Dear Editor,
I was born and raised on St. Maarten, travelled to The Netherlands and successfully obtained my Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, and I have returned home to positively contribute to the island of St. Maarten.
However, for the last few months, my living conditions have only been deteriorating.
The Westin septic tank, placed by The Westin far away from The Westin, but next to the residential area of Dawn Beach Estates, has been (and is) making life unbearable.
This septic tank is approximately 50 metres (160 feet) away from my home – thus practically in my backyard.
Apart from the fact that it smells really bad and that the design is something I would have expected from a three-year-old, the noise levels produced are simply off the charts.
I have my windows and doors permanently shut, and the hurricane shutters rolled down at all times. Yet regardless of these measures, I constantly hear the noise in my home. I am even woken up at least three nights a week in the middle of the night.
Spending time outside in the yard is out of the question, because the terrible noise will instantly induce a migraine attack.
I don't do any barbeques or landscaping around the house anymore.
Simply put, I cannot even find peace in and around my own home. I am growing wearier and wearier by the day, which in turn negatively impacts my ability to positively contribute to the island.
Presently, I am seriously wondering if I have made the right choice by coming back to the island. How can I possibly recommend St. Maarten to any of my friends, who are still living abroad and thinking of returning as well, when such a basic need as normal living conditions cannot be guaranteed?
How much longer will I be forced to live like a caged animal before justice is served?
What is more important to the business community and Government? Having The Westin on the island, which, after promising to hire locals, has given all the good jobs to its own people? Having The Westin run by a management team with a clear "We don't care about St. Maarten" mentality? Or having St. Maarten youth with internationally-recognised top diplomas return to the island for a lifetime of dependable work?
Just remember: at the end of the day, The Westin can easily be replaced by, for example, a Hilton, but the passion and love of local youth for the island cannot be replaced.
It's about time we start putting our own people first as well.

Dawn Beach Resident

Dear Editor,
With the deplorable state of the roads in Simpson Bay village, I have some suggestions for the government to get funding to get them fixed. Government already tried to get financial aid from PJIA, but seems unable to pry some money from the hands of its President, which I find strange since the government is a major shareholder in PJIA. But they tried.
Since our noisy neighbour seems unwilling to give some of the improvement taxes back to the people who actually paid them, and continues to sit on its mountain of money, I think we need to come up with some other means of collecting money to fix our roads.
Living in Simpson Bay village or trying to run a business here is difficult if we can hardly reach our own homes, and when our customers cannot reach our businesses. So here it goes, in random order:
* Collect a toll from cars, buses and trucks that use Simpson Bay village as a shortcut, hoping to avoid the ridiculous traffic jams that occur every day in the Simpson Bay area.
* Exempt Simpson Bay businesses from paying TOT and have them put this into a foundation that eventually pays for the much-needed road works.
* Put all road tax collected from cars that are registered in Simpson Bay in the same foundation as mentioned above. If all the road tax paid by the rental companies, businesses and private entities that are registered in Simpson Bay is used to actually make Simpson Bay accessible, I believe we will finally get what we pay for.
* Use 25 per cent of the bridge fees collected at the Simpson Bay bridge for keeping Simpson Bay accessible to the visitors who come ashore after passing the bridge.
* Stop fixing small potholes in the Philipsburg area and use the money allocated for that to actually make areas accessible to its inhabitants.
Don't forget that Simpson Bay is a huge tax-money generator for the Government of St. Maarten, and it seems ridiculous that this same area and these businesses collecting these taxes have to crawl on their knees and bend over backwards to try to get some of this money back to the community they operate in.
I hope Government can use these suggestions to find a solution to ensure a safe and accessible passage into Simpson Bay village.

Simpson Bay businessman,
wondering where his tax money is.

Dear Editor:
I am delighted to see that someone apparently read my last letter and turned back on the lights on Prins Bernhard Bridge that were on during the election campaign. I was beginning to think we would have to wait until the next election. However, I still have to wonder why only two lights? Why not all of them?
And when will they get around to fixing the broken-down safety railings? Are they waiting for yet another vehicle to go crashing down into Fresh Pond?
This whole business reminds me of the old joke/riddle: How many (fill in the blank)s does it take to (fill in the blank)? In this case it would go: How many public Works personnel does it take to change a light bulb on Prins Bernhard Bridge?
Perhaps someone would like to offer an answer.

Concerned motorist

By Fareed Zakaria

Despite the recent squall in U.S.-Chinese relations, the fact remains that both countries have powerful reasons to cooperate with one another. These have grown over the last two decades, something that both countries seem to recognize. China's reaction to the Obama administration's decision to sell arms to Taiwan has been furious, but has mostly involved symbolic gestures. Compare this with 1992, when the Bush Sr. administration sent Taipei weapons, and soon afterward Beijing reportedly sold missiles to Pakistan and signed a nuclear-cooperation agreement with Iran.
This time China's strongest threat – to "retaliate" against U.S. companies involved in arms sales – is likely to be targeted at those firms, like Raytheon, that have been long-time suppliers to Taipei and as a consequence have written off the China market. Beijing will likely not punish the three American giants involved in the deal: Boeing, General Electric, and United Technologies.
Similarly, Beijing's indignant reaction to President Obama's decision to meet with the Dalai Lama is posturing. The Chinese government could not have been surprised. Every U.S. president in recent memory has met with the Dalai Lama, and Obama told China's President Hu Jintao directly that he was going to meet with the Tibetan leader.
On Washington's part, despite Hillary Clinton's criticisms of China over Internet freedom and President Obama's declaration that he will get tough with Beijing over its currency, it is unlikely that this strong rhetoric will be matched with equivalent actions. The United States has few arrows in its quiver, and the administration knows well that public admonition of Beijing rarely works. In fact, both countries might well be playing the same game: feigning public outrage to satisfy domestic audiences.
But there are two trends that could take a manageable situation and make it something more worrisome. The first is a growing perception in China that it is no longer as reliant on the West, and in particular the United States, as it was. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping brought China out of the cold by embracing America and opening up to foreign investment. This was different from the somewhat predatory, export-driven strategy of Japan and South Korea. But, the China scholar Minxin Pei argues, this was not an ideological conversion to free-market capitalism. Ravaged by the Cultural Revolution, Beijing desperately needed Western managerial know-how, technology, and capital to develop its economy.
Today, China is awash in capital, has many topnotch local companies, and this year for the first time, the primary engine of Chinese growth has been its domestic market, not exports. As China expands, that internal market will probably become its dominant concern.
A similar reality applies in foreign policy. Mao restored relations with the United States in some measure to buy himself an ally against the Soviet Union. China has needed the United States as a political ally ever since; Jiang Zemin's fuzzy embrace of the United States was part of a strategy whose goal was concrete: membership in the World Trade Organization. Today, China commands respect across the globe. It is confident, even cocky, in bilateral and multilateral fora.
None of this is nefarious. But Beijing's newfound arrogance is not joined with a broader vision. The country does not appear ready to play a global role. In international summits Beijing has been largely focused on pursuing its interests in a fairly narrow sense. At the April G20 summit, for example, China participated actively on only one issue: to make sure that Hong Kong was kept off the list of offshore tax havens being investigated. Perhaps it's too soon to expect China to play a broader role, taking on responsibilities for global order and making concessions for broader interests. But given its impact on the global system, this is likely to produce paralysis on several fronts. American isolationism during the 1920s was understandable, too, but it had unhappy effects on the world.
The second factor that could exacerbate Sino-U.S. tensions is America's economic fate. Right now there's great fear that the U.S. economy is in deep structural decline. If American politicians cannot muster up the courage to make the U.S. economy competitive again, and Beijing perceives that it is dealing with a superpower in inexorable decline, relations between China and America will change fundamentally. Of course, if that happens, America will have plenty else to worry about as well.