying to tweet-wake Manuel ‘Multicam’ Mallia. To no avail.

Oh and we had to find out through a Libyan Arabic-language newspaper.

Isis have set up theirs in Derna.