'We signed a lease agreement' - yeah right lol, with who, with cubanos stood up against the enmienda Platt, with guns to their heads ... signed under duress, invalid contract ... 'in perpetuity', give us a break, no independent nation signs something like that of their free will, in this case the signers had been hand-picked by the US and if they hadn't signed they'd have been shot
'maintained it LEGALLY' - yeah right lol, according to WHOSE LAW ... law of Cuba says yanqui go home, we broke the shackles of enmienda Platt in 1934 when you were having that little depression and even though you got back control through Batista for a while the Platt thing is just not on so forget it and piss off
'We still pay Cuba an annual rent' - yeah right lol, usd2000/yr, what a sick joke that is ... in fact you don't pay a dime, you send a cheque each year, and Cuba doesn't cash them, they're saving the whole stack for evidence in court .... lease in perpetuity on that many square miles including a fine harbour for usd2000, yeah that's real 'rent' all right, pffft
They told you lies in school Hawk, you're likely aware of others already, just not this one apparently ... there is considerable on the net regarding it, if you'd like to study up .... the US navy has a site where they try to explain it all away, well of course they miss a few bits, like the duress of the Platt thing and the drunken sailors wandering out of the 'leased' area during the Estrada Palma to Batista years inclusive, others as well, to be expected one suspects eh
'The US hasn't applied such imperialistic rhetoric since the 1800s'
The rhetoric has been adapted but the game goes on, Guantánamo is the most glaring example of it in these Americas, same old dirty game, from O'Sullivan through Platt through Batista through who knows next .... Martí warned of this, he had lived in New York and was familiar with both the slavers and the Thoreau/Websters, he said beware the norteamericano, there are good ones but there are evil ones too, be careful ... didn't matter how careful were cubanos in 1898 though, they got steamrollered
'As for Plattismo, bear in mind that Spain ruled Cuba at that time'
Technically, and just barely ... the spanish had been just about completely beaten off by the point the Maine thing was cooked up for justification of US 'assistance', and cubanos themselves did the great majority of fighting from then to the end, as well - a lot of that Teddy and the roughriders charging up hills stuff is utter rot, the hills had been taken and were being held by cubanos at the time .... 'helping them get their independence' would not in any case have included controlling them and taking their territory afterwards, such things give the lie to both 'help' and 'independence'
You know what enmienda Platt was really about? - it was about keeping niggers from running their own lives anywhere in the Big Stick area .... rather blatantly presented as such in US congress, too, you should read some of the speeches ... i forget where they are listed, but here is a piece that shows general attitude -
'On 24 December 1897, US Under-Secretary of War J.C.
Breckenridge wrote in a memorandum 'This [the Cuban] population is
made up of whites, blacks, Asians and people who are mixture of
these races. The inhabitants are generally indolent and apathetic –
Since they only possess a vague notion of what is right and wrong, the
people tend to seek pleasure not through work, but through violence –
It is obvious that the immediate annexation of these disturbing
elements into our own federation in such large numbers would be
madness, so before we do that we must clean up the country – We
must destroy everything within our cannons' range of fire. We must
impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion,
disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the army.
The allied army must be constantly engaged in reconaissance and
vanguard actions so that the Cuban army is irreparably caught
between two fronts.' '
rcgfrfi.easynet.co.uk
Real sensitive new age guy, eh ... well a lot of your legislators were saying similar things for the next ten years, and a lot of commentators too, there is one particularly pointed newspaper editorial, i forget where .... many now don't realise how black are half of cubanos, it was a factor then and it is a factor now, with the ex-cubanos of Miami being largely white, and the blacks still at home
The US Library of Congress has a whole piece on what they call the spanish-american war, it has fairly good detail, from it you can get search terms and google up more .... every day more spent occupying Guantánamo is another day too many of outright US imperialism, keeping the whole sorry mess fresh and vivid, you'll see why if you can get beyond what they taught you in school |
