I write about culture, philosophy, history. Tech director @WorldBeyondWar. Lost Music Literary Opera. Litkicks. The blogger formerly known as Levi Asher.
Hasan Piker: “There’s two major lies Republicans tell all the time. Number one: Immigrants do crimes in overwhelming numbers. That’s a lie. The evidence is the exact opposite. The evidence shows migrants are responsible for a much lower share of crime per capita than documented citizens are. The second biggest lie is there are far too many people voting in this country and we have to restrict them. The problem is far too little people are voting. Voter fraud, not a problem. The real problem is voter suppression”
CNN = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
CBS = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
FOX = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
WaPo = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
WSJ = Owned by a right-wing billionaire.
Ah yes, tell me more about how the mainstream media is “far left.”
It has been incredible to watch the hypocrisy of what crimes both parties Washington DC will overlook (ALL OF THEM) as long as the corrupt politicians are loyal to Big Money, Big Oil and Israel.
🚨 The First US War Overseas Was A Genocide—It Was Erased From History 🚨
During the Spanish-American War, which was largely created by US propaganda, the US went after Spanish colonial territories — one of those being the Philippines. In the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898, the US won a decisive victory, destroying the Spanish Pacific fleet. Afterward, one might think the Americans would turn around and sail home, singing sea shanties with grog in hand. …But no.
President McKinley decided it made more sense to try to take over the entire Philippines even though few Americans knew what it was or where it was. About this decision, McKinley stated:
“One night late, it came to me this way. There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos and uplift them and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could for them, as our fellow men for who Christ also died.” (Quotes are from the book "Overthrow".)
It’s unclear if the hundreds of thousands of Filipinos who would die in McKinley’s pursuit felt uplifted by the experience. Also interesting is the fact that McKinley believed there was “nothing” else he could do but subjugate, oppress, convert, and control the Filipino people. Apparently no one made him aware of the idea of leaving them alone. (I bet when he heard about that years later, it was a real head-smack moment.)
Prior to the arrival of the Americans, there were already Filipino guerrilla forces fighting against the Spanish colonizers. After the Battle of Manila Bay, the head of those forces, Emilio Aguinaldo, met with Commodore George Dewey, the head of the US naval force. The two of them differed on what happened at that meeting. Aguinaldo believed they had agreed to defeat Spain together, at which point the Filipino people would have their independence. Dewey later claimed that’s not at all what happened. But then again the two of them didn’t speak each other’s language, and there was no interpreter. Also, the United States has broken every promise it has ever made to indigenous people — so this was just par for the course.
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A few months later the US and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, which brought the Spanish-American War to a close. In the agreement, the US paid Spain $20 million for the entire Philippine archipelago, which consisted of 7,000 islands and was home to 7 million people who had no idea they’d just been sold from one colonizer to another. (That means the US paid $2.85 per Filipino.)
The Filipino people proceeded with implementing their newfound independence. They approved a constitution, created a republic, and proclaimed Aguinaldo president.
“Twelve days later, this new nation declared war against the United States forces on the islands. McKinley took no notice. To him the Filipinos were what the historian Richard Welch called ‘a disorganized and helpless people.’”
Oddly, at this time in American history, some percentage of Congress believed the US should not be a dastardly and repulsive imperial hegemon. (I know. I’m as shocked as you are.) Therefore, the Senate (for a bit) refused to ratify the Treaty of Paris.
“Senator George Frisbie Hoar of Massachusetts warned that it would turn the United States into a ‘a vulgar, commonplace empire founded upon physical force, controlling subject races and vassal states, in which one class must forever rule and the other classes must forever obey.’”
Ha! Can you imagine that? The US would never do something so grotesque! …except for the next 125 years and counting. (Also, my man George gets extra credit for having the middle name Frisbie.)
Hmmm, so how can America’s ruling psychopaths get Congress to play along with the subjugation of 7 million Filipinos? I bet those pesky politicians would change their tune if the US forces in the Philippines were attacked by the barbarians who lived there. Oh, what do you know?! That’s exactly what happened next!
During the Senate’s debate, the Filipino rebels attacked the American forces in Manila. This helped push the Senate to finally ratify the treaty. …But it was later revealed that the American troops actually fired the first shots. So we can see the US tradition of false flags used to drag us into bloody wars goes back quite a way. (Apparently, the long arc of history bends towards repeating itself.)
In the battles that followed, the Filipinos—up against superior US weaponry—used every guerrilla tactic they could think of in order to defend their land, families, villages, and lives. The Americans responded with genocide. In just one example:
“General Wheaton ordered every town and village within twelve miles to be destroyed and their inhabitants killed.”
The US military worked to stop any reporting of the ethnic cleansing from getting back to the home audience. Eventually, in 1901, some of the extent of the horror made its way into US newspapers. Average Americans found out the troops were using torture, rape, and ethnic cleansing to subdue the local population. They rarely differentiated between combatants and noncombatants.
“‘We have actually come to do the thing we went to war to banish,’ the Baltimore American lamented. The Indianapolis News concluded that the United States had adopted ‘the methods of barbarism,’ and the New York Post declared that American troops ‘have been pursuing a policy of wholesale and deliberate murder.’”
Of course, plenty of US newspapers fell all over themselves to defend the genocidal colonizers. Can you guess which rag led the way?
“The New York Times argued that ‘brave and loyal officers’ had reacted understandably to the ‘cruel, treacherous, murderous’ Filipinos.”
In early 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt had succeeded the recently assassinated McKinley. In yet another moment of foreshadowing, Roosevelt — pretending to care — pushed for hearings in the Senate to address the charges of misconduct by American forces. Teddy then got his allies to steadfastly limit the scope of the hearings. The committee never even issued a final report. As with the Warren Commission on the assassination of JFK and the 9/11 Commission, the mere appearance of an effort to “figure it out” was enough to distract the American public. The commissions never got to the truth, nor were they meant to.
By July of 1902, Teddy Roosevelt announced that the Philippines had been pacified. Most of the rebel leaders had been killed, and the indigenous population had given up its resistance.
“In three and a half torturous years of war, 4,374 American soldiers were killed… About 16,000 guerrillas and at least 20,000 civilians were also killed. Filipinos remember those years as some of the bloodiest in their history. Americans quickly forgot that the war ever happened.”
Britannica puts the death toll higher:
"An estimated 20,000 Filipino combatants were killed, and more than 200,000 civilians perished as a result of combat, hunger, or disease."
The first time US troops ever fought overseas they committed genocide. It does not seem that much has changed over 125 years.
[NOTE: Support my work (for free) by subscribing at "RealLeeCamp" on subs tack. Thanks for supporting independent media!]
Rep. Jake Auchincloss: "On social media, whether it's TikTok or Meta or otherwise, anti-Semitism is viral."
"When societies have pathologies that go unaddressed, they tend to manifest as anti-Semitism and scapegoating of Jews, and social media is a failed society."
Auchincloss has taken over a million dollars from AIPAC.
The trauma left behind when a society is split by war is immense. This is how a community chokes itself to death. This is what occupied New York City lived through during the entire Revolutionary War.https://t.co/1e1dhRHMJJ
Outside Delaney Hall Detention Center, protesters gathered in solidarity with immigrants inside who are on hunger strike, risking their health to demand dignity, freedom, and an end to their detention.
Instead of pouring billions into detention centers, deportations, and raids, we should be investing in the things that actually make communities stronger: housing, healthcare, schools, legal services, and good jobs.
Abolish ICE. Fund communities. Free them all.
John Fetterman seems to genuinely think that the reason no one likes him is because he refuses to wear a suit.
It's not the hoodie, dude. It's because you've become a stooge for AIPAC and the Republican party.
“It’s either Disneyland or oblivion in USA” https://t.co/1e1dhRHMJJ a personal encounter with the way we represent (or forget) traumatic generational history from past wars
This week at CODEPINK, we:
☮️ Disrupted Marco Rubio's war on Cuba
☮️ Protested the AMA to take action against genocide
☮️ Stood with the Bolivian general strike
& more!
Check it out:
https://t.co/LMu1vkvxs2
I unequivocally condemn misogyny and toxicity against women.
I believe in redemption.
@grahamformaine opposes the war in Iran that Collins supported.
Platner supports taxing the billionaires who Collins gave breaks to.
Platner believes in Medicare for All, while Collins believes in cutting Medicaid. @FaceTheNation
a critical moment for us media. this is exactly what happened in turkey with erdogans initial rise to power. regime loyalists bought up all the private media outlets.
The Iranian navy, which has been destroyed eight times, has apparently closed the Strait of Hormuz again, because the United States, for the seventh time, won the war that wasn’t a war, so now the United States has to open the Strait of Hormuz that was already open before the not-war began.
The not-war began because Iran had uranium that was totally, completely, beautifully obliterated, so they can’t build the nuclear bomb they weren’t building, which is why the United States had to start the not-war it definitely didn’t start.
Now the United States, which has nuclear weapons, is threatening to use nuclear weapons to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons, because nuclear weapons are far too dangerous for countries with nuclear weapons to allow other countries to have.
If the United States saw the United States doing what the United States does in other countries, the United States would invade the United States to liberate the United States from the tyranny of the United States.