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Bomb kills journalist who exposed Malta's ties to tax havens
- chatwinra 9y agoDoes anyone know or have any good ideas about how to donate money to her cause? (her website doesn't have any donate links on it). I often find with stories like this, that are horrifying, that the least I can do to show my support is donate money to the cause in the hope that it can help those brave enough to pursue it.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoThe EU should send in the EU Army and remove that stupid Russian Mobster Visa giving halfwait thats in charge of Malta. The place is rotten.
- Numberwang 9y agoAnother one?
- icebraining 9y agoNo, it's the same. I think the only new information is that the FBI has agreed to help with the investigation.
- covercash 9y agoThis was an assassination, yet not a single article about this contain that word.
- icebraining 9y agoIs there really a significant difference between "assassination" and "slaying"?
- thriftwy 9y agoYou definitely have someone to blame when there's assassination, and also the whole country should take an image hit. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya
- simonh 9y agoIt is a well established word with a commonly understood meaning in English. For example, a Lynching is another form of murder with a different and generally well understood meaning for native English speakers. If you're not a native English speaker, does your native language not have terms similar to these?
- icebraining 9y agoYeah, I'm not a native speaker, and while I get there are different terms for different types of murder, it seemed "slay" was pretty much equivalent.
- simonh 9y agoSlay is usually used for up close brutal killings. It has its origins in an old English word also used to mean to strike or hit something physically. This was somewhat remote for the killer, possibly professional and likely politically motivated so assassination seems appropriate.
- ajdlinux 9y ago
- westmeal 9y agoUnfortunately this is what happens when you say the truth.
- hd4 9y agoWhat's the point of assassinating anyone after the documents (Panama Papers) have already been leaked? Surely the cat's long out of the bag. Just ask Nawaz Sharif (ex-PM of Pakistan).
- onion2k 9y agoOther journalists might be reluctant to do any similar investigations in the future. Or perhaps it's just straightforward revenge.
- eponeponepon 9y agoSeems clear enough that there are more cats still in the bag, and likely enough more bags...
- turk184 9y agoI think that the level of corruption worldwide has reached such a state that it is amazing civilization doesn't collapse.
- erikb 9y agoThis is the dark side of capitalism. It won't go away. You discover 1000 people, they maybe even lose everything. 2 years later there will be another 1000 people.
- flexie 9y agoVery disturbing. EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. Regardless of what the prime minister says, and we should assume his innocence, we cannot assume that his government will investigate it when he's an obvious suspect. To make matters worse, Malta is a tiny island state where "everybody knows everybody". I was there just a few months ago and you can comfortably walk around the (stunningly beautiful) capital in a few hours and see the entire nation in a matter of days. While Malta supposedly has a great deal of corruption, it's not considered more corrupt than so many other member states in Southern and Eastern Europe, and quite frankly, it would be nice also in Western and Northern Europe to have a supranational investigative body in stead of or in addition to parliamentary hearings, commissions etc. that often require parliament majority which rests with the government parties anyways.
- coldtea 9y ago>EU needs a "federal" police force to investigate such things. So, something like the Europol? (And there's also Interpol).
- lukasm 9y agoEuropol budget is 1/80 of FBI's
- Chris2048 9y agoFBI uses it's budget to spy on its own citizens (Prism) and interfere with political process. The budget is supposed to be small.
- coldtea 9y agoFBI's budget should have been 1/80 of FBI's too -- the US has 25% of the world's prison population, with just 4% of the world's population.
- Tepix 9y agoWow, they are doing such a great job obviously! /s
- Bromskloss 9y agoIn addition to the president doing this against a critic, you could also do this as a third party if you wanted to incriminate the president!
- Bromskloss 9y agoThe title makes it sound like other nations had criticised the Malta for having these ties, when it actually was about an individual doing something _against_ the law of Malta (I presume).
- ddebernardy 9y agoIt's more complicated than that. Among other topics, she was investigating ties between the mafia and Malta's gambling industry (the island's most important after tourism), and the links between those and the island's politicians.
- tryingagainbro 9y agoCaruana Galizia’s death resulted from a “barbaric attack” that also amounted to an assault on freedom of expression, Muscat said. Memo to all: if you cost someone reputation, $ hundreds of millions, jail time etc., freedom of expression means jack. If they can kill you without being traced to them, they will kill you and your daughter in the crib. In US due to FBI etc., they try to "kill" you differently via lawsuits, blackballing... If you saw El Chapo e few years ago at a California mall, would take to twitter to announce "OMG, just saw El Chapo...look at his picture"? I wouldn't. He could have lunch with me and I wouldn't recognize him
- rl3 9y ago>The leak exposed the identities of rich and powerful people around the world who allegedly had offshore holdings in Panama. In other words, some foreign intelligence agency could have very well assassinated her. Good luck getting to the bottom of that. I'm kind of at a loss why there isn't some organization that offers protection to investigative journalists. They're basically fish in a barrel otherwise. Surely there's enough altruistic rich people out there to fund something like that. Of course, when you're talking intelligence agencies, there's not much that can stop them if they're determined. Protection on that level has to be more in the form of mutual understanding.
- pjc50 9y ago> Surely there's enough altruistic rich people out there to fund something like that. Evidently not. And they would be hugely outnumbered by rich people who buy newspapers and journalists to pursue far more harmful agendas.
- rl3 9y agoI guess security could be crowdfunded too. Kind of like a life and death version of Patreon. It might be a tough sell though.
- aaron695 9y agoThoughts on Daphne Caruana Galizia from the Malta sub reddit before the assassination - https://www.reddit.com/r/malta/comments/4tltyf/i_think_ive_lost_respect_for_daphne_caruana/ https://www.reddit.com/r/malta/comments/4tltyf/i_think_ive_l... Also see throwaway_malta's comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485624 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485624 A lot of comments here seem to be implying she is a highly respected journo who broke the Panama Papers. She did some good comments on them and other interesting stuff but was also a TMZ as someone puts it.
- gejjaxxita 9y agoThis. As a Maltese person who has been following her for a very long time it is frustrating to see the way in which she is being mischaracterised in the international media. She was well known in Malta for making false allegations, character assassinations, mocking people from what she considered to be a low social status, publishing revenge porn to humiliate people and so on.
- lumberjack 9y agoThis sounds to me like a plausible motive: https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20170906/local/ndrangheta-ran-a-2-billion-money-laundering-operation-through-malta.657333 https://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20170906/local/nd... https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/07/the-gaming-activities-are-legal-but-they-are-used-for-laundering/ https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/07/the-gaming-activiti... Background: One of Malta's biggest industries is online "gaming". It's basically virtual poker and other virtual gambling games. It's a huge money maker and has attracted lots of foreign EU nationals to work in the small nation's IT sector.
- gejjaxxita 9y agoMaltese person here who has been following this journalist for a long time. The international reporting of this omits a lot of important information. It is far from certain that her assassination had a political motive. While I admired her for uncovering cases of corruption, she also had a very nasty streak, resorting to things like publishing revenge porn [1][2] and mocking women for the way the dressed [3]. A revenge motive completely unconnected to politics cannot be excluded. I don't deny that the circumstances of the assassination are suspicious, and I also think a political motive is possible, but people are jumping to conclusions without waiting for evidence. [1](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-here-mr-starkers-appointment-to-the-chair-of-the-pharmacy-council-is-announced-in-the-government-gazette-today/ https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2013/08/oh-look-whos-here-m...) [2](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barrel-the-labour-mayor-of-hal-qormi/ https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/09/bottom-of-the-barre...) [3](https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-wrought-iron-patterns/ https://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/09/hot-new-style-wroug...) NOTE: I cross-posted my comment from the other thread on this subject (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485005 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15485005).