Malta Today: not thinking straight, as usual

Published: July 27, 2011 at 7:13pm

“Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday resisted calls to sack his chief of staff Edgar Galea Curmi, despite revelations that Galea Curmi had attempted to intervene with Police Commissioner John Rizzo in a criminal case involving Chrus Engerer, the father of former PN councillor Cyrus Engerer.” – maltatoday.com.mt

You know, Malta Today has yet to understand that it is not published in a vacuum. When it fails to lay out the facts, its readers can get them elsewhere.

That is, if they want to do so because they are not the usual sub-literate crew who have been drawn in by Saviour Balzan’s and Matthew Vella’s anti-gONziPn agenda, cluttering up the comments-board with their low-IQ rants.

Malta Today knows exactly why Edgar Galea Curmi called the police commissioner, and what he asked for: a meeting with Chris Engerer’s lawyer.

(Correction to earlier text: Franco Debono is the lawyer for Cyrus, not Chris. I think his defence of Cyrus puts him in a difficult position of conflict of interest).

Perhaps Mr Engerer, despite everything, still believes that the Nationalist Party has the better lawyers just as he thought, up until the end of June, that the Nationalists are the better party.

But despite knowing the facts, Malta Today persists in pretending there are no such facts and if there are, it doesn’t know them. Despite burying the bit about the meeting with the lawyer deep inside its report, it continues to take the tone That This Is Serious.

Its ace reporter Raphael Vassallo was busy at it on his Facebook wall, asking what it could possibly be that Edgar Galea Curmi asked the police commissioner, and suggesting that it might well be something really sinister.

And now, in the piece quoted above, they use the carefully worded “Galea Curmi had attempted to intervene with Police Commissioner John Rizzo in a criminal case involving Chris Engerer”, when the assumption made by anyone reading that, who doesn’t know the facts, will be that Galea Curmi tried to stop the police action against Mr Engerer Snr, a corrupt practice and abuse of power.

The trouble with obfuscators and liars is that they lose track of what they’re doing and saying and end up tangled in a mess of their own making.

On the one hand, the anti-government machine tries to suggest that the police acted on instructions from the government in arresting Engerer Senior.

On the other hand, the same anti-government machine seeks to imply that Edgar Galea Curmi abused his power and influence as the prime minister’s chief of staff to intervene in favour of Mr Engerer Snr.

They need a holiday. Their brains are fried.

Something else – it follows that if, as they claim, Edgar Galea Curmi was wrong to ring the police commissioner, then Cyrus Engerer was wrong to speak to Edgar Galea Curmi and ask him to do so.

You can’t have it both ways, though judging by the antics of the man who was persuaded by the prime minister to eat two kiwis (HUNGER-STRIKING GAY PORN STAR EATS TWO KIWIS AFTER PRIME MINISTER VISIT), some people can and do.




22 Comments Comment

  1. tat-TWO NEWS says:

    (HUNGER-STRIKING GAY PORN STAR EATS TWO KIWIS AFTER PRIME MINISTER VISIT),

    …and also a welcome change from sucking bananas.

    • ciccio2011 says:

      Jeez, two kiwis? He must have been very hungry.

      The Wellington Post headlines this morning: New Zealanders under Shock. Maltese Gay Porn Star Eats Two Kiwis. Unacceptable Bahaviour.

    • Dee says:

      … under a chocolate fountain.

    • WhoamI? says:

      Kiwis are round and hairy. Can’t see the welcome change you mention.

      • H.P. Baxxter says:

        Did our PM go through all that trouble to make a stealth innuendo right under our noses? If he did, if the man really has it in him, then by god I retract everything I wrote about him. This will go down in legend just like that Toni Bajjada fellow or Censu Brared.

  2. Lomax says:

    Have you heard what Saviour Balzan has said on One News? I really can’t stand him.

    [Daphne – Fill us in.]

  3. Two Kiwis says:

    From the same Malta Today report: more playing around with verbs and tenses to create ambiguity and confuse its readers whose linguistic skills are not that great:

    “PN information secretary Frank Psaila was reportedly livid at the story appearing in The Times, and warned Castille that it was high time that someone gave explanations, and also warned about the political consequences should it emerge that the charges were leaked from Castille.”

    SHOULD IT EMERGE THAT THE CHARGES WERE LEAKED FROM CASTILLE – nice one.

    How about this,then?

    SHOULD IT EMERGE THAT EDGAR GALEA CURMI IS REALLY CYRUS’S BOYFRIEND

    SHOULD IT EMERGE THAT LAWRENCE GONZI IS A PORN STAR

    SHOULD IT EMERGE THAT JOSEPH MUSCAT WAS BLACKMAILING CYRUS ENGERER

    SHOULD IT EMERGE THAT MATTHEW VELLA AND SAVIOUR BALZAN HAVE TIED THEIR NECKS TOGETHER AND STEPPED OFF DINGLI CLIFFS

    • ciccio2011 says:

      “SHOULD IT EMERGE THAT MATTHEW VELLA AND SAVIOUR BALZAN HAVE TIED THEIR NECKS TOGETHER AND STEPPED OFF DINGLI CLIFFS”

      That should explain that loud bang heard in that area some weeks ago. As usual, it-Torca got it wrong.

  4. silvio farrugia says:

    Are we truly an E.U democratic country ? If one resigns from the party in government and if one criticise the government one’s family is hounded and one is charged with affairs of long ago.
    Does the PN and government think we are stupid ? These just happened practically after Cyrus Engerer resignation and defection. This ia an other blunder in a long list this government did.
    I expect you Daphne to condemn these remiscent of communism acyts.
    We are disgusted..and please do not think we are fools

    • Joethemaltaman says:

      I really think you should use a spelling checker. But spelling apart, I think you should also try to use your brain once in a while. Oh, and try and watch less Super One.

  5. Edward Caruana Galizia says:

    We’re talking about these people and using big titles and names etc…Sometimes I like to focus on the more human side of things.

    Isn’t there a God-father and a God-son somewhere in all this?

  6. Dee says:

    “You know, Malta Today has yet to understand that it is not published in a vacuum. When it fails to lay out the facts, its readers can get them elsewhere.”

    Maltatoday and One news suffer from the same delusion. It is called “folie a deux” if I’m not mistaken.

    • Harry Purdie says:

      Good stuff. Surely puts the local shit in perspective. Seventy plus kids wiped out by a fanatic. Although I doubt if it will deter the local nitwits, sitting in their sandbox, from doing the ‘pointy finger’ game. Jeez, will we ever grow up?

    • sap says:

      “Malta — an island where a different group of Crusaders, the Knights Hospitalier, withstood a three-year Ottoman siege in the 16th century”

      3 YEARS?

  7. How on earth can ANYONE be allowed to SIT in the corridors of the palace of a Head of State and be filmed without authorisation?

    This is intolerable. We are such stooges!

    These guys behaved no better than that Snoop Dogg person. Are we that desperate to have tourists here that we are ready to bend over backwards like this?

    Where is our self respect?

    Apart from the utter historical gobbledygook, I am fed up of hearing that the 417 people on that Norwegian mass murderer’s list was a mathematical calculation and we need not worry about it.

    I do hope that the Poloce Commissioner is doing his homework and is investigating the very real possiblity that 417 names were supplied deliberately…………makes a change from chasing Engerers and embarrassing Prime Ministers!

    If Mrs Caruana Galizia or I receive an anthrax-filled letter shall we hold Commissioer Rizzo responnsible?

    • John Schembri says:

      Well informed: “and there’s the parliament building in front of the presidential palace..!”
      I think such people should be taken seriously because they bend ‘facts’, history and bible quotations to fit their purpose.

    • H.P. Baxxter says:

      “I am fed up of hearing that the 417 people on that Norwegian mass murderer’s list was a mathematical calculation and we need not worry about it.”

      Wow. Now we’re fed up of not having to worry. What have we come to?

      You’re not alone though, Kenneth Zammit Tabona. You’re in the company of millions who are fed up of hearing that a giant asteroid will not destroy the earth in 2012, that nanobots won’t turn us into grey goo, that the Mona Lisa is just a good old painting, and so on.

      I read on Wikipedia that the population of Malta is 417,608. I do hope the Police Commissioner will investigate the possibility that this list was compiled deliberately. Who gave Jimmy Wales that figure? Who is on this list? Does Jimmy Wales have accomplices in Malta?

  8. Raphael says:

    ‘Its ace reporter Raphael Vassallo was busy at it on his Facebook wall, asking what it could possibly be that Edgar Galea Curmi asked the police commissioner, and suggesting that it might well be something really sinister.’

    Bollocks. What Raphael Vassallo asked on his facebook wall was why the times reported that ‘no request was made’… when the police commissioner himself had just confirmed that galea did indeed make a request. The times in fact amended the mistake in its story a little later. I know it might be a little hard for you to do, but do you think you could resist the impulse to lie at least once in your entire career?

    [Daphne – Go to hell, Raphael. You live off your earnings from a newspaper that has turned manipulating facts, to suit the owners’ agenda, into an art form. Ask yourself why they keep you on the pay-roll. If your history with The Malta Independent is anything to go by, it’s not because you’re productive. Since joining Malta Today you have become a hundred times worse: now you’re not just lazy, but you’re also a paranoid dissembler.

    You start out with an agenda and sort the facts to suit. When the facts do not suit your agenda, you twist them, or leave bits out (it’s called ‘lying by omission’, but then you were probably asleep during this particular lecture).

    Your boss Saviour is particularly good at it – I can still see him sitting in my burned and blackened home five years ago and telling me he would not pursue any story on Arlette Baldacchino’s involvement with Norman Lowell and the extreme right because “she is a friend of my sister”. Nice one. Nice editorial policy for a newspaper: protect our friends and target our enemies.

    You know exactly what you were trying to do on Facebook: cast aspersions and sow doubt about what Edgar Galea Curmi asked the police commissioner. You should know exactly what he asked the police commissioner, for the simple reason that we know he rang the police commissioner because MALTA TODAY ASKED A QUESTION AT THE COMMISSIONER’S PRESS CONFERENCE. And who told Malta Today?

    The only person who knew, the person standing next to Edgar Galea Curmi at the time: Cyrus Engerer. Just as he told your shoddy excuse of a newspaper that the police had raided his father, stupidly informing the world that he’s the son of a heroin addict and egocentrically compounding the stress for his family at this terrible time. And did your boss have the decency and integrity to say ‘Don’t do it because you’ll just continue to ruin your life and your father’s?’

    No, because he’s an ahdar, and so is your editor Matthew Vella, a totalitarian with a grudge against society, posing as a liberal, when he is in the same class of animal as those poor creatures who march about London with placards telling us to Eat The Rich. If that’s what you’ve chosen to make of your life, and those are the kind of people you feel comfortable mixing with, then fine.

    But they have every reason to have a grudge against society and you have none, which makes your behaviour and attitude doubly reprehensible. You started out with so much promise and now look at you.]

    • duncan scerri says:

      So bitter. So twisted. You need a new hobby.

      [Daphne – I agree. That sums up Raphael perfectly. Oh, were you talking to me? Tsk Tsk, the new Liberal Gay Labour Elve propaganda: now that we know for sure that Daphne isn’t an ugly witch because some of our number have seen her around at last, let’s spread the word that she’s bitter and twisted and in need of a life despite the voluminous evidence that she must have at least two lives to cope. Fikhom priza bhala progressivi misoginisti.]

Leave a Comment