Catch-22 for Azmar

To Mr. Kenneth Moore: You and your smoke and mirror company, Azmar, seem to have been caught in a Catch-22. Your investors won’t pony up their money until you get the permit, and you can’t get the permit until you show you have the money, in an account, and not just on paper. Whoops, how to get out of that conundrum? The 60 days are running out, and I see that your latest tactic is to brazenly bluff MPLA and demand the permit before you submit any further documents. Are you trying to set up your excuses ahead of time for why you can’t come up with the seed money MPLA so wisely has required of you?

In your recent “open” letters to Pete Perez, you sound very much like a childish despot who is having a snit because the “natives” dare to question the expansion of the Ken Moore/Azmar empire and the “good” it will bring. How arrogant of you to take Pete Perez to task personally and imply that he is a troublemaker! Good for him, more power to him and all the other people who don’t want to blindly hand over Pagan to another money-grubbing outsider.

If you were offering shares in Azmar (which would be impossible as you’d never pass the SEC filing requirements to get on any stock exchange I know of), I’d buy shares in your company in a hot second. Who wouldn’t want to make obscene amounts of money with very little investment capital? But, like your unnamed, unknown investors, I’d want to see the permit first too. I guess I’ll hold off on finding a nice, decorative frame for my stock shares in Azmar.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, the people of the CNMI, with the exception of a greedy few, don’t want their paradise strip mined from a beautiful, mystical place into a slag heap? Even if you do claim the despoliation of the land will bring a few extra dollars for you to “generously” pass out. Also, your negative campaigning may not turn people off mining Pagan, but it should certainly turn sensible people off letting Azmar mine Pagan. I fail to see a single ecological, responsible bone in your body, or your company. If there were, you would take the time to patiently address the concerns voiced by the esteemed and worthy PaganWatch and others. I expect you would be unable to answer some of the more technical and operational aspects of strip-mining a remote location, but give it a go, why don’t you? I’d dearly love to see a copy of the detailed business and operational plans. Have they been written up yet? Oh, right, it is proprietary information, can’t release it, oh so secret and all, mustn’t let a competitor know how badly Azmar is floundering. Possibly once you get the permit, eh? I fervently hope and pray that MPLA will come to its senses and tell you and your company to slink back to wherever you came from. Perhaps you can try your luck on another island teeming with pozzolan?

To our political leaders, especially Mr. Ben Fitial, kudos for attempting to block Azmar and protect Pagan. To Senators Luis P. Crisostomo, Joseph M. Mendiola and Senate President Joaquin G. Adriano, shame on you! You are selling your children’s precious resources for 30 pieces of tarnished silver. Less if Azmar has its way.

A long time ago, in an allegedly much more ignorant era, Manhattan Island was sold for a few beads by Native Americans. I didn’t think to see a modern day example.

Deborah Muusers
PaganWatch member
Papago, Saipan