Columnists

AMONG the islands of Indonesia, in the steamy mountains of central Sulawesi, live the Toraja people.  History has little to say about them, since few outsiders knew they were there until a century ago.  For the most part, they live their lives in a way that resembles others in the region, but they …

THERE is hardly anything more jarring than a fall-from-grace story and certainly no shortage of real-life anecdotes playing out sometimes on public display with a blood-thirsty media (social or otherwise) circling then feasting like sharks on a whale fall — at times a slow, majestic descent and oth…

WHILE the Republicans have literally destroyed America and the CNMI it is the Democrats whom the People have to turn-too and depend upon for salvation. All kinds of proof that Trump literally caused hundreds-of-thousands of People to DIE all because of his Republican Politics for his personal inten…

TO say that the tourism industry, the major driving force for the CNMI economy, took a blow from the Covid-19 pandemic would be an understatement. Mike Sablan The industry was devastated! Visitor arrivals ceased, and a ripple effect of business closures, job losses, and plummeting revenues immediat…

MANY of us generalize most of the time, and when we deal with other people, we usually resort to stereotypes.  “Aren’t all Latins excitable?” economist Robert L. Heilbroner asks (rhetorically). Aren’t “all Swedes stolid, all Irish hot-tempered? Think about any group of people — mothers-in-law, teen…

LAST week’s tale of an unfortunate man who experienced a serious wardrobe malfunction is followed this week by a ship captain who faced a pirate attack.  But while the previous account dates back only a few years, the captain speaks to us through two hundred years of history. The waters of Indonesi…

FOR over 25 years I have been writing letters to the editor and op-eds trying to HELP the People of the CNMI — so I’m not the enemy.  But unfortunately, I have been literally talking to “blind, deaf & oblivious” Republicans leaders who just refuse to listen and their supporters are clearly bein…

THE Governor is still doing what he does best which is “gaslighting & misdirecting politics” and I guess he thinks WE are like the Trump supporters who will believe anything with his 10-year plan to make the NMI a world class destination — WOW!  Given Governor Torres has already been in office …

AUTHOR Hans Rosling says that contrary to what many of us believe (and will, alas, continue to believe), “the majority of people live neither in low-income countries nor in high-income countries, but in middle-income countries.” Hans Rosling That category — middle-income — is “where 75 percent of h…