DU posters have been asking where our Navy has gone to

[donsu]

http://www.goasiapacific.com/news/GoAsiaPacificBNP_1159116.htm

US plans increased military presence in the Pacific

The Commander of the United States Pacific Command has toured the Northern Marianas amid plans to increase the military presence there.

Gemma Casas reports.

Admiral Thomas B. Fargo made an aerial and land inspection in the CNMI to familiarize himself with the geography, infrastructure and potential of the islands in future plans of the US military. Mr. Fargo and Rear Admiral Arte Johnson gave the governor and the lt. governor of the CNMI a short-term snapshot of the military's plans for the region. The plan include basing more planes at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, increasing use of military pre-positioned ships - especially for the U.S. Army, more training, another submarine home ported in Guam, and continued use of the CNMI as an R&R stop for the Navy. Mr. Fargo says as the US shifts both economically and militarily towards Asia, the Marianas will play a more strategic role for America.

--------------------------------

Guam has been tring to get us off their island and now we will be there double time

feel sorry for the Marianas - women and children be on alert

[madrchsod]

1. rule America

America rules the seas!!!! protecting corporate america`s trade routes. nothing ever changes but the names of the players.

[donsu]

4. life is change and loss - we survive it or not

get the criminals out of Washington, D.C., the city without a state.

[Cleita]

13. Maybe the fifty states should secede from D. C.. Of course

we'd have to offer amnesty to those residents who don't want to stay with the Bushzis. Gee, they'd be left all alone with no country to rule and rob.

[redqueen]

2. Marianas

how much land in those islands is devoted to sweatshops? how many people suffer daily so we can have cheap crap?

:grr:

[pocket]

3. I lived on Guam for a couple of years

It is mostly a tourist-driven economy, along with the military and shipping industry. I don't think they manufacture much of anything, but there are some farms for local consumption.

It's basically a cheaper version of Hawaii for Japanese tourists.

Hafa Adai!

[pschoeb]

5. The sweatshops are mostly in Saipan

not Guam. Though Guam is a Marianas island it is in a seperate jurisdiction, US. Territory of Guam. The northern islands, including Saipan are in the US. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

[pocket]

6. Yes, along with Tinian

n/t

[redqueen]

7. Is Tinian also home to sweatshops?

Is the fact that an island is in the "Commonwealth" as opposed to the "Territory" what makes it possible for sweatshops to be run with no accountability?

Sorry to go offtopic but this is just one issue that burns me up... living in the state that elected the scum that champions this crap drives me up a wall.

http://www.alternet.org/story/13140

Part IV: DeLay's Unregulated Pacific "Paradise"

No rules, no regulators, no inspectors, no health and safety laws. What more could a sweatshop operator ask for? Welcome to the Mariana Islands, a U.S. protectorate and Tom DeLay's very own pet project.

As Tom DeLay preached his pro-business/anti-regulation theology in the US, his model of perfection was far from the mainland. The U.S. protectorate of the Northern Mariana Islands -- 14 islands in the North Pacific -- have become something of a free-enterprise petting zoo for DeLay and those he wishes to convert to his way of thinking.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. acquired the islands, which are located off the coast of booming Asia. To encourage development and self-sufficiency Congress exempted the islands from the very kinds of U.S. business regulations and oversight DeLay despised. Even today the island's minimum wage is only $3.05. Other work and safety regulations either do not apply at all or are rarely enforced.

In short, the Marianas embodied many of the key ideals DeLay and other House Republicans were pushing in their 1994 Contract With America.

(snip)

"Returning from a fact-finding trip (to the Marianas) where he played two rounds of golf at the first-class Lao Loa Bay Golf Resort, DeLay blasted critics of what he called Saipan's 'free market success.' He went on to explain how he wants to use a set of Chinese-owned sweatshops on the far-off U.S. territory -- factories manned by low-paid Chinese and Sri Lankan indentured servants living in squalor -- as a model for Mexican labor camps here on the mainland." (Dallas Observer/New York Times Group)

more...

[pocket]

10. I dont know about sweatshops

I was just pointing it out as the third of the Marianas Islands that the US owns.

[Kong]

8. Your Use of Acronyms Makes Your Post Unreadable

Not everyone is as well informed as you, apparently. Not everyone knows what your acronyms mean, in fact I'd hazard a guess and say that the vast majority of people have no idea what they mean.

[redqueen]

9. Not a big deal really...

*Something* Northern Marianas Islands... Commonwealth? Command center?

Anyway... the net contains the answers I'm sure... google away...

[tkmorris]

12. The acronyms are from the article

He just pasted a few paragraphs from the article, which is the accepted practice. In cases where the pasted portion leaves things a bit muddy my first reaction is to go to the linked article itself. Usually that clears things up. Don't fault the poster.

[donsu]

14. DU means Democratic Underground

nt

[leanings]

11. Admiral Mahan still rules the waves...

1840-1914), naval strategist and historian. At a time when he was drifting "aimlessly" as a forty-five-year-old naval officer, Mahan recalled, his life was transformed in a Lima, Peru, library; he interpreted Theodor Mommsen's history of Rome to mean that the Roman Empire had been shaped by its control of the sea. Invited to the new U.S. Naval War College to lecture (because of a bland history he wrote on Civil War naval battles), Mahan developed his interpretation into The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (1890), which became the single most influential book on strategy and foreign policy in his time. He argued that naval power resulted from geographical position, excess production, proper national character, and a supportive government. Enjoying all these characteristics, Americans, "whether they will or no, ... must now begin to look outward," he wrote. "The growing production of the country demands it. An increasing volume of public sentiment demands it."

He strongly influenced key U.S. officials, especially Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt (a close friend), to follow the policies dictated by his insight: continual expansion overseas; the taking of Caribbean islands, Hawaii, the Philippines, and other Pacific territory for bases the navy needed to protect commerce; building an isthmian canal so the fleet and freighters could quickly move ocean to ocean; and, of course, constructing the great navy.


http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/rcah/html/ah_055600_mahanalfredt.htm