Enquiring about a room? Email: mirrooms@ntamar.net
(Paid advertisement)
Inside Stories
Friday, March 12, 2010
Advertisements
LUA shrouds Kwaj talks
Kwajalein leaders are worried that the opportunity for solving issues relating to American use of their atoll is slipping away. “We have a new administration in RMI and in the US and a new US ambassador,” Kwajalein Senator Jeban Riklon told the Journal late last week. “It’s a golden opportunity.” But he and Kwajalein Senator Tony deBrum agree that something needs to happen, and soon, on the disputed land use agreement (LUA) for Kwajalein.
Bobo on track
to be a
Coast Guard
The first Marshallese student is expected to graduate from the Coast Guard Academy next year, US officials announced at last week’s Joint Committee Meeting in Majuro. Jefferson Bobo, from Kwajalein, is on track for graduation in 2011 with a degree in civil engineering. “It’s a good example of what Marshallese can do when they set their minds to it,” said Foreign Minister John Silk.
Only few outer
Islanders are fully immunized
An average of only one-in-three children on the outer islands is fully immunized. And while all inhabited outer islands received at least one immunization visit in fiscal year 2008, the number of these visits declined last year, according to a government report issued on the status of outer islands immunizations. A total of 30 visits to outer islands were made by Public Health nurses in FY2008. That number dropped to 24 in FY2009, with three islands receiving no visits last year, the report said.
PII Chuuk project moves to high gear
Pacific International Inc.'s Chuuk road and pipe construction project is moving into higher gear next month as paving work is expected to commence. Majuro Senator David Kramer said for the past year, the project has been focusing on laying sewer and water pipelines under ground, and the work is now progressing to the paving stage.
US trip for youth Nitijela group
Photo: Karen Earnshaw
Senior students from Marshall Islands High School held a Youth Nitijela session last Saturday. Of the 45 senators and ministers that took part, nine were chosen to be delegates for a Civic Engagement and Exchange Initiative at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) Conference on National Affairs in North Carolina in July. The students are (back row) Darrel Saimon, Stella Kibin, Derek Summerville, Carbina Carter, Gabriella Hitchfield and (front row) Niten Anni, Peterson Larry, Paul Andres and Stephen Clark. Organizeer of the event, Dartmouth's Derek Summerville, is now attempting to organize funding for eight of the students' airfares.
(Paid advertisement)
Ships get priority
MISSA: Sell MIR
The Marshall Islands Social Security Administration has filed a motion in the High Court to put Marshall Islands Resort into receivership with the goal of selling it so that its large debt can be paid off.
MISSA attorney David Strauss (pictured) filed the motion Friday, asking the court to name a receiver who would be responsible for selling the hotel — under specific conditions, including that the hotel after sale continue to be operated as a hotel — to pay off the more than $1.5 million the hotel owes to MISSA, the RMI government, Marshalls Energy Company, Pacific International Inc., and other companies. Strauss wants the receivership action to enforce the court’s earlier order directing Marshall Islands Resort to pay MISSA.
Strauss’ move also follows a High-Court issued “hold” on an impending sale of the 150-room, government-owned facility. The proposed sale is said to includeclosing the hotel, and then selling individual rooms as “condos” with a permanent resident permit included. tests at Bikini and Enewetak.
Strauss included affidavits and information from various officials showing the Resort owes:
• MISSA $477,615.49
• MEC $560,930.54
MISSA’s judgment and debts owed to other creditors.”
A receiver is needed to ensure the court order is not ignored and that MIR’s assets are administered in “a responsible manner on a continuing basis until MISSA’s claims are satisfied.” He also stated that while the RMI government received two bids for sale of the hotel, and that a company named RC International was the high bidder, “there is no such entity listed as eligible to do business in the Marshall Islands in either the corporate registry or the foreign investment business license registry.”
Strauss’ motion sets out MISSA’s desire that the court appoint a receiver to:
• Give notice to all MIR creditors.
• Place the hotel up for bid, with the following conditions: the hotel is bid as a hotel, after sale must be operated as a hotel with at least 60 percent of rooms available for rental, and no right to sell citizenships or residencies are permitted.
• Use the proceeds of sale to pay in full the court judgment for MISSA against the Resort, and other creditors as identified.
• PII $537,915.35.
• More than $300,000 to multiple businesses and government agencies MIR “has failed to satisfy the judgment in whole or in part,” Strauss said of the earlier court order. “Since the date of judgment, the asset (hotel) has been wasting away and as each day goes by (Marshall Islands Resort) incurs more debt and the asset depreciates more in value.” He said this makes it unlikely that MISSA can collect what is owed.
He called on the High Court “to appoint a receiver…tailoring the receiver’s powers and duties to ensure that the MIR’s resources are appropriately applied to satisfaction of
GIFF JOHNSON
While an $8 million Japan-funded fisheries construction project is moving forward on schedule in Majuro, frequently changing priorities by RMI political leaders have ensured that the Marshall Islands received only one Japan-funded construction project from 2000-2010 — and the latest priority projects are still far from the approval stage.
The Marshall Islands has been eligible for a major Japan-funded infrastructure project annually dating back to the 1980s. But the government has been unable to manage the program to bring in Japan-funded projects on a regular basis. The fish market now being built by Uliga Dock is funded through Japan’s international fisheries program, and is in addition to funding available for large infrastructure projects such as the hospital and road paving projects — the only two in the past dozen years. Japan Charge Kazuyuki Ohdaira said that the two RMI government-advanced priorities — two new field trip ships and a campus for the University of the South Pacific — are getting positive review but are still in the initial stages of assessment. Typically, it can take three years to bring a project from the request stage by RMI to approval from Japan.
A multi-million dollar request to Japan to fund a new learning center/library at the College of the Marshall Islands had been put forward by the Note administration and reviewed, designed and approved by Japan when the Tomeing government 		came into power in 2008. The new administration removed the CMI project from the RMI’s priority list in favor of a USP campus project. The result: the Marshall Islands lost this major construction project that could have been underway with the resulting jobs, tax revenue and benefit to CMI students while Japan reviewed the USP campus proposal. “If we’d kept CMI (on the priority list) it would already have started while we worked on a new project,” Foreign Minister John Silk said this week. CMI’s learning center project, despite being approved, is no longer a high priority for RMI. Instead, now the USP campus plan — which after 15 months is still in the review stage by Japan — is no longer the top priority, as ships for outer island service have been elevated to top priority, according Silk. “USP is still there but it’s a lower priority than the ships,” he said.
“We continue to examine both projects (ships and USP campus) with positive eyes,” said Ohdaira.
For Japan, an important concern is the price tag of the two proposed infrastructure projects. Ohdaira said both the USP campus, at an estimated $13 million, and the ships, estimated at $10 million, are “big sums for one project.” He said Japan officials have indicated to RMI that a way to manage these big-budget projects is to break them into two-phase projects that would be accomplished over two year (or longer) periods, as the Majuro Hospital project was done in 2004-2005.
Capital repair on the move
Renovation work on the capital building’s fourth floor is well underway. Last week, an Anil Development construction crew was loading replacement materials by crane up to the top floor.
A PII worker in Weno, Chuuk checks out a trench for sewer and water pipes that are being installed prior to road paving that is scheduled to start next month. This is one of the few Compact-funded projects moving forward in the FSM.
This book explodes the "myth of the four atolls" maintained by the US government since the Bravo hydrogen bomb test in 1954; relies heavily on previously secret US studies to show how US officials consistently underestimated or underreported fallout exposures; and points out, among other findings, that more than 40 years after the US nuclear testing program ended, the US government has still not released complete fallout data on 50 of the 67 tests conducted at Bikini and Enewetak.
Inside Stories
SUBSCRIBE
Subscribe to the Journal. One year costs just $52 by check or $57 by PayPal (See subscribe button at top)! Click here to see a sample of the Journal.
SINGLE COPY: Price in Majuro Atoll: $8
• US orders: $10 International orders: $15
Send US money check/money order to the address below.

Journal 3/12/1973

Journal 3/15/1985
P2 It has become the fashion in Micronesian politics to denounce the US Congress for cutting $15 million out of the 1973 fiscal budget for the Trust Territory. Amazingly, almost no one states the budget issue from a positive point of view. After all, when the budget was $60 million, there was a surplus of over $1 million, which the TT government could not use. In the fact of this, does it not seem reasonable that the US Congress should reduce the amount of money appropriated for use in the TT?
So, to state the budget issue positively once and for all, the US Congress has allocated approximately $50 million for use here in Micronesia. What can be said about this? Well, first of all, “Thank you very much.” And then add, “Why so much?” The answer has been stated often enough in this paper to bear very little explanation here: the money is being spent in Micronesia to dupe the Micronesian people into accepting a huge infrastructure of government bureaucracy and capital
P1 Three Marshallese girls have been commended for their play with Kaimuki High School varsity girls softball team in Honolulu. Nancy Matauto of Majuro and Jackie Matsumura of Ebeye were outfielders and Maile Kaaiakamanu of Ebeye was the shortstop. Maile batted .310 for the year and was voted an “honorable mention” all star for the Oahu Interscholastic Association.
improvement programs, which will be impossible to maintain without continued US aid. Once the people have become psychologically dependent on the artificially developed infrastructure, it is a short walk into complete political dependence on the US and, by extension, powerlessness in the face of military encroachment through land acquisition.
To stop this ongoing undermining of Micronesia’s future, it is necessary to convince the US Congress that their continued support of this policy is actually detrimental to the real welfare of the American people themselves. But if someone were to succeed in doing just this, it would still not solve the problem for the people of Micronesia. To a large extent the psychological dependence has already taken root: our own leaders in the Congress of Micronesia are more than ample proof of this dependence.
Maybe it is too much to expect that anyone in Micronesia at the present time could go so far as to actually set up a truly independent and effective leadership group. In this case, we must call upon the US Congress to turn a sympathetic and understanding eye to the actual plight of the people of Micronesia. There are definite things the US Congress could do that would benefit both the American people and the people of Micronesia. The first of these would be to cut out the Trust Territory budget entirely.
Admittedly, this is a radical point of departure and demands immediately, “What are Micronesians then to use for money?” The answer is simply that the US would continue to make money available to Micronesia but only under the provision that Micronesian products be given in exchange for money. The US could use all the copra that Micronesians are able to produce, could use all the fish that is taken, use all the taro made available for export. The American government would merely have to perform a very simple function of middleman for Micronesian products — not as a way of making a profit but as a very real way of offsetting the cost of administering Micronesia. This way the US taxpayer would be getting something for his money and the Micronesian citizen would have the satisfaction of knowing that any money he was paid was for his own labor.

Journal 3/12/1993
P1 A group of landowners are asking the High Court to nullify a 50-year agreement signed by another group of landowners with an American resort developer for Erikub Atoll in the northern Marshall Islands. They asked the High Court to issue a permanent injunction against the agreement.
P20 This weekend cadets from the Salvation Army will invade Majuro in “an attack on sin and Satan” in a series of evangelistic meetings, said the Salvation Army’s Lt. John Chamness.