> Besides Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands and a handful of minor outlying islands, the US maintains roughly 800 overseas military bases around the world.
Germany has a few US military bases. It’s a bit of a micro cosmos. People pay in USD and can buy American products there. I think even the VAT is added on checkout to the price (whereas in Germany, prices in stores always show VAT included).
I was on one a couple times when they played a theatre play (Christmas Charol or so). Quite interesting.
I grew up around US military bases in Japan, and the same holds true : they're basically "little Americas" where you can pay in USD and buy Twizzlers (among other things, but I happened to like twizzlers)
An open question I have after reading your comment is whether or not this isn't true of other countries foreign miltary installations (like the French bases in Djibouti, etc.). Intuitively it seems like due to the nature of military installations, it makes sense to treat them like an extension of the home country - but I'd be curious to see if other countries approach it differently.
I lived in Stuttgart a number of years ago, and used to drink with some guys who had a business exclusively selling American cars to American servicemen (in dollars; taxation deferred; big money). In fact, I spent a good bit of time drinking with American servicemen ... they were a large segment of the Anglophone community around there.
> I think even the VAT is added on checkout to the price
No. VAT in Germany is not charged to American servicemen and women and dependants. This is covered under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) [1]. One may also receive reimbursement of VAT paid on the economy, though that is subject to some restrictions at around €2500, I believe. There are specific rules on cars. The actual forms for receiving reimbursement are onerous enough that VAT forms aren't often used outside of major purchases.
I went to high school on an American military base in Germany in the 1990s. At least then, the major items of note were jeans and gasoline/diesel (though, I had a teenager's bias). Both were subject to significant taxation on the economy that Americans didn't need to pay on base. In practice, this meant there were some restrictions on how many jeans people could purchase at once, to prevent Americans from reselling them to the Germans. There were also special booklets that Americans could buy on base that had little tear-out pages; each page could be exchanged for a certain number of liters of fuel at, specifically, Esso gas stations on the economy. While fuel prices on base (the same rate as the booklets) were considerably more expensive than in the US, it was still far cheaper than off base.
Most of the goods available in stores on base were imported from the US [2]. All prices and payments were in dollars. We did not use pennies on the base, since they were too expensive to import. All bills/receipts were rounded to the nearest five cents [3].
I was told by a teacher at the time that the Rhine valley had "the single largest concentration of Americans outside of America." That specific area of US installations has grown in the intervening 20 years both due to the wind down of smaller Cold War-era bases scattered throughout Germany and due to the current conflicts the US is involved in, of which, most require US forces to deploy via Germany.
2015: "Despite recently closing hundreds of bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States still maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad"
It's not just military bases, the US DoS runs a whole Spa-resorts in Garmisch-Partenkirchen exclusively for US/NATO (excluding German nationals) military personnel [0].
In the 90s my sister was friends with a US soldier in Stuttgart so I got visit that environment quite a bit. It felt like a different world. Even the street layout of the areas where they lived were more like an American suburb than a German one.
Killing Hope (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Hope) is a write up of all major US efforts at controlling other countries. I don't know what Americans think of it, but it's fascinating as an outsider.
I haven't read that book, but on the topic of US foreign policy in general, most people I know here in America realize it's a lose-lose effort that we must continue to lose. When it comes to helping other countries, we go from "not enough" to "too much" seemingly overnight, but there never seems to be a "just right".
The US also had a practical reason for disliking traditional imperialism.
By the time the US became substantial enough for real international trade, vast swathes of the planet were under other nation's empires leaving fewer trading partners than could be desired. Commodore Perry's somewhat invasive trip to Japan was to try and add a few trading partners from unclaimed nations.
So I suppose it's not too surprising that the colonies gained in the pointless glory seeking of the Spanish American war led to a bit of schizophrenia.
The historiography [1] of this article is interesting. The author talks about how the drafts of FDR's speech changed throughout the day after the bombings. Presumably this means that the author had access to the various drafts of the speech. Pretty clever way to try to glimpse into what he was thinking.
[1] The study of the methods used when writing history.
Kind of curious that the author didn’t mention a primary motive of Roosevelt’s: making the case for entering the war. FDR had been trying to (rightly) sell it to a reluctant, isolationist public as a necessary evil. Thus emphasizing the loss of “American” life was critical, despite the fact that it may have been subject to a less inclusive view that the author would have preferred.
I’ve lived in Hong Kong for some time and even though I’ve been to Guam a few times, in my mind the US is a country that is a 12 to 16 hour flight away when in fact its really only a 4 hour flight away.
The problem with big hairy political words like "empire" is that meaningless semantics take over.
From our perspective, in the post-colonial era, the term "empire" and "colonisation" are just inherently negative terms. The defining qualities (this article explicitly makes this argument) of empire are considered to be slavery, reservation systems and such. In some sense, empire can just mean "bad" and bad can be proof or empire.
The postcolonial age is also the natiolist age, where nation states are the basis of the political system. That makes imperialism's defining quality "the subjegation of nations" because it denies nations ultimate authority.
Marx associated empire with capitalism (surprise surprise), using the term "international capitalism" interchangeably with empire. Considering history, this has some logic to it. For example, the Royal Britsh East India Trading Company colonized India. The crown later confiscated it. 18th and 19th century empires were about controling trade, whether by a king, legal monopoly or otherwise.
The article plays with a mundane territorial definition. Ff you control "overseas" land...
All interesting discussion topics, but also a problem.
"Is X an Empire" just depends on the definition. It's not a meaningful question in itself. Just because you conclude that "yes, it is" doesn't mean anything.
If X controls my local politics to its benefit, overthrows legitimate governments, and establishes dictatorships whenever it likes, and does that in tons of countries around the world, I'd call it an empire...
US citizenship and American Samoa will become an interesting topic if Tulsi Gabbard becomes a frontrunner as a presidential candidate. To become POTUS you need to be "native born" US Citizen which is a very nebulous idea.
This is the reason why China finds it acceptable to act as they do in quite a few things, such as attempts to enlarge their EEZ. In their mind, they are just doing what USA did too, so it's a fair game.
But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one example; another example is 'we do it, and after that we declare it illegal for others to do it' - US committed significant war crimes, such as fire bombing of Dresden and Kyoto, and was never held accountable for it.
-The fire bombing of Dresden was executed jointly by the United States and United Kingdom, with the UK flying more sorties. This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK.
-The United States of America did not fire bomb Kyoto. Nobody did.
Well the US collapsed our own narrative with Iraq and subsequent regime change attempts, which is why Russia and China don’t bother to try now.
In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush originally attempted to create an international precedent where sovereign nations don’t invade each other, by refusing to push into Iraq and depose Saddam after expelling him from Kuwait. That was an important aspect of his “New World Order” and quite forward looking. Clinton mostly upheld it, but subsequently Bush Jr and the neocons tossed that out the window with their invasion of Iraq.
That the Iraq invasion was both poorly justified and poorly executed (the occupation at least) hastened the destruction of H. W.’s precedent. America’s additional regime change attempts since of varying results have further undermined it. At this point the precedent and SOP for the great powers is barely concealed will to power.
The 21st century is going to be ugly as Russia, China and others follow America’s ill-conceived lead in this regard. But make no mistake, it was the US itself that made this dangerous state of affairs more likely.
Oof. As a German I cringe when I hear people cite the firebombing of Dresden.
Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war crime (or at least extremely unethical) nowadays (much like many things both sides had done throughout either World War) but it's usually invoked to play down nazi crimes and it's usually misrepresented because of very successful propaganda.
The estimated death toll was around 25-30 thousand. During and after the war various revisionists and propagandists have blown up that figure to over 100 thousand. Additionally German nazis have built an entire tradition around it, "mourning the fallen" to exploit the incident as a display of nationalism and nazi sympathies.
There's no legal basis to single out the bombing of Dresden as a war crime within the context of the Second World War. I would say that it can be argued that some of the crimes nazis were charged with after WW2 also lacked a pre-existing legal basis but there was no expectation that the winning side would apply punishments consistently, sufficiently or even fairly.
So even if there were good reasons to categorise the Dresden bombings as a war crime in the context of WW2, it'd just be one of many alleged and proven war crimes that went unchallenged -- including other crimes (and "crimes") committed by the US, the Allies in general or any other involved military.
I'd love to hear what you're referring to since common knowledge is that Kyoto was notoriously the only part of Japan spared from major bomb raids (originally due to no military significance, then because they wanted to A-bomb it and didn't want earlier strikes to mess up the damage data, but later it was spared from the A-bomb as well)
It's "hidden" to us by our propagandists. Our empire is visible and obvious to everyone else.
Our news, history books, movies, etc all hide it by simply not labeling the US as an empire. It's just as easy as that. We use terms like "superpower" or "leader of the western" or "leader of democracies" or other euphemisms to hide and forgive conquests, brutality, genocide and empire.
Empire is evil and it's something our enemies do, not what we do. It's the british, germans, japanese and most recently the evil soviets who create empires. We are not evil, we don't create empires.
Wait - so the special relationship with the Philippines then ... which was in mostly fairly autonomous?
... that's the big ole' 'Empire'?
... and a few mostly unpopulated dots in the Ocean?
Oh, so scary! The power!
And to consider that Filipinos, who are culturally distinct from Americans in every way, and who have almost nothing in common with Americans but a temporary geopolitical alignment should be considered 'Americans' in the same way as those from New Orleans and NYC?
So that's 2018 intersectionalist history?
Rubbish.
America is quite fundamentally distinct from the Philippines and always has been, there's no fundamental reason that most Americans on the street should care enough to 'go to war' over foreign interdiction.
Going to war for those with whom the US has a special arrangement, and going to war for the 'homeland' are indeed quite different questions.
There's no 'hiding' here.
Thanks for the history tidbits Graun, but as usually the headline is ridiculous.
1941 Philippines was as American as 1941 Hawaii which were both about as American as or 1848-1859 Oregon Territory was or 1941-present Puerto Rico is. So, American, if you consider territory where Americans live on American soil to be American.
Where they fork off is the Philippines are now an independent nation, Hawaii is now a US State, Oregon Territory was eventually split into 3 entire US States and part of a couple of others, and Puerto Rico still has more or less the same status as it did in 1941, but a few more rights and privileges afforded to them along with present day Guam, present day Northern Marianas Islands, and present day US Virgin Islands. American Samoa is US Territory, but a Navy playground so while the people are American Nationals living under the US Constituton, they’re not American Citizens and their territory is considered to be on par with all those unpopulated guano Islands we once claimed. That’s the law, 2019.
The Filipinos are culturally distinct but we still count large numbers of them as American Citizens, both as immigrants and as a people that have lived in the mainland since before the Philippines were granted independence. The Native Hawaiians were and still are considered culturally distinct but they are still American Citizens by birthright.
Put another way, your defensive posture is simply out of place here. On December 7th 1941, the Japanese attacked the United States. That shouldn’t need qualification. If they had only attacked Manila but didn’t make it to Oahu, they still would have been attacking the United States and that was certainly the intent of their attack.
No version of the word "intersectional" appears in the article, nor (so far as I can tell) in anything else by its author.
I agree that the word "empire" here seems overblown, but it seems like perhaps you're bringing your own pet hates into this for some reason?
Also: The article, and the book it's based on, are from 2019 (though I'm sure much of the work was done in 2018 and indeed earlier). Not sure what the point of specifying "2018" is meant to be.
I don't think this article characterizes the relationship with the Philippines accurately at all. No mention of Japan's horrific occupation that the Americans fought with the Filipinos to expel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines_Campaign_(1944%E2%...
> On this to-scale map, Alaska isn’t shrunken down to fit into a small inset, as it is on most maps.
I'm pretty sure it's usually "scaled down" because that's how map projection works. Does this writer also think that Greenland and Africa are of comparable size?
One example map, and to me a pretty typical example of the genre, shows Alaska on a about half the scale of the contiguous states. Compare the by the scale markings:
This is not simply projection effects, this is explicit downscaling.
Another comparison, Wikipedia lists the area of Alaska as 1,717,856 km^2 and that of the contiguous United States 8,080,400 km^2, so on a map with only projection correction Alaska should be around 1/4 of the size of the lower 48, this is clearly not true on the wikipedia example shown above, and for any other map in the same style.
So no, Alaska is not scaled down for the sake of accurately depicting its size.
"Contrary to popular memory, the event familiarly known as “Pearl Harbor” was in fact an all-out lightning strike on US and British holdings throughout the Pacific. On a single day, the Japanese attacked the US territories of Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Midway Island and Wake Island."
This is horrendously sloppy journalism.
The first attack on Wake was three days later and was repelled. The successful attack was another 12 days after that.
Perhaps you’re thinking of the Battle of Midway where the US defeated Japan, and which was indeed six months after Pearl Harbour. However Midway was attacked just two hours after Pearl Harbour.
My understanding of the initial attacks (which largely comes from what I was taught in school) lines up with the timeline presented in the article, and every source I've been able to find in the last few minutes after reading your comment supports that. Can you point to any additional material we might have missed?
[+] [-] WA|7 years ago|reply
Germany has a few US military bases. It’s a bit of a micro cosmos. People pay in USD and can buy American products there. I think even the VAT is added on checkout to the price (whereas in Germany, prices in stores always show VAT included).
I was on one a couple times when they played a theatre play (Christmas Charol or so). Quite interesting.
[+] [-] doktrin|7 years ago|reply
An open question I have after reading your comment is whether or not this isn't true of other countries foreign miltary installations (like the French bases in Djibouti, etc.). Intuitively it seems like due to the nature of military installations, it makes sense to treat them like an extension of the home country - but I'd be curious to see if other countries approach it differently.
[+] [-] rusk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] venning|7 years ago|reply
No. VAT in Germany is not charged to American servicemen and women and dependants. This is covered under the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) [1]. One may also receive reimbursement of VAT paid on the economy, though that is subject to some restrictions at around €2500, I believe. There are specific rules on cars. The actual forms for receiving reimbursement are onerous enough that VAT forms aren't often used outside of major purchases.
I went to high school on an American military base in Germany in the 1990s. At least then, the major items of note were jeans and gasoline/diesel (though, I had a teenager's bias). Both were subject to significant taxation on the economy that Americans didn't need to pay on base. In practice, this meant there were some restrictions on how many jeans people could purchase at once, to prevent Americans from reselling them to the Germans. There were also special booklets that Americans could buy on base that had little tear-out pages; each page could be exchanged for a certain number of liters of fuel at, specifically, Esso gas stations on the economy. While fuel prices on base (the same rate as the booklets) were considerably more expensive than in the US, it was still far cheaper than off base.
Most of the goods available in stores on base were imported from the US [2]. All prices and payments were in dollars. We did not use pennies on the base, since they were too expensive to import. All bills/receipts were rounded to the nearest five cents [3].
I was told by a teacher at the time that the Rhine valley had "the single largest concentration of Americans outside of America." That specific area of US installations has grown in the intervening 20 years both due to the wind down of smaller Cold War-era bases scattered throughout Germany and due to the current conflicts the US is involved in, of which, most require US forces to deploy via Germany.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_forces_agreement
[2] As a major exception, I believe the bases purchased civilian fuel from German suppliers directly as part of the taxation agreement.
[3] The base bank would always do business to the penny which, over the course of years, would create a small pile of useless copper in every home.
[+] [-] acqq|7 years ago|reply
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/06/us-military-...
Additionally, I must admit haven't thought much about the actual status of the "territories" before.
[+] [-] freeflight|7 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.edelweisslodgeandresort.com/accomodations/eligib...
[+] [-] maxxxxx|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
Unless you're talking about privately owned stores.
[+] [-] gambiting|7 years ago|reply
How is that legal? By law the price shown has to include VAT. Unless somehow the American base is not considered German territory?
[+] [-] lewilewilewi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TomMckenny|7 years ago|reply
By the time the US became substantial enough for real international trade, vast swathes of the planet were under other nation's empires leaving fewer trading partners than could be desired. Commodore Perry's somewhat invasive trip to Japan was to try and add a few trading partners from unclaimed nations.
So I suppose it's not too surprising that the colonies gained in the pointless glory seeking of the Spanish American war led to a bit of schizophrenia.
[+] [-] kaycebasques|7 years ago|reply
[1] The study of the methods used when writing history.
[+] [-] tanderson92|7 years ago|reply
You can view the handwritten edits by Roosevelt in the archival drafts.
[+] [-] cjf4|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrysalibra|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
From our perspective, in the post-colonial era, the term "empire" and "colonisation" are just inherently negative terms. The defining qualities (this article explicitly makes this argument) of empire are considered to be slavery, reservation systems and such. In some sense, empire can just mean "bad" and bad can be proof or empire.
The postcolonial age is also the natiolist age, where nation states are the basis of the political system. That makes imperialism's defining quality "the subjegation of nations" because it denies nations ultimate authority.
Marx associated empire with capitalism (surprise surprise), using the term "international capitalism" interchangeably with empire. Considering history, this has some logic to it. For example, the Royal Britsh East India Trading Company colonized India. The crown later confiscated it. 18th and 19th century empires were about controling trade, whether by a king, legal monopoly or otherwise.
The article plays with a mundane territorial definition. Ff you control "overseas" land...
All interesting discussion topics, but also a problem.
"Is X an Empire" just depends on the definition. It's not a meaningful question in itself. Just because you conclude that "yes, it is" doesn't mean anything.
[+] [-] coldtea|7 years ago|reply
If X controls my local politics to its benefit, overthrows legitimate governments, and establishes dictatorships whenever it likes, and does that in tons of countries around the world, I'd call it an empire...
[+] [-] mbubb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nick2|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eloisant|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] forkLding|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] eternalban|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] YUMad|7 years ago|reply
But they do not understand, refuse to understand, or simply hold irrelevant the narrative manipulation that is necessary to pull it off, and this is something US excels at. The 'spreading freedom' meme is just one example; another example is 'we do it, and after that we declare it illegal for others to do it' - US committed significant war crimes, such as fire bombing of Dresden and Kyoto, and was never held accountable for it.
[+] [-] i_am_proteus|7 years ago|reply
-The fire bombing of Dresden was executed jointly by the United States and United Kingdom, with the UK flying more sorties. This occurred during a war when Germany was executing strategic bombing campaigns against the UK.
-The United States of America did not fire bomb Kyoto. Nobody did.
[+] [-] SkyMarshal|7 years ago|reply
In the aftermath of the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush originally attempted to create an international precedent where sovereign nations don’t invade each other, by refusing to push into Iraq and depose Saddam after expelling him from Kuwait. That was an important aspect of his “New World Order” and quite forward looking. Clinton mostly upheld it, but subsequently Bush Jr and the neocons tossed that out the window with their invasion of Iraq.
That the Iraq invasion was both poorly justified and poorly executed (the occupation at least) hastened the destruction of H. W.’s precedent. America’s additional regime change attempts since of varying results have further undermined it. At this point the precedent and SOP for the great powers is barely concealed will to power.
The 21st century is going to be ugly as Russia, China and others follow America’s ill-conceived lead in this regard. But make no mistake, it was the US itself that made this dangerous state of affairs more likely.
[+] [-] pluma|7 years ago|reply
Yes, it was one of the worst bombing raids and yes, we would consider it a war crime (or at least extremely unethical) nowadays (much like many things both sides had done throughout either World War) but it's usually invoked to play down nazi crimes and it's usually misrepresented because of very successful propaganda.
The estimated death toll was around 25-30 thousand. During and after the war various revisionists and propagandists have blown up that figure to over 100 thousand. Additionally German nazis have built an entire tradition around it, "mourning the fallen" to exploit the incident as a display of nationalism and nazi sympathies.
There's no legal basis to single out the bombing of Dresden as a war crime within the context of the Second World War. I would say that it can be argued that some of the crimes nazis were charged with after WW2 also lacked a pre-existing legal basis but there was no expectation that the winning side would apply punishments consistently, sufficiently or even fairly.
So even if there were good reasons to categorise the Dresden bombings as a war crime in the context of WW2, it'd just be one of many alleged and proven war crimes that went unchallenged -- including other crimes (and "crimes") committed by the US, the Allies in general or any other involved military.
[+] [-] kalleboo|7 years ago|reply
I'd love to hear what you're referring to since common knowledge is that Kyoto was notoriously the only part of Japan spared from major bomb raids (originally due to no military significance, then because they wanted to A-bomb it and didn't want earlier strikes to mess up the damage data, but later it was spared from the A-bomb as well)
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] subjoriented|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] porpoisely|7 years ago|reply
Our news, history books, movies, etc all hide it by simply not labeling the US as an empire. It's just as easy as that. We use terms like "superpower" or "leader of the western" or "leader of democracies" or other euphemisms to hide and forgive conquests, brutality, genocide and empire.
Empire is evil and it's something our enemies do, not what we do. It's the british, germans, japanese and most recently the evil soviets who create empires. We are not evil, we don't create empires.
[+] [-] sonnyblarney|7 years ago|reply
... that's the big ole' 'Empire'?
... and a few mostly unpopulated dots in the Ocean?
Oh, so scary! The power!
And to consider that Filipinos, who are culturally distinct from Americans in every way, and who have almost nothing in common with Americans but a temporary geopolitical alignment should be considered 'Americans' in the same way as those from New Orleans and NYC?
So that's 2018 intersectionalist history?
Rubbish.
America is quite fundamentally distinct from the Philippines and always has been, there's no fundamental reason that most Americans on the street should care enough to 'go to war' over foreign interdiction.
Going to war for those with whom the US has a special arrangement, and going to war for the 'homeland' are indeed quite different questions.
There's no 'hiding' here.
Thanks for the history tidbits Graun, but as usually the headline is ridiculous.
[+] [-] SllX|7 years ago|reply
Where they fork off is the Philippines are now an independent nation, Hawaii is now a US State, Oregon Territory was eventually split into 3 entire US States and part of a couple of others, and Puerto Rico still has more or less the same status as it did in 1941, but a few more rights and privileges afforded to them along with present day Guam, present day Northern Marianas Islands, and present day US Virgin Islands. American Samoa is US Territory, but a Navy playground so while the people are American Nationals living under the US Constituton, they’re not American Citizens and their territory is considered to be on par with all those unpopulated guano Islands we once claimed. That’s the law, 2019.
The Filipinos are culturally distinct but we still count large numbers of them as American Citizens, both as immigrants and as a people that have lived in the mainland since before the Philippines were granted independence. The Native Hawaiians were and still are considered culturally distinct but they are still American Citizens by birthright.
Put another way, your defensive posture is simply out of place here. On December 7th 1941, the Japanese attacked the United States. That shouldn’t need qualification. If they had only attacked Manila but didn’t make it to Oahu, they still would have been attacking the United States and that was certainly the intent of their attack.
[+] [-] gjm11|7 years ago|reply
No version of the word "intersectional" appears in the article, nor (so far as I can tell) in anything else by its author.
I agree that the word "empire" here seems overblown, but it seems like perhaps you're bringing your own pet hates into this for some reason?
Also: The article, and the book it's based on, are from 2019 (though I'm sure much of the work was done in 2018 and indeed earlier). Not sure what the point of specifying "2018" is meant to be.
[+] [-] dade_|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yazboo|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golergka|7 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure it's usually "scaled down" because that's how map projection works. Does this writer also think that Greenland and Africa are of comparable size?
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|7 years ago|reply
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/92/Map_of_U...
This is not simply projection effects, this is explicit downscaling.
Another comparison, Wikipedia lists the area of Alaska as 1,717,856 km^2 and that of the contiguous United States 8,080,400 km^2, so on a map with only projection correction Alaska should be around 1/4 of the size of the lower 48, this is clearly not true on the wikipedia example shown above, and for any other map in the same style.
So no, Alaska is not scaled down for the sake of accurately depicting its size.
[+] [-] nikbackm|7 years ago|reply
Have only really seen maps using Mercator myself though.
[+] [-] hanging|7 years ago|reply
This is horrendously sloppy journalism.
The first attack on Wake was three days later and was repelled. The successful attack was another 12 days after that.
And the Midway attack was six months after Pearl.
[+] [-] blowski|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] culturestate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NeedMoreTea|7 years ago|reply
In the case of Wake, 8 of the 12 Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters were destroyed. In the case of Midway, the attack that day was repulsed.