1895-1899: The Spanish-American War, A Sordid Little War

1895: COLOMBIA. U.S. troops invade the Colombian state of Panama to “protect American interests”.

1895: UNITED STATES. Josiah Strong, minister of the Christian religion, publishes Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis, in which he contends that the United States, as the home of the “superior” Anglo-Saxon race, has an obligation to spread political "liberty", "Christianity" and "civilization". Strong's book was enormously popular and the first edition sold 158,000 copies. The delusions of racial, moral and societal superiority promulgated by Strong were an important factor in encouraging Americans of the day to rationalize U.S. aggression against other nations.

1895: COLOMBIA. U.S. Marines invade the Colombian state of Panama. Again.

1895: UNITED STATES. Whites attack black workers in New Orleans killing six.

1896: UNITED STATES. Once again in the forefront of freedom and liberty, the United States Supreme Court puts its stamp of approval on apartheid in the land of the free. In Plessy v. Ferguson the Court rules that "separate but equal" facilities satisfy guarantees under the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

1895-98: UNITED STATES. Yellow media mogul and Nazi mouthpiece-to-be William Randolph Hearst and yellow media tycoon Joseph Pulizter engage in a contest to see which man can reduce American journalistic standards to the lowest possible level. A mixture of exaggeration, outright lies and fabrications, jingoistic nonsense, xenophobia and sensationalism, so-called "yellow journalism", apparently sells newspapers in the U.S. and Hearst and Pulitzer strive to outdo each other in their race to the sewers. The two newspaper barons play the major role in "manufacturing consent" by manipulating the U.S. public before and during the long-planned war which led to the U.S. invasions of Cuba, the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico.

In fantasyland America, Pulitzer, who plumbed the depths of sleazy and dishonest publishing, will ultimately be remembered only for the Pulitzer Prize, ironically intended as a recognition of quality journalism.

1896: UNITED STATES. Vivisection gets a boost when Dr. Arthur Wentworth performs spinal taps on twenty nine children at Children's Hospital in Boston to determine if the procedure is harmful.

1896: NICARAGUA. U.S. Marines invade the port of Corinto.

1896: UNITED STATES. Corporations directly buy their first presidential election. William McKinley is elected with $6 million in cash from from corporations. His opponent, populist William Jennings Bryan, has only $600,000 to spend on the campaign. The six mil buys McKinley's campaign hundreds of trained speakers, millions of posters, buttons, and billboards, and three hundred million campaign flyers printed in nine languages.


McKinley was peculiarly susceptible to the boys with the money. In 1893, he had been rescued from bankruptcy with $100,000, a pretty big chunk of change in 1893, by a conspiracy, sorry, consortium, of John D. Rockefeller, his friend Mark Hanna and similar types. Hanna duly became McKinley's top political adviser and chairman of the Republican National Committee. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust kicked in a cool quarter million to McKinley's election campaign. And, to keep Rockefeller's rival, J.P. Morgan, happy, his minion Garret A. Hobart, the director of various Morgan enterprises including the Liberty National Bank of New York, was made Vice-president, nicely rounding out the robber baron ticket.

A grateful McKinley will soon, on behalf of the same corporate interests who bought his election, preside over the illegal annexation of the nation of Hawaii and a war of empire against Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

All questions in a democracy
are questions of money.

Mark Hanna

McKinley’s Campaign Manager

1896: UNITED STATES. State militia are used to break a miners’ strike in Leadville, Colorado.

1897-ongoing: UNITED STATES. America's leading merchants of death, the Dupont family, enter into a conspiracy with their European competitors to monopolize the world gunpowder market. Better killing through chemistry.

1897: UNITED STATES. Theodore Roosevelt, tightly allied to the J.P. Morgan banking interests, is made Assistant Secretary of the Navy. During a speech at the U.S. Naval War College where plans for a war of empire against Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines have been under development since 1894, Roosevelt says, "diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier...No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war."

1896: NICARAGUA. U.S. forces invade the Nicaraguan port of Corinto to “protect American interests”.

1897: UNITED STATES. At the Lattimer Mine in Pennsylvania, a sheriff and his deputies open fire on striking mineworkers, killing nineteen. Most of the victims are shot in the back.

I897: UNITED STATES. Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, sends a cable to Admiral George Dewey advising him to prepare for an attack on the Spanish fleet in the Philippines pending "developments" in Cuba. Whoa there Teddy, we haven't blown the Maine up yet. And six weeks before the Maine does blow up, Roosevelt writes a letter to his very good friend, gun runner William Astor Chanler, saying, "I earnestly hope that events will so shape themselves that we must interfere (in Cuba) some time not in the distant future."

1898-1900: CHINA. U.S. troops invade to oppose the Boxer Rebellion which is an attempt to end Western domination of China.

1898: NICARAGUA. U.S. Marines invade the Nicaraguan port of San Juan del Sur.

1898: UNITED STATES. White Democrats disagree with an editorial written by the Wilmington, North Carolina Daily Record's black editor. They march on the newpaper's office, burning and destroying it. The mob goes on a racist rampage in the city, killing fourteen blacks. The Democrats then stage a coup forcing Wilmington Mayor Silas P. Wright and black and white members of the city government to resign.

1898: UNITED STATES. Once again the United States Supreme Court demonstrates clearly whose pulling its strings when it declares invalid a section of the Erdman Act which had made it a criminal offense for railroads to dismiss employees or discriminate against prospective employees based on their union activities. Can’t be havin’ none of that in the land of the free.

1898: UNITED STATES. Wall Street stock market manipulator E.H. Harriman and Judge Robert Scott Lovett gain control of the Union Pacific Railroad with cash arranged by William Rockefeller and the Warburg family's Kuhn, Loeb Company. In return, Harriman deposits the vast receipts from the railroad into the Rockefellers' City Bank and, when he issues tens of millions of dollars in "watered" (fraudulent) railroad stock, Harriman sells most of it through the crooks at Kuhn, Loeb.

Harriman and the Rockefellers have a nice little conspiracy going. Harriman charges those oil companies competing with the Rockefellers vastly inflated freight rates. The Rockefellers then buy the struggling companies for peanuts and build Standard Oil into a monstrous and utterly ruthless monopoly. The Rockefellers sell oil products below cost in every market in which there is a competitor, driving it out of business. The Rockefellers then jack up their prices to the absolute maximum they can extort from consumers.

1898-1959: CUBA. In the midst of countless hostile actions, the destruction of the Cuban economy and an ongoing, vitriolic propaganda campaign by the U.S. against Spain, the USS Maine enters Havana Harbor on the patently absurd pretext of it being, in the words of the grotesque U.S. consul in Havana, a “friendly act of courtesy”. The secondary pretext, of protecting Americans in Cuba, is equally absurd as Frederic Remington pointed out.

Remington, an illustrator for the Hearst newspapers, the key element in the propaganda campaign preparing the U.S. public for the long-planned U.S. invasion of Cuba, sends a cable to Hearst telling him that, contrary to the hysterical tales being invented and carried in the Hearst papers, “all is quiet” in Cuba and asks for permission to return to the U.S. Hearst sends Remington a cable saying, “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

On cue and as though by magic, the USS Maine oh-so-conveniently blows up in Havana Harbor, resulting in the death of two hundred and sixty six U.S. sailors. By a fabulous stroke of luck, of the two hundred and sixty six corpses, only two belong to officers and to junior officers at that. Enlisted men were barred from going ashore. Officers were not.

By another fabulous stroke of luck, the U.S. has, since 1894, been beavering away planning for a full scale war against Spain and the seizure of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. The blowing up of the USS Maine is the starting whistle.

The “act of terrorism” is, of course, immediately blamed on the Spanish who, self-evidently, had absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by blowing up the Maine. A massive and hysterical propaganda campaign in the U.S. mass media, largely owned by Hearst and his fellow media slut, Pulitzer, whips the American public, who have already been well prepared by several years of vicious anti-Spanish propaganda, into a mindless war frenzy.

American newspapers carry out their sacred duty of printing lies to deceive the masses and carry headlines such as “The Warship Maine Was Split in Two by an Enemy’s Infernal Machine”, “How the Maine Looks As It Lies, Wrecked by Spanish Treachery” and “The Maine Was Destroyed by Treachery”. Illustrations in the newspapers, presented as fact and accepted as such by the American public, show imaginary explosives beneath the Maine and imaginary wires running ashore to imaginary Spanish evildoers.

And Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, who had, prior to the Maine explosion, warned Admiral Dewey to be ready to attack the Spanish, cold bloodedly kicks off the wars against Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines when he tells American newspapers that the Maine explosion definitely was not an accident, a statement for which there was absolutely no factual basis and was clearly designed to inflame the American public.

Six weeks later, a U.S. Naval Court of Inquiry surprises no one by coming to the conclusion that the Maine explosion was caused by a mine and we’re all supposed to know who put it there, aren’t we? The head of the Court of Inquiry, Captain William T. Sampson, will be duly rewarded with a nice fat promotion to the command of the U.S. North Atlantic Fleet.

But there are one or two things about this Court of Inquiry which seem to have been forgotten. The Judge Advocate of the U.S. Navy, Adolf Marix, reported to the court that his informants in Havana indicated that a two hundred pound mine had been placed beneath the Maine's powder magazines by divers working for Cuban businessmen, not by the Spanish, who were, of course, the last people in the world who would do anything to give the U.S. an excuse to attack.

The Cuban businessmen were, in turn, connected to the American gun runner William Astor Chanler who had been involved in smuggling arms to Cuba and was, purely coincidentally, a very good friend of Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt. And Roosevelt wasn't the least bit squeamish about killing a few hundred Americans. In one of his less guarded moments, he had written to Henry Cabot Lodge, "I don’t care whether our sea-coast cities are bombarded or not, this country needs a war."

In 1971, British historian Hugh Thomas will quote William Astor Chanler as claiming responsibility for the blowing up of the Maine in a conversation with the American ambassador to the USSR, William C. Bullitt in the early 1930's. Shortly after the conversation with Bullitt, Chanler died. Information on the cause of his death is difficult to find.

The blowing up of the USS Maine serves as the pretext for the U.S. attack on all Spanish possessions in the Caribbean and the Pacific which had been planned by the U.S. since 1894. The U.S. invades Cuba and occupies and seizes Puerto Rico, preventing its first scheduled democratic election. The U.S. later seizes Guam and invades the Philippines. In the fantasyland of American "history", this unprovoked war of aggression and empire building is called the Spanish-American War. In Cuba, it is more accurately known as the U.S. intervention in the Cuban War of Independence.

And now that Theodore Roosevelt has the splendid little war he has been so keen on, it's time to turn it to political advantage. Roosevelt heads off to "liberate" Cuba with the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry Regiment, the so-called Rough Riders. Roosevelt has very good friends in the U.S. mass media and he makes sure there is a constant flow of reports of his exploits, real or imagined. To be doubly sure, he has his very own "embedded" reporter, Richard Harding Davis of the New York Herald, whose glowing reports are picked up by a host of other American newspapers and magazines. Roosevelt's propaganda engine would have us believe that he and the Rough Riders defeated the Spanish at San Juan Hill in Cuba virtually single handed. Roosevelt lobbied mightily for a Congressional Medal of Honor but he and his cronies couldn't persuade the War Deparment to cough up. It would have to wait until 2001 for William "Wet Willy" Clinton to put the icing on Roosevelt's propaganda cake.

The Humboldt (California) Times puts a nice racist spin on things when it prints a New York press story reporting that "Japs are excluded" from serving in the U.S. Navy. The report continues that “in view of the fact that there were several Japanese on board the Maine when it was blown up, it is interesting to learn the government has adopted a method that will keep them out of our navy.” The idea, apparently is that all people of Japanese ancestry are spies and those who were killed on the Maine had “useful information which (could) have been used for Japan's benefit.” Well, Praise the Lord that those yellow devils got themselves blown up before they could betray the world’s loudest demockracy. The paper goes on, “The government has passed a rule that men admitted to the navy must be more than five feet, four inches tall. Navy officers say that will exclude the Japs.”

And who is making tens of millions of dollars yet again in their role as America's leading merchants of death during this “splendid little war”? None other than the Duponts of course, who provide the majority of gunpowder to the U.S. government for its conquest of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Once again, it’s a case of Better Killing Through Chemistry thanks to the Dupont family.

When the Spanish in Cuba are defeated, the U.S. immediately changes its tactics, which were purportedly intended to help Cubans win their independence. The U.S. military refuses to allow Cuban independence fighters, the majority of whom are black, to take part in the surrender ceremonies or the creation of a Cuban government. The U.S. does not allow the Cubans to be present at the signing of the peace treaty in Paris. To prevent democracy prevailing and the Cuban government falling into the hands of its, gasp, black majority, U.S. dictator John R. Brooke disbands the mainly black Cuban army but leaves the previously demonized white Spanish officials in place. Hold on there John, I thought we were fighting the Spanish and helping the Cubans…

Unlike Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam, Cuba is not directly seized by the U.S. due to the Teller Amendment to the U.S. declaration of war against Spain. Instead, following U.S. military occupation, a series of repressive, racist dictatorships, ultimately connected with the U.S. Mafia, is installed. American sugar companies, multinationals, the Mafia, various Nazi supporters and merchants of death such as the DuPont family and other wealthy, white friends of the various U.S. supported dictatorships prosper while the great majority of Cubans live short lives of poverty, hopelessness and fear.

1898. NICARAGUA. U.S. Marines invade the port city of San Juan del Sur.

1898-present: HAWAII. In the midst of all this murderous empire building, the U.S. purports to formally annex the independent nation of Hawaii, the government of which had been overthrown by a coup of American sugar barons in 1893. By happy coincidence, the illegal annexation of Hawaii happens just in time for the U.S. to use Hawaii as a base for its planned invasion and occupation of the Philippines.

The U.S. remains in illegal occupation of Hawaii until the present day.

1898: HAWAII. Now that Hawaii has been stolen by the U.S., the great benefits of freedom and equality enjoyed in the U.S. are generously given to Hawaiians. Congress extends the racist Chinese Exclusion Act to Hawaii and the immigration of people of Chinese descent from Hawaii to the U.S. is prohibited. The U.S. appoints commissioners to run Hawaii. Unsurprisingly, among them is sugar baron and coup leader Sanford Dole. And to ensure harmony with our not-quite-white brothers in Hawaii, the list of commissioners is nicely rounded out by John T. Morgan, a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, an advocate of apartheid, a supporter of legalized lynching and a devout opponent of the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which was intended to prevent the denial of voting rights based on race.

1898-present: PUERTO RICO. The U.S. invades and occupies Puerto Rico, a rich island with a strategic position long coveted by American militarists and robber barons, just as its one million people are in the process of achieving independence from Spain and are about to hold their first democratic elections. The first priority of the world's loudest demockracy is, of course, to cancel the scheduled elections which, as in Cuba, would have resulted in a free country ruled by, gasp, black people. The nation of Puerto Rico is stolen from its people and becomes an occupied colony of the U.S. Repeated independence movements are ruthlessly and murderously crushed by the U.S. Puerto Rican patriots and independence leaders are imprisoned and tortured. The Spanish language is outlawed in schools and the American colonizers send missionaries to further the destruction of local culture. Local agriculture is systematically destroyed, making the island dependent on food imports from the U.S. and driving Puerto Ricans to work as virtual slave labor on what rapidly become American-owned plantations. Other Puerto Ricans are driven into the factories of U.S.-owned companies as cheap labor. A completely powerless puppet legislature is installed to create the usual tawdry illusion of democracy. In plain fact, Puerto Rico is a dictatorship run by the U.S. military.

The U.S. forces Puerto Ricans to become U.S. citizens in 1917 in order to allow them to be drafted into the military after the U.S. enters WW I just in time to be in on the treaty signing. In the fine tradition of American demockracy, Puerto Rico is given "non-voting" status in the U.S. Congress. The U.S. constructs major military bases and uses large parts of Puerto Rico, particularly the islands of Culebra and Vieques, as bombing ranges. Puerto Rico’s El Yunque rainforest is used by the U.S. for chemical warfare testing. The island of Vieques is used for test firing radioactive depleted uranium (DU) armaments (dirty bombs) which the U.S. will later use in its covert nuclear wars against the people of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan.

General Nelson A. Miles, who headed the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico was not just a talented genocide artist who had carried out innumerable slaughters of native Americans so that their land could be stolen, he was also, as befits a senior U.S. military officer, a truly gifted liar. Miles said, “We have not come to make war upon the people of a country that for centuries has been oppressed, but, on the contrary, to bring you protection, not only to yourselves but to your property, to promote your prosperity, and to bestow upon you the immunities and blessings of the liberal institutions of our government.” Well gee, thanks a lot there Nelson. Thought for a minute you were here to steal our country.

1898-present: GUAM. The U.S. invades and seizes the strategically located island of Guam. It becomes a permanent part of the American Empire.

1898: PHILIPPINES. The U.S. Navy under Admiral Dewey, who was warned by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt BEFORE the Maine explosion to be ready to attack the Spanish, destroys the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay. Filipino independence leader Emilio Aguinaldo returns from exile and resumes the Filipino war of independence against the Spanish. On June 12, 1898, having defeated all Spanish forces in the Philippines outside the capital of Manila, Aguinaldo signs the Philippine Declaration of Independence and ranges twenty thousand Filipino independence fighters in fourteen miles of trenches around the city of Manila, trapping fifteen thousand Spanish troops.

The ever-benevolent United States is, of course, in the Philippines only, as Admiral Dewey says, to "protect the natives and free them from the yoke of Spain", a sort of nineteenth century Operation Filipino Freedom. Aguinaldo honors an American request not to attack the Spanish garrison, holding off for three months as Dewey waits for U.S. troops to arrive. Unknown to Aguinaldo, Dewey assures the U.S. government that he will "enter the city and keep the Indians (Filipinos) out." When U.S. troops finally arrive, Dewey and General Wesley Merritt make a secret agreement with the Spanish governor, Fermin Jaudenes, for a mock battle after which the Spanish will surrender to the U.S. Dewey warns the Filipino independence fighters to stay out of Manila or they will be fired on by the U.S. The farce is carried out and the Spanish duly surrender to the U.S.

A few weeks later, the Philippine assembly ratifies the Malolos Constitution, establishing the Philippine Republic as an independent nation. During the Paris Peace Conference between the U.S. and Spain, President William McKinley first orders that the U.S. annex Luzon, Guam and Puerto Rico but not the Philippines. But, apparently, God has other ideas. On the night of October 24th, the President of the United States of America receives formal instructions from The Lord God Almighty.

I walked the floor of the White House night after night until midnight; and I am not ashamed to tell you, gentlemen, that I went down on my knees and prayed Almighty God for light and guidance more than one night. And one night late it came to me this way, that there was nothing left for us to do...but to take them all (the former Spanish colonies) and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died. And then I went to bed, and went to sleep, and slept soundly, and the next morning I sent for the chief engineer of the War Department and I told him to put the Philippines on the map of the United States.

William McKinley's jihad against the Filipino people has begun. When told that the people of the Philippines are Roman Catholic, McKinley responds, "Exactly."

1898: UNITED STATES. In December, McKinley issues what is farcically called the Benevolent Assimilation proclamation, one of the most outrageous pieces of hypocrisy ever crafted.

We come, not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employments, and in their personal and religious rights. All persons who, either by active aid or by honest submission, co-operate with the Government of the United States to give effect to these beneficent purposes will receive the reward of its support and protection. All others will be brought within the lawful rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity, so far as possible.....Finally, it should be the earnest wish and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of BENEVOLENT ASSIMILATION substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule. In the fulfillment of this high mission, supporting the temperate administration of affairs for the greatest good of the governed, there must be sedulously maintained the strong arm of authority, to repress disturbance and to overcome all obstacles to the bestowal of the blessings of good and stable government upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the free flag of the United States.

Needless to say, the reality didn't quite align with McKinley's pious lies.

In the path of the Washington Regiment and Battery D of the Sixth Artillery there were 1,008 dead niggers, and a great many wounded. We burned all their houses. I don't know how many men, women, and children the Tennessee boys did kill. They would not take any prisoners. U.S. Soldier

1899: PHILIPPINES. The real Battle of Manila takes place when U.S. troops slaughter three thousand Filipinos in a battle for the capital of the Philippines. Admiral Dewey steams up the Pasig River and fires five hundred pound shells into the Filipino trenches. Filipino corpses are so numerous that the Americans later use the bodies to makes breastworks. A British witness says, “This is not war; it is simply massacre and murderous butchery.”

The slaughter at Manila was necessary, but not glorious. The entire American population justifies the conduct of its army at Manila because only by a crushing repulse of the Filipinos could our position be made secure. We are the trustees of civilization and peace throughout the islands. Chicago Tribune

1898: UNITED STATES. As always, the U.S. press is doing a fine job of brainwashing the masses and, however we may criticize them for their whoring on behalf of the the ruling elite, we have to admire their flexibility. In the blinking of an eye, Filipino independence leader Emilio Aguinaldo, who had foolishly decided to oppose the U.S. theft of the Philippines, is repositioned from international statesman to brutish dictator. Aguinaldo even undergoes a change in skin color, appropriate since America's war against the Filipino people is, fundamentally, a racist war of conquest against "niggers" and "Indians".

1899: PHILIPPINES. In March, U.S. troops capture Malolos, the seat of Aguinaldo's government. The U.S. conducts a war against the Filipino people throughout 1899 in a series of bloody battles. The U.S.-appointed dictator of the Philippines is the military governor, General Elwell Stephen Otis. Otis is well qualified for the position, having been instrumental in carrying out the United States Government's successful genocide of native Americans. Otis' command is staffed with officers who, too, have learned the craft of genocide, killing native Americans.

The war against the people of the Philippines becomes nothing more than an extension of America’s racist wars against native Americans and its enslavement of blacks. American troops in the Philippines routinely talk and write of hunting and killing “niggers” and “Indians”. The phrase “nigger hunting” frequently occurs in letters written by American troops to the folks back home. Such letters also include gruesome details of burning villages, slaughtering prisoners and civilians, forced labor and looting. In 1900, Otis is replaced by another talented genocide artist, General Arthur McArthur, who carries on the good work.

U.S. Army Colonel Jacob Smith tells American reporters that fighting the Filipinos is "worse than fighting Indians". Smith says that he is using tactics against the Filipinos which he had learned fighting "savages" in the American west and Smith, a "veteran" of the Wounded Knee massacre of three hundred and fifty native American men, woman and children, knows all about exterminating the inferior races. The New York Times enthusiastically endorses Smith's embrace of genocide as "long overdue." The American press, as always doing its sacred duty to deceive and manipulate the American public on behalf of the ruling elite, routinely refers to the Filipinos fighting the foreign invaders of their country as "insurgents".

In the U.S. Senate, Albert Beveridge isn't shy about stating the real motives for America's war against the people of the Philippines.

The Philippines are ours forever....And just beyond the Philippines are China's illimitable markets. We will not retreat from either....We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world.....The Pacific is our ocean.....Where shall we turn for consumers of our surplus? Geography answers the question. China is our natural customer....The Philippines give us a base at the door of all the East....No land in America surpasses in fertility the plains and valleys of Luzon. Rice and coffee, sugar and cocoanuts, hemp and tobacco.....The wood of the Philippines can supply the furniture of the world for a century to come. At Cebu the best informed man on the island told me that 40 miles of Cebu's mountain chain are practically mountains of coal......I have a nugget of pure gold picked up in its present form on the banks of a Philippine creek. . . .It has been charged that our conduct of the war has been cruel. Senators, it has been the reverse.....we are not dealing with Americans or Europeans. We are dealing with Orientals.

And the mass murder of the Filipino people and the theft of their country has another motive. One of the major goals of the U.S. ruling elite was the economic conquest of the Far East and especially the opening of the vast Asian markets to the petroleum products of the Rockefellers. At the time, the U.S. fleet lacked a base in the Far East. The extension of American military might to the Far East on behalf of the Rockefellers and their clubmates demanded a place where American warships could be based, repaired and replenished with coal and ammunition. Unfortunately for the Filipinos, their country fit the bill perfectly.

1899: GUAM. The U.S. establishes a prison for Filipino political prisoners on the the island of Guam.

1899: PHILIPPINES. The staff correspondents of the American newspapers stationed in Manila cable a joint protest against censorship of the press by the U.S. military. The correspondents make the shocking allegation that the American people have been deceived about what is going on in the Philippines. They report that they have been forced to participate in this misrepresentation. Genocide artist General Elwell Otis, U.S. military dictator of the Philippines, explains the suppression of the truth as being a good thing. The truth, he says, "would alarm the people at home." Can't be havin' nobody alarmed in the land of the free.

1898: UNITED STATES. U.S. troops attack Chippewa Indians at Leech Lake, Minnesota.

1898: UNITED STATES. The American Anti-Imperialist League is formed to oppose the U.S. annexation of the Philippines. Among the members is Mark Twain who will serve as vice president of the league from 1901 until his death in 1910. It will have to wait until 1992, however, until many of Twain’s anti-imperialist writings are published in book form. Better late than never.

1898: UNITED STATES. Funny thing about America, the boys in the back room have got everyone so thoroughly brainwashed they’ll kill and die for them on the most ludicrously fabricated pretexts even though, during and after every war, men in uniform are treated like shit. It’s been that way since the Revolution and it’s still that way today.

The war against Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines was no different. American troops were inadequately housed, poorly fed and had shoddy medical care. Thousands died from communicable diseases such as typhoid. There were allegations of contaminated meat. The patriotic folks at Armor supplied 500,000 pounds of canned meat to the military. It had already been shipped to Britain and returned but, hey, business is business. The answer? Appoint a commission to "investigate" the problem.

And what fine, upstanding person of unquestioned integrity do we select to head this noble commission? Why none other than Grenville Dodge, big time genocide artist and, more to the point, big time railroad swindler and a man who committed treason for cash against the federal government during the Civil War. One of Dodge’s best rackets had been defrauding the federal government of millions of dollars on per-mile railroad construction subsidies. Appointing Dodge to investigate possible fraud and mismanagement by the War Department is sort of like appointing Allen Dulles to the Warren Commission or Henry Kissinger to the 9-11 Commission. Oh yeah, we did that too.

Unsurprisingly, Dodge does his job just the way he’s supposed to and finds that everything in the War Department is just swell. What a relief!

1899: NICARAGUA. U.S. forces invade parts of Nicaragua to “protect interests” during the revolution of Juan Reyes. What they are really doing is trying to help Reyes who will be more "understanding" to American gold mining and other commercial interests.

1899: COLOMBIA. U.S. forces invade the Colombian state of Panama.

1899: SAMOA. U.S. and British forces invade to “protect interests” and control the succession to the Samoan throne so it comes out right.

1899: UNITED STATES. Two thousand people gather in Georgia to witness the lynching of Sam Holt, a black farm laborer accused of killing his white employer. A contemporary newspaper report states that Holt's ears, fingers and other parts of his body were cut off. He was then burned at the stake. Holt's bones were crushed and his heart and liver cut into small pieces. Souvenir collectors paid twenty five cents for a piece of bone. A piece of Holt’s liver, cooked, sold for ten cents.

1899: UNITED STATES. In a six week period during March and April, twelve black men are lynched in Georgia including a minister of religion, Elijah Strickland, who was tortured before being lynched. Yet again it's a case of Truth, Justice or the American Way and none of the murderers is charged.

1899-1901: UNITED STATES. On behalf of corporate interests, the U.S. Army occupies the Coeur d’Alene, Idaho mining region to break a miners’ strike.

1899: WAKE ISLAND. The U.S. invades and occupies Wake Island to use it as a cable station as part of its military strategy against the people of the Philippines.

1899: UNITED STATES. In a long-running battle with mineowners, miners blow up machinery in Wardner, Idaho. President William McKinley sends federal troops to crush the miners and, using the ruling elite's standard divide and conquer tactic, picks black units from the segregated U.S. army on the theory that racial divisions will prevent them sympathizing with the white miners. The troops conduct house-to-house searches at bayonet-point and make mass arrests throughout the area. More than a thousand people are held prisoner without charge or trial for months in so-called "bullpens". Eventually all are released without a single charge being laid.