More lies–damned lies!

Our dastardly, unscrupulous detractors are back at it again. This time with an even greater vengeance than before.

The cause of this renewed vigor? The $1 billion lawsuit against our local garment industry.

Our detractors are celebrating beside themselves with joy. The reason? More ammunition–another blast of negative publicity to hurl our way. The truth be damned.

A few typical examples, from a column carried in last Friday’s Honolulu Advertiser, by Annette Fuentes, the brilliant co-author of the hit best seller, “Women in the Global Factory”:

“…They are asking for $1 billion on behalf of Asian women allegedly working in slave-like conditions in Saipan.”
‘Slave-like conditions.’ That’s a first–’Slave-like conditions’ under constant (and disproportionate) OSHA inspections.

But wait, it gets better–or worse: “…The lawsuits describe conditions in the Saipan factories that are worse than in any Charles Dickens novel.”

Did you get that: ’Worse than in any Charles Dickens novel’?

Has she personally toured any of these Saipan garment factories? I sure have–repeatedly–and I can tell you this is a blatant, vile, evil, malicious lie. The factories are modern, clean and well-kept. Go ahead, see for yourself.

“The contractors allegedly recruit women from Thailand, China, the Philippines and Bangladesh and hold them as virtual prisoners. According to the lawsuits, they live under guard in crowded barracks behind barbed wire.”

‘Virtual prisoners’? Wait a minute. Don’t we see Chinese garment factory workers walking around the island all the time? Maybe we are all going insane; our eyes must be deceiving us.

Two years ago, I thought I saw OIA Field Rep. Jeff Schorr parading around with a “well-stacked” Chinese woman at a public function. Naturally, I must have been mistaken. She could not possibly have been a Chinese woman. If she were, she would have to be imprisoned behind some well-guarded barbed-wired barracks somewhere. No, sir,
I had to be sorely mistaken.

Unfortunately, the US Department of Interior’s Office of Insular Affairs is behind these vicious, hateful distortions–these damned lies. This Honolulu Advertiser column is precisely the kind of malignant propaganda Interior is dedicated toward advancing.

Al Stayman is behind it. Through press releases, radio interviews and other carefully orchestrated media publicity stunts, Stayman directly sponsors and encourages these type of reprehensible acts. He collects them to submit to the US congress. When we try to show our side of the story, he cries foul and perverts our good faith attempts to present our case, calling our congressional invitations junkets and bribes.

Al Stayman, indeed, is the mortal enemy of local self-government in the Northern Marianas. He will stop at nothing–he will go through any and all lengths–to destroy everything our Covenant agreement with the United States was ever intended to achieve: free and democratic local self-government, economic development and self-sufficiency.

Stayman is the malignant enemy of freedom and democracy in the CNMI. Politically, economically and socially, Stayman is out to destroy us–to totally discredit our quest for freedom in the Marianas. Mr. Stayman exudes with irrational federal paternalism, backed by the ideology of protectionism and the special interests of US textile labor unions.

Jeff Schorr probably isn’t so bad. He’s just trying to do his job, and maybe have a good time.