Samoa was first visited by Europeans in 1722 by a Dutchman named Jacob Roggeveen and later by the French in 1768. As the Germans began to show more interest in the Samoan Islands, the United States laid its own claim to them. Britain also sent troops to express its interest. There followed an eight-year civil war, where each of the three powers supplied arms, training, and in some cases combat troops, to the warring Samoan parties. All three sent warships into Apia harbor, and a larger-scale war seemed imminent, until a massive storm damaged or destroyed the warships, ending the military conflict. Samoa was divided among the three until Britain relinquished her claim in exchange for Germany's release of territories in Africa.
Fishing around in the now widely-known Samoan exception to the recently passed Minimum Wage bill (where tuna industry workers there are apparently being paid $3.26 an hour).
The interesting thing, however, is that the largest employer in American Samoa is Del Monte Foods' StarKist Tuna, home to over 75% of the island's workforce. Del Monte Foods, as it turns out, is headquartered in the District of the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Smelling a whiff of impropriety, House Republicans have thrown up some serious questions about the exemption and who inserted it into the bill.
Follow the money trail a little further and Speaker Pelosi may have a sympathetic accomplice in the US Senate. It turns out that the H.J. Heinz Company owns nearly 75% of Del Monte's stock. Heinz, of course, is the company owned in large part by the H.J. Heinz family of whom Teresa Heinz is a major heir as the widow of H.J. Heinz the III, the late Senator from Pennsylvania. And who did Mrs. Heinz marry shortly after her late husband's passing? Senator John Forbes Kerry of Massachusetts!
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