Pages are just the Beginning

Abuse of young pages has been much in the news lately. While these sordid tales have grabbed the spotlight, the media fails to focus on a similar but much larger, more pervasive scandal! And I know that we are all shocked by this!

The larger scandal is the systematic and entrenched way in which powerful politicians protect and maintain the exploitation of sweatshop labor and the systematic sexual exploitation of children. Yup, all of that from the party of family values.

This larger story offers a peek at the intersections of sweatshop labor, lobbying, politics, and religion. But we're not talking about an average, low level scandal. The behind-the-scenes effort to maintain sweatshop conditions on Saipan in the Marianas Islands goes right to the very top of the Republican Party. And all of it for the likes of The Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, and Wal-Mart.

To encourage you to move beyond the superficial crap that the "media" is wallowing in, we provide excerpts as a public service, dear readers -- for the full story, just follow the links.

In 1999 ABC News did an exposé which found:
"...young women are being lured into Saipan's thriving sex trade and forced into onstage sex acts and prostitution. Sixty dollars for an hour of massage with one of the thousands of young women from across Asia who, under a loophole in American immigration law, have been legally brought to work on American soil, Saipan."

The victims, many of them underage, are:
"...working under the protection of the American flag, and they're being exploited as if they were in the worst Third World country."

But the sex trade isn't the only way in which women brought to Saipan are abused.
"...companies like The Gap and Tommy Hilfiger and Wal-Mart ... have profited in the hundreds of millions of dollars from the Saipan sweatshops."

"The Gap and Wal-Mart say they try to monitor the factories they use on Saipan and won't tolerate sweatshop conditions. But American retailers have long been drawn to Saipan because it is an American territory, where clothes can legally be labeled with some version of 'made in the USA,' even though almost all of the workers are foreign, working in foreign-owned factories."

Check it out at Global Exchange.org

Disgraced Republican Jack Abramoff was the lobbyist for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI.) A report released in June by the Department of Justice's Inspector General, Glenn Fine, contained what may have been be the first references of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff's strong ties to White House Political Director Ken Mehlman, but it was only today that the extent of that relationship was revealed. Melhman is now the Chairman of the Republican National Committee!

Check it out at MSNBC.com

Jack Abramoff insured that sweatshop conditions would not be threatened:
Abramoff’s team apparently succeeded in arranging the removal of a State Department official named Allen Stayman, who had advocated labor reforms in the Marianas Islands. “Mehlman said he would get him fired,” read an e-mail from one of Abramoff’s lobbyists. Later, Stayman was told by his superior “that politics had been brought into the decision, which Stayman took to mean White House involvement, and as a result Stayman’s appointment would not be renewed.” Soon after, according to the committee’s report, “Susan Ralston reported to Abramoff that the Office of Presidential Personnel and the State Department had ‘worked out a deal’ and that Stayman would ‘be out in four months.’”

Abramoff’s client, the government of the Marianas Islands (a U.S. protectorate), wanted to maintain their ability to operate textile factories with virtual slave labor conditions yet put “Made in the U.S.A.” on their products. In one of the ugliest vignettes of the Abramoff scandal, Rep. Ralph Hall, R-Texas, who took a junket to the Marianas and had numerous contacts with Abramoff’s office, inserted in the Congressional Record an attack on a 15-year-old girl who had been vocal about her sexual slavery in the Marianas and told her story (Hall argued that she was a willing participant).

There’s more than just the party affiliation of the offenders that unites the Abramoff scandal and the Foley scandal. In both cases, the most pious, sanctimonious figures turn out to be the most corrupt. Tom DeLay, the man on whose power Jack Abramoff built his career, said that God was using him to bring a “biblical worldview” to the American government. DeLay’s “spiritual advisor” and former chief of staff Ed Buckham set up a lobbying organization (the U.S. Family Network) to funnel money to DeLay. (The group received $1,000,000 from Russian oil oligarchs where were apparently attempting to get DeLay’s help in securing IMF funds for Russia that would benefit them.) Abramoff himself is a famously observant orthodox Jew. DeLay and others were aggressive in helping Abramoff’s client, the Marianas Islands, maintain virtual slave labor conditions. And Mark Foley co-chaired the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, often speaking passionately about how we need to protect our children from online predators.

Check it out at Tom Paine.com