Quote from the Times: "Former Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici said today that Malta was an accomplice in the military action being taken against Libya because it was allowing warplanes to transit its airspace and their pilots must be talking to Maltese air traffic controllers."

Considering that anyone with access to an air-band radio or the appropriate computer program can hear pilots of all sorts talking to Malta's ATC, this is hardly a discovery of earth-shattering proportions. At least, it didn't send Dr KMB scuttling off to tell tales to the thug Gaddafi.

Another quote: "He described Gaddafi as an arch-democratic dictator in that he had the support of the people despite not having been elected."

Considering that Dr KMB succeeded Mintoff without being elected and this after Mintoff himself ruled without a popular mandate after 1981, one can only comment that Dr KMB is eminently qualified to talk about dictators, arch-democratic or not, who have not been elected. The extent to which these specimens had the support of the people is, of course, debatable.

And another quote: "Questioned on Gaddafi's actions against the people, Dr Mifsud Bonnici asked what any government would have done when faced by a group of people who used weapons to attack other people and public property."

Considering that Dr KMB and his Human Rights prize-winning predecessor (Mintoff, who won the Gaddafi Prize - side-splitting, no?) were at the helm when Maltese policemen and their tame thugs fired on the Maltese, you would have thought he could answer his own question.

And to finish with the quotes: "He also criticised the Prime Minister for going against the Constitution by not completely ruling out that Malta could ever become a military base for foreign forces. The only thing the Constitution allowed was for the island to provide military facilities in pursuance of a UN Security Council resolution."

Considering that the military action that is going on is precisely in pursuance of a UN Security Council Resolution, Dr KMB's Orwellian verbal gymnastics serve only to demonstrate his perverse agenda and facility for saying anything as long as it sounds wacky enough.