James Perloff — henrymakow.com Jan 16, 2014
The 'Hun' was Spanish, In this 1898 magazine cover, Spain is depicted as the Maine's apelike murderer. Note the foot trampling the Stars and Stripes. Click to enlarge
The Spanish-American War of 1898 bore remarkable parallels to today’s realpolitik.
• As Ferdinand Lundberg documented in America’s Sixty Families, President William McKinley was ruled by Wall Street, especially the Rockefellers’ National City Bank. McKinley had gone bankrupt while governor of Ohio, and was bailed out by a syndicate headed by Rockefeller front man Mark Hanna, who became McKinley’s political manager and White House boss. Said Chicago’s Chronicle (April 14, 1898): “The Rothschilds and the Morgans control the White House.”
• Like today, Americans were growing disgusted with the corrupt Democratic and Republican parties, and the nominal distinctions between them. The Populist Party was formed in 1891 out of grass-roots opposition to Wall Street’s political domination. The Rockefeller-Morgan-Rothschild axis decided to distract Americans with a new “enemy”: Spain.
• The choice was not coincidental. Spain ruled Cuba, which by the 19th century had become the world’s richest colony and largest sugar producer. National City Bank coveted Cuba’s “white gold” as a complement to Standard Oil’s “black gold.”
• The Yellow Press, led by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, began inundating Americans with fabricated tales of Spanish oppression: Spaniards feeding Cubans to sharks, roasting Cuban priests, slaughtering hospital patients where no hospital even existed.
• The decision to send the battleship Maine to Havana was made at a secret White House meeting of which no minutes were kept. Unknown to the ship’s captain, Charles Sigsbee, neither the Spanish nor even the American consulate had been forewarned – but no shooting erupted, and the Spanish permitted her to dock.
• Hearst paid bribes to have the correspondence of Spanish ambassador Enrique Dupey de Lôme spied on. In violation of diplomatic immunity, a letter critical of McKinley was stolen and reprinted in The New York Journal under the headline “THE WORST INSULT TO THE UNITED STATES IN ITS HISTORY.” Two days later – with anti-Spanish sentiments at peak – the Maine exploded in Havana harbor, killing 266 crew members.