Dear Editor, It is never ever a sad day when a monster dies. Fidel Castro, the mass murderer who “sadistically tormented the Cuban people for over fifty years”, died on Friday at the age of 90. Thousands of Cuban exiles understandably celebrated in the streets of Miami. Leftists in the Caribbean and around the world, meanwhile, dutifully mourned their fallen evil communist hero. So called progressives always grieve when the vicious enforcers of class hatred die. Many useful idiots openly wept in the streets of Paris and other parts of Europe when Stalin and Lenin died. Lenin once said, “If Russia was…
Author: The Publisher
Minister Koenders about Oyster Pond dispute: “Negotiations about land border begin as soon as possible” GREAT BAY – The action of French authorities against Captain Oliver’s in Oyster pond “go against the agreement to maintain the status quo,” Minister of Foreign Affairs Bert Koenders writes in answer to questions from VVD-parliamentarians André Bosman and Han ten Broeke. Koenders furthermore wrote that negotiations about the establishment of the land border between the French and the Dutch side of the island “will begin as soon as possible.” “The relationship between the Kingdom of the Netherlands and France are excellent and they are…
GREAT BAY – The Team Combating Undermining (team bestrijding ondermijning – TBO) arrested the owner of Checkmate Security, O’Neal A. yesterday morning after searches at the company’s offices on Illidge Road, at the port and at the Sun Tan Villas and Apartments Hotel (aka Rama Hotel) in Pointe Blanche. Corruption and fraud investigation Investigators seized a number of bank accounts and, in cooperation with the French authorities, they seized a yacht as well. More searches cannot be excluded, the prosecutor’s office said last night. Photo caption: Investigators enter the Checkmate building. Photo Today / Leo Brown It is the second…
The Ministry of Justice is of course quite right with its move to establish a stricter gun permit policy. It looks good on paper – except for gun nuts – but there are some practical concerns. It is for instance unclear where applicants for a permit have to go for training to get their certificate showing that they are able to handle a gun and that they know what’s in the firearm ordinance and in the criminal code. Also, the projected house visits to permit holders seem to pose a challenge. If all permit holders have to be visited at…
The report that more than one thousands of medical treatments are actually useless is quite an eye opener, as is the report that the cost of healthcare in the Netherlands has shot up by 40 percent over the past ten years. What happens in the Netherlands does not necessarily stay there, so we figure that in our mini-medical world of St. Maarten the same things occur. It makes sense to put medical treatments under the microscope and to separate the useful from the useless ones. Why is this a good idea? Because giving people useless treatments does not make any…
Dear Editor, By the time this article appears in the daily newspapers it will be 27 more days before Christmas. Last year some or many felt as if the ambience was not there. I would have to agree. And I am referring to specifically Philipsburg. We can agree that if you looked at some 90% of the homes on the Dutch side of the island there were no Christmas lights decorations that reflected the festive ambience which many of us feel around this time and I am not talking about the financial aspect because I know the reality of our…
That the prosecutor’s office has decided not to start a criminal investigation against Minister Emil Lee (Public Health) and SZV-Director Glen Carty suggests that the departed chairman of SZV’s supervisory board Dr. Michel Petit had an axe to grind. After all, he was the one to file a complaint and he was vocal about it too. There are still some suspicions that Petit’s attack had something to do with the bid for the hospital project but that is by now water under the bridge. If there are no indications, or evidence, of actions that warrant a criminal investigation, then the…
The report about spending by cruise passengers in St. Maarten is a clear yard stick for the effects drops in passenger arrivals will have on the local economy. When the chairlady of the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association announced earlier this year in the parliament in Philipsburg that the numbers would drop by around half a million this year, it was like a bomb went off. With an average spending level of around $190 per passenger this projection represented a loss to the local economy of $95 million. Yet, nobody reacted. Recently, the port presented numbers indicating that there will be…
SZV has decided to dig in its heels and appeal last Friday’s court ruling that has brought the development of the new hospital to a screeching halt. Whether that makes any sense remains to be seen. The court’s opinion that Inso’s bid was ‘abnormally low’ cannot be brushed aside as irrelevant. What to do? Breaking up the contract with Inso is probably going to cost a ton of money and wading deeper into legal procedures will move the whole hospital project into a distant and uncertain future. The warning signs were there before the contract with Inso was signed, but…
If only half of the story of our anonymous Indian man is true, then there is an ugly practice going on our island. It’s called enslavement. Fortunately there are plenty of actors in our community that have the slavery topic high on their agendas. That should put a stop to these practices in a hurry. If only life was that simple, because our slavery specialists prefer focusing on slavery during the colonial years. That’s a lot easier, because you don’t have to do anything. The struggle with the ugly past of our slavery history comes down to finger pointing and…
