Guam Square Miles

The land is sold per square meter!

What makes the US press so insistent on calling Guam small?

North Korea announced early this months that it had blueprints for the launching of four rockets near Guam, part of the Marianas Islands and non-incorporated US soil. Subsequently, reporting in the US press increased. The Americans desperately Googleed "Where (or what) Guam is" and reporters hurried to declare the island's unresolved relations with the US and gamble about the effects of the North Korean terror.

At the same time, many agencies showed a worrying, centuries-old pattern: a focus on the greatness of Guam. The headlines of several hundred headlines in the majorstream media have often referred to the proportion of Guam. "Superficially, these portrayals could be seen as a simple letter from the journalist trying to say the term "small" in an ever more or less expression.

It may also aim to make Guam more interesting to US audiences, most of whom have never even been on the Isle, although it has been a US state since 1898. It is not irrational to describe Guam-30 miles long and nine miles broad with a surface area of about 211 square miles - as a small isle in certain interrelations.

However, the frequent repetition of the concept by reporters leads to the assumption that the descriptions have little to do with geographical factors. Inasmuch as " size talc " only appears in the discussion about Guam's relations with the USA or the US army, its primary effect is to make the islands own sovereignty as a matter of course and rationality.

To put it another way, taking a shower in Guam with a diminutive is not a dic - it mirrors how the US press sees the value and intent of Guam. Under the title "Some in Guam Push for independence from U.S. as Marines Preparation for Buildup" the play contains at least 15 words related to sizes and refers to Guam's "small" body or demographic sevenfold.

Significantly, "free association" - a type of autonomy that would transfer supreme key competencies such as defence to the US - is neutral, while state identity and autonomy are considered potentially unprofitable due to Guam's stature. Considering Guam's possible accession as a state of the CDU/CSU, Fifield reaffirms that Guam would be "a very small state with a populace of less than a third of Wyoming".

" Further, when she refers to the option of Guam electing sovereignty, she claims that this would turn the country into a "tiny" state. It seems to be the embassy that Guam's wish to become a US state or an impartial national state is laughable given its greatness. Non-U.S. English speaking resources also give a different account of Guam and emphasize America's unique perspective.

A similar story is found in a widely read Associated Press article by Grace Garces Bordallo and Audrey McAvoy: "Guam's minute US territories feel a powerful feeling of patriotism and trust in the US army, which has an immense presence", even though "Guam has a sometimes complex relation to the US continent.

" It is not in these tales that the extremist militarisation of Guam and its tribe is regarded as weird. What is weird is that Guam is small. A further way to see this tendency is to see how other "small" policies are described in the US press. Singapore, for example, is not much larger than Guam with a population of 277.

Six square miles. With an area of 2 square miles, the Vatican is the smallest state in the canyon. However, a reviewer of the latest two weeks' top outlet stories such as CNN, CNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post shows that neither Singapore nor the Vatican has ever become too small.

Insisting on Guam's small stature is the extension of a military-sponsored collective frame that still sees Chamorros as "simple and defenceless people" in need of US shelter, goodwill and wardship. However, the issue of height is not only relatively - Guam is smaller than Hawaii, but larger than Barbados - and demands a sensible context: small or large for what purposes and from what perspective?

It may be unreasonable and unsustainable for some that the US has taken a third of Guam's territory under police scrutiny for purely strategic purposes and a 120-year record of trivialisation. Guam's call for a non-colonial presence continues unabated. Where the right of a fellowship to liberty and fairness is concerned, greatness is irrelevant.

Did America ever need a more than now a medium guard? She is a film maker, author, trustee, researcher and lecturer at Columbia University, where she is founder president of the Music and Idea Laboratory and trustee of the Latino Arts and Activism Archive at Columbia's Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.

Latino Media Gap (2014) et Sovereign Acts (2017). Recent movies are Small City, Big Change (2013) and War for Guam (2015). He is as much an insignia of US journalists as any living journalist.