The Daily Invisible

By Hilbert Haar Julius Vischjager was, I am not exaggerating, a phenomenon. Between 1977 and 2009 he produced 528 editions of The Daily Invisible, the only handwritten newspaper in the world. Vischjager was its editor-in-chief who provided all of its contents. Did this make Vischjager a journalist? A publisher? The fact is that he had access to the More...

Tricky business
By Hilbert Haar People in Curacao were surprised by the offer of Hushang Ansary’s attorney to abide by a ruling from the Court in First Instance from November 2021. I was not surprised. I was stunned, because More...

Slightly insane
By Hilbert Haar I have more than once expressed my amazement about the huge number of tax warrants our tax inspectorate issues on a regular basis. Hundreds of them and they all have one characteristic in common: More...

Crying over spilt milk
By Hilbert Haar Als het kalf verdronken is dempt men de put. That Dutch expression aptly describes the belated anger of parliamentarians about the destruction of the historical ruins at Diamond Estate. I am not More...

Unlawful spending
By Hilbert Haar The General Audit Chamber investigates the lawful and efficient spending of public funds, or so I read in the chamber’s report about St. Maarten’s 2021 financial statements. Related article: More...

Mixed reactions to removal of COHO-law
PHILIPSBURG — Local politicians have reacted with caution and at times enthusiasm to the news that the consensus kingdom law COHO (Caribbean Organization for Reform and Development) is now definitely history. More...

Present-day slavery
Door Hilbert Haar St. Maarten will “accept nor deny” apologies for the history of slavery from the Dutch government, according to Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs in a reaction to a speech by Prime Minister Mark More...

Be careful what you wish for
By Hilbert Haar Independence. That term has been doing the rounds among politicians and among civil proponents of it like José Lake Jr. for a very, very long time. And now independent MP Grisha Heyliger-Marten More...

Freedom of choice
By Hilbert Haar The Common Court of Justice has ordered Aruba and Curacao to allow marriages between partners of the same sex. That order had not gone into effect yet, because both countries could appeal the ruling More...

Don’t come back, or how did you get that job again?
Dear Editor, Students who go away to study are doing so for particular reasons, whether they know or not the ranking of the reasoning. But what guarantees do students have of a different life from those who came More...