Dear Editor,
Animal Defenders SXM wishes to thank the sponsors, supporters, the adoption families, the foster parents and specially the dedicated volunteers who have continuously worked so hard the whole year through. Thanks to the veterinarians for the great work and cooperation through 2021. Thank you to Steffy from Steffy’s Pet Sitting for all the lovely help, your love for animals is felt and is much appreciated.
It was a very difficult year with lots of challenges and all volunteers were always there for the animals. Some volunteers had to work extra to substitute for others because some left the island permanently and some for a longer period next to the normal vacation absence and sick notices.
The pandemic did not make it easy on us humans and that reflected directly on the animals. Many pets were abandoned and the foundation has never received so many reports and calls from pet owners who want to surrender their pets because of financial reasons. It is worrisome. Although people love their furry friends, they cannot take care of them anymore.
Although people want to spay or neuter their pet, they cannot afford the spay/neuter operation, not even with a big discount via our foundation. Too many kittens and puppies are born daily which is not necessary at all. We try to help as much as we can to prevent all these unwanted births.
We encountered many dumped dogs who got lost, injured by traffic, bitten by other dogs, sick or too hungry, skinny and weak to fend for themselves.
We cannot remember having so many calls and sad cases of animal neglect and abuse. Not a nice recollection to end the year. But this year also brought us nice memories of the lovely volunteers who continued to work and love the helpless animals.
This year was very difficult to choose a volunteer of the year because this year we all did the extra mile for the animals. Thanks to Alex who found a lovely handyman Orlando to make feeding stations for the strays. Thanks to Paul who had a school project and chose to fix up the enclosure for Joanna. You all did an amazing job. Thanks to Vivian, Annet, Natalia, Evi and Alma who brought strays to the vet and back. Thanks to Sherwin and Dorien for helping with the pet food collections. Thanks to the volunteers who left the island and thanks for the new volunteers. There are many more volunteers to thank. Thanks to all the volunteers for feeding and being ready to jump in for help when and where needed.
But one volunteer needs special mentioning: Shobha Lall jumps out because of all the extra work she did next to her normal feeding rounds. When others were sick or on vacation Shobha was there to help. She brought pets to the vet to be sterilized. She also created solutions for 2 abandoned dogs in a deplorable state.
At one location we were feeding 3 dogs with a group of volunteers. An old dog who was not able to walk because of the arthritis, he needs daily medication but we could hardly find him hiding in the bushes next to a busy road. The other dog, his longtime friend, she protected him from a neighborhood bully, she recently died of old age and tick fever plus there was a younger dog who usually gave us hints where the older dog was hiding but she herself was not always there and she was scared of the bully.
The older dog missed out days of his medication if he was not to be found so the arthritis got worse by the day. We could not leave food plus treatment behind because the bully would eat it all. Shobha came with a great solution and her husband approved to move the older dog to the garden of his company where the dog now lives in an enclosed area. He cannot escape and now he gets his food, medicine plus tender loving care daily from Shobha and her husband.
He now looks much better and he walks again but he was all alone. His friend the younger female dog who took care of him was left on her own and started wandering off. But Shobha and her husband took her to the same enclosure and the two friends are now happy to be reunited and well taken care of. No more worries of traffic or other dogs bulling them. The young female likes car rides and she is allowed to go along in a big truck sometimes; it is an awesome sight to see her on the passenger seat with a big grateful smile on her face.
Shobha makes many more dogs happy in the area next to her own 4 dogs. She does it with a nice smile, a sweet voice and a soft touch. Thank you Shobha for all that you do and for touching all those animals’ hearts. You touch our hearts as well, plus you are a great example.
Knowing that there are many more people helping out the animals we hope that many more others will join in this higher cause for the animals.
Wishing everybody a Happy Healthy New Year with lots of love and laughter, hugs from the animals.
The Board of Animal Defenders SXM
Cheers to Shobha. She was chosen as Animal Defender of 2021
Thanks for no fireworks or for using silent fireworks, nice and peaceful without the bangs.
Dear Editor,
We sure are a special population which takes special dates with a mushy sentiment. We are waiting for the 1st of January to enforce the testing of vaccinated Americans while knowing fully well that USA is facing a crisis with Omicron.
We are facing a crisis with double-digit and triple-digit figures of new infections daily for the past few days.
Only reason we are not seeing the same amount in our active cases is due to the reduced period now for the recovery cases to be gleefully counted.
We are facing this situation like an ostrich where we are waiting for someone to take care of this problem or just want this to miraculously disappear and when nothing happens, we will tug on the coattails of our “equal” kingdom partner Netherlands – of course keeping the rhetoric of independence in check for the time of present crisis.
Last election there was a lot of talk of diversifying the economy, etc. Of course, now that the seats are warm with the 15 parliamentarians and a few Ministers, etc., we will only depend on tourism as that’s the easiest low-hanging fruit.
With only the tourism or Netherlands bailouts cut out for our survival we have been accepting untested travelers on our shores with absolute disregard. We are still engaging with the idea of being open until 3:00am on New Year’s night. We had our “own” on the floor of parliament suggest a 6:00am permission for New Year’s night. Nations around the world are cancelling the New Year’s Eve festivities.
Of course, we will elect the same back for their incompetence to be proactive and sometimes reactive.
So, no diversification of economy, no government salary cuts (no idea if the 12.5 per cent cuts exist), corruption galore, no growth of sports, COVID, etc. Who’s got the time for that now … that’s just a common flu!
Ain’t we special!
Name withheld at author’s request.
~ Spreading a spirit of goodwill ~
My Fellow Sint Maarteners,
I am delighted to speak to you on this Christmas Day.
Christmas is the season of goodwill brought to us through the birth of Jesus. May your day be blessed with the season’s gifts of caring, giving, and renewed hope for a brighter tomorrow. May you safely navigate the pandemic world we live in.
Wherever you are I ask you to join me in prayer. Let us pray for and show compassion to the children who do not enjoy the care of parents or of other loved ones. Let us pray for and support our fellow brothers and sisters who cannot care for themselves and who continue to experience difficulties: health, social, financial, or otherwise. Let us pray for those of us who are missing loved ones taken from them by the coronavirus or by other ailments.
As we celebrate this Christmas, we should be grateful for and inspired by the courage of our health care professionals and other front-liners. When compared to other countries we should count ourselves fortunate with the availability and the opportunity of the vaccines. Let each of us use this opportunity to do our part to protect ourselves and each other. And above it all we should be thankful to the Lord for His blessings on our country. For guiding and seeing us through in our continuing fight against the coronavirus and its financial and economic effects.
In celebrating Christmas, we therefore have reason for hope for a brighter tomorrow. We have reason to spread goodwill and lighten and brighten the way of our nation. Let us, in the spirit of the season, therefore commit ourselves to seize the opportunities available to us to spread goodwill.
May the spirit of Christmas move us to care for and protect each other and bring joy and laughter to each home. Let this Christmas period be the time for us to renew our commitment to work together as one people to build a better life for all Sint Maarteners.
It is in that spirit of spreading goodwill that Marie-Louise and I bring you Christmas greetings from our home to yours.
May you have healthy, joyous, safe, and hope-filled Christmas holidays!
God bless you and may God bless Sint Maarten and protect its coast.
Governor Eugene B. Holiday
Dear Editor,
Regardless of what the media in general and the politicians think, people aren’t stupid. And for the record, I am not just talking about the media and politicians here, I am talking about the media and politicians globally.
The debate rages on every day whether to get vaccinated or not. The pro vax side will tell you it’s the only way to save the world and to trust big pharma when they tell you it works and it’s safe. Sure, normally it takes years to develop and test a vax and true, we did this one in about 3 weeks, but you can believe us when we tell you it’s safe and it works. The anti-vax people will tell you there isn’t a shred of genuine credible scientific evidence that says the vax will stop anything and besides, what about all the people it’s killing? And that’s not counting the wack jobs that will tell you that the vax is strictly a way for government to establish mind control, genetic mutation and track you everywhere you go. So, who do you believe and why do you believe it ?
Do the media help you ? No. they merely repeat whatever good story that will get them some attention, ratings and circulation numbers. Some PhD scientist says that the vax will prevent every virus known to man and grow your hair back as well? The New York Times and CNN are happy to give it front page coverage. Some other PhD scientist says that your heart will explode in your chest within 30 minutes of getting the vax and that if it doesn’t then you will grow a third eye in the middle of your forehead anyway and the Times and CNN are happy to give it front page coverage as well.
The government scientist guy who is supposed to have all the definitive answers says on Monday that everybody on earth has to go into quarantine for two years and the media sell that as the ultimate truth, but then 24 hours later the same guy says, “Well, a 24-hour stay-at-home self-isolation is just as good unless you have to go out for like coffee or a fundraiser or something.” The Washington Post parrots that as the new ultimate truth. This is the supposed noted scientist who is in charge of all U.S. policy and changes his mind literally every day about what he thinks will work. Most days he can’t even remember what he said the day before.
The U.S. military says, “We vax everybody so we are ready!” and three days later one of their fully-vaxed ships is down and can’t sail because they have a comprehensive outbreak on board.
The U.S. government says on one day that the nation is has millions of cases in hospital and that the system is in chaos and the next day the President’s press secretary and the New York Times say that there is no one in hospital at all. That, in fact, overnight, everybody got better and went home. That’s an exaggeration, of course, but not far from the complete blithering nonsense that comes out of the White House these days.
Now for a bit of reality. Government says, “Get the vax and then wait five or six weeks (or whatever it was) to get the next one. We know this is safe.” But now, “That that didn’t exactly work out,” they say, “Oh wait, three weeks is really okay, and remember when we told you that two shots would do it? Well, there is this new booster thing and what we really meant was that it was going to be two shots unless someone somewhere told us that you needed more.”
And government and the media are absolutely mystified why people are skeptical about this whole vax thing.
Well, here is the news flash for you and it is mind-numbingly simple. Nobody believes a thing you say anymore. You have been so comprehensively wrong so many times and you have changed your mind and the rules so many times with no results that you simply have no credibility on the matter any longer.
The mask thing is complete nonsense. Everybody on earth knows it. It is probably the only thing that the scientists actually agree on.
You pretend that a few hand-washing machines at the entrance of buildings are doing something, yet a casual observer anywhere sees personal and intimate interaction 10,000 times a day.
The notion that “Anything is better than nothing” is nonsense on its face. Viruses spread exponentially. All you need is one infected person to miss any single hand-washing machine and in 24 hours he has passed that infection exponentially to thousands. You impose curfews and social distancing standards that are universally ignored because, simply, people don’t believe you and you have no track record of being right about anything or that they work.
Another news flash for you. People live in the real world. They don’t live in labs and test tubes and in theses written by theoretical scientists working with statistical studies. Maybe in a lab somewhere if you isolate your 10 rats from the other 10 nothing gets transmitted but in the real world with about 8 billion people you can just forget about that. They tried total isolation in Australia and it failed, and it failed everywhere else where it was tried.
The one shining example of what may actually work is Florida. They dropped virtually all the restrictions and nonsense and ended up with the lowest infection and death rates in the U.S. Maybe it’s time to do the same here.
In the meantime, my advice to the media , this newspaper included, is maybe try treating the info that gets fed to you with a healthy dose of skepticism for a change. When someone in authority changes the data 180 degrees from one day to the next, maybe just ask them why what was true yesterday isn’t true today anymore. If you want people to start believing you again, you will have to earn that trust back.
Now, for those of you wondering, I am vaccinated and boosted. Not because I believe or have any confidence in the propaganda but because it is a simple matter of expedience. I have to get on airplanes periodically and I don’t want to sit there and argue philosophy at some check-in counter. I want to show the card and move on. Will the vax kill me? Maybe, maybe not. And for sure there is no one I trust to ask that might actually have an answer I believe. If anything, it will be the whole hypocrisy of this situation that will likely see me dead.
Steven Johnson
Dear Editor,
While shopping for a “Welkom” sign to put on the front door, I met an acquaintance in the hardware store. We chit chat a little and then the situation with the guilty verdicts came up. During that conversation “I do not defend criminals” was expressed. When I heard that it rocketed me back about 40 years.
I was working on Aruba between 1979 and 1982 and stayed at my parents’ home. My father had stopped sailing , so we saw each other every day and of course had some good conversations. He accepted me being a police officer, but he would always hint that I would make a good lawyer. During one of those conversations, he said to me lawyers can protect people also. All they have to do is refuse to defend criminals. I never remembered that until I spoke to that gentleman a few days ago.
My father summed it up this way. When the criminal realizes that he cannot get the lawyer of his choice to defend him, he would be reluctant to commit crime. The crime rate would go down significantly. At that time I told him that the court appoints lawyers for defendants who cannot afford a lawyer.
That might be so, he said, but the routine criminal knows which lawyer is good at what. But when he has no choice but to accept the one which is assigned to him, that’s a different story. They will not have access to seasoned criminal lawyers and would realize that it is not worth it. Crime rate will go down; less people in prison, including those 27 years and younger. With less convicts, no need for expanding or building new prisons, lawyers will have more time to adequately attend to civil cases. The rightful people will get what is entitled to them and the statistics would help to eradicate that dreadful word “corrupt”. I am sitting here typing this letter and blaming myself for not remembering what I would say is one of the most realistic things that my father had said to me years ago.
This past week I was told a few things as a consequence of the letters that I have written to you. One of them is what a friend of mine once told me. He said, “If people follow what you write they won’t get locked up, because you have goat mouth.” Another one told me one time that I am working with the Dutchman. I literally laughed out loud, because he did not realize that I was a policeman for years and that I could know something about law enforcement and crime detection.
But the latest one that I heard is the truth and staring us in our face – “Right now the word parliamentarian seems to be synonymous to prisoner”. I applaud where it came from, because who else is left to highlight and denounce that kind of behaviour?
The following might be challenged by skeptics, but I believe that basically the human being is good and where there is a will there’s a way. These last few days we have come to realize that money is not the cure for sickness, but that it is still so that the love of money is the root of all evil, so my question is: Can “not defending crime” be a deterrent to crime?
Russell A. Simmons
