Columnists

AS the Second Global Ocean Conference opens today in Lisbon, governments in Asia and the Pacific must seize the opportunity to enhance cooperation and solidarity to address a host of challenges that endanger what is a lifeline for millions of people in the region. If done right ocean action will al…

TO be sure the founders of America KNEW they were creating a “Delicate Democracy” that could be torn down by any number of opposing forces, including forces from within. There is no doubt our Democracy is being challenged more than ever since the Civil War to no-end by forces from within to the poi…

IT has been said here and elsewhere that crisis reveals character.  No matter who we try to be or pretend to be, when disaster strikes, the real person comes out.  Some show they are heroes: the woman who leaps into raging water to save a child or the man who rushes into a burning building to pull …

THIS week, the Marianas hosted a most historic event — the Northern Marianas Pacific Mini Games 2022. It has been a great pleasure to see the country officials, the more than 70 teams, and our community come together to enjoy this event. The love and support that our residents showed to our athlete…

The folk theory of democracy celebrates the wisdom of popular judgments by informed and engaged citizens. The reality is quite different. Human beings are busy with their lives…. Elections are capricious collective decisions based on considerations that ought, from the viewpoint of the folk theory,…

SOME years back I served as a policeman on a small island that shall remain nameless.  I do that to protect the innocent, and to protect myself, innocent or not. I recollect a time when I was engaged in a strategy of defeating the sun’s oppressive heat by defending myself in a beach bar with cold b…

ELECTED and other government officials of the CNMI are either unaware or do not care that they have mislabeled the seat of the Commonwealth government. It is not Capitol Hill, and it was never Capitol Hill. It is Capital Hill. Yet all (or almost all) government-approved signs all over the island (s…

DURING the early planning stage of the Taste of the Marianas, the Marianas Visitors Authority aimed to host it every Saturday in May as we usually do. However, 2022 is an extra special year as the Marianas is hosting the first-ever NMI Pacific Mini Games 2022! After several meetings with the NMIPMG…

INFLATION is at a 40-year all time HIGH and our Governor is giving out “piece-meals” when WE the People need REAL HELP!  But readers need to know, if they didn’t, that Robert Hunter, the Pseudo Scientist, Ezthere are literally QUACKS invoking their opinions, as if they are the greatest authorities …

TO be afraid of something that might harm or kill you is a natural human emotion. The fear of dying, the fear of getting harmed, the fear of the unknown and, for some of us, the fear of flying or undergoing a major surgery — these are some of the fears that we go through in life. Whenever our life …