“There was a broad based, centrist, moderate, reformist United States anti-war effort right before 1900. This Original Populist Era organization was run under similar structure to 21st Century Populist movement’s cooperative involvement in the 2000s Anti Iraqi Occupation ground swell.

The American Anti-Imperialist League that organized over nine decades before George H. W. Bush invaded Iraqi occupied Kuwait was broad based.

Political groups outside of the two party duolopoly spoke up in opposition to the proposed illegal annexation of the Spanish Philippine Islands at the ‘other’ turn of the century. This group of Non Republicans and Non Democrats was formed over a century before the current American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq.

First meeting on June 15, 1898, in San Francisco, California. Its members included Andrew Carnegie, THE Billionaire Steel Magnet and Philanthropists; Mark Twain (Samuel Longhorn Clements); William James, Philosopher, Writer, Educator; David Starr Jordan; and Samuel Gompers, Union Legend.

George S. Boutwell, former secretary of the treasury and Massachusetts U. S. senator, served as first and only president of the League.

On December 21, 1898, United States President William “Big Bill” McKinley issued his Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation, unilaterally and quite illegally ceding the Philippines to the United States. He also was secretly instructing the American occupying service members to use force, as necessary, to impose American sovereignty over the Philippine Islands. This second criminal act was informal and unlawful. It was issued even before the nation obtained formal Senate ratification of the (’Paris’) peace treaty with the global Spanish “Iberian” Empire.

As we fulfill our lives in this 21st Century doesn’t it seem that the more things ‘change’ the more they seem to ‘re-invent’ themselves. Like Ho Chi Min City and Baghdad, Americans were originally hailed as liberators in Manila! These same United States troops were later fired upon and then bombed with make shift materials by local patriots. To add injury to insult, the Imperial Japanese Empire mimicked the United States of America by ‘liberating’ Manila from it’s second group of light skinned European based over lords on December 7th, 1941. The Philippines were FINALLY an independent, unoccupied territory in 1946, almost half a century after the American Anti- Imperialism League.

Citizens For A Better Veterans Home, not just more lethal, politicized, uncaring programs that create hack patronage jobs, spend taxes in constituent communities, while doing little or nothing for real veterans, their real families, with their real problems……

Tags: anti imperialism, centrist, Democrats, empire, history, imperialism, populist, power, Republicans, resistance
Categories: Commentary, Power, Empire, History
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