The Visit

By Luis G, Urbina (Mexican poet 1864 - 1934)

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

She has to come. She will come.
When? I don't know. But quite soon.
I can now listen to her far-off voice 
and her footsteps I do hear.

Open the door, soul, no need's there for her to knock
and set all things in right order
the hearth put out, the house neat,
the candle of the faith at the back.

She has to come. She'll come quietly,
taking me in her arms just as 
the mother of a child who, tired,
comes back from the woods and creek hopping.
In a low voice I will tell her — Welcome —,
and without fear or amazement,
will surrender myself to the Mystery,
I'll think of God and then close my eyes

Empire-phobia and the Black Legend

by Javier Torres

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

Historian Elvira Roca, author of "Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra", (Empire-phobia and the Black Legend), puts on the eighteenth century Spanish elites the responsibility of assimilating uncritically the French doctrine of the Enlightenment, greatly responsible for the negative image of the Spanish Empire which had dominated the world since the sixteenth century.

It is not often that a historical essay keeps itself on the best-selling books list. But historian Elvira Roca (b. El Borge, Malaga, 1966), researcher at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), has accomplished this.

And with a politically incorrect thesis, at that. She has sunk her teeth in a centuries-old Taboo topic, the black legend which Spain has been wearing as a sanbenito.

The book, "Imperiofobia y Leyenda Negra" (editorial Siruela), breaks apart the topics which so successfully had been erected by the enemies of Hispanism. Myths which talk about an obscure and backward Spain despite it having carried its faith to America and having been the foremost world power in the sixteenth century. A stigma from which it could never get rid of.

Elvira Roca claims that none of that would have happened without the bandwagonism of the Spanish intellectuals of the Enlightenment, or the pessimism of the generation of 1898, which helped assimilating and propagating the poisoned narrative cooked on the fire of the lights of the Enlightenment: Spain is guilty.

Having interiorized the complex, the Spanish elites repeated uncritically the Enlightenment doctrine, quite the opposite of what was happening in our neighboring country: Voltaire, who spent his life exiled from a France which prohibited his books, never wrote anything which could suppose an affront to his country. All comparisons are odious.

In her book, Roca recollects that institutions such as the Inquisition, or episodes such as the expulsion of the Jews — something that has been repeated in other European nations at other historical moments — were magnified in such a way that they still burden the imagery of the Spanish collective guilt.

Interview with Elvira Roca:

Is the bad press regarding Spain and its Empire the price to pay for its conquest of America?

It is the price to pay for many things. The anti-Spanish propaganda was useful at a moment in history as part of Protestantism's self-justification, and of several nationalisms; it was a kind of dual mentality which makes up an enemy and transforms it into a devil. The question is not that our history is free from errors and mistakes just as that of any other nation, the matter is the peculiar position that those errors occupy in the European imagery,

Some examples of errors and mistakes in other countries.

The history of France contains very shameful acts, some of them in the twentieth century, but on France has not befallen any general disrepute nor any indictment of anomalous and ignorant people among the whole of Europe. In Spain, that current has been produced with cases which have not in any way been anomalous in European history.

"With the arrival of the Bourbons, our elites copied the Enlightened French and assimilated the idea that there had never been a case of religious intolerance comparable to the Spanish Inquisition"

For example?

The expulsion of the Jews, In no place has it taken the peculiar connotations which it has acquired in our history. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 seems to be unique when actually it was not so; it is something which has occurred in Europe over many centuries. Why is it that in our case it is peculiar and not in others?

Sánchez Dragó wrote the essay "And if he talks badly of Spain, he is Spanish" in which he pictures our complexes and legends. Do we happen to be the main enthusiasts of the black legend?

We have assumed it with absolute enthusiasm. In the eighteenth century the Bourbons arrive, and with them the Hispanophobe French Enlightenment: anything that was prejudicial to Spain was useful to France. But our elites copied the French Enlightened, and propitiated an assimilation that maintains that there had never been a case of religious intolerance comparable to the Spanish Inquisition, when exactly the opposite is the case.

The opposite?

Religious intolerance should be hung around the neck of Protestant peoples, which were much greater persecutors than the Inquisition.

Was there never a reaction to such current?

Our elites generated the tradition by which, if you want to be a prestigious intellectual in Spain, you have to be critical of our country to the point of exhaustion. But that was the only thing imitated from the Enlightenment, because the French Enlightenment always worked favoring the creation of France as a world power. Voltaire passed his life exiled from a France that prohibited his books. But you can never find in Voltaire a single criticism to his country! He could have said that liberty and culture were being persecuted there, but he said nothing of the sort. And not only him, none of the French intellectuals of the Enlightenment wrote anything against France, on the contrary, for them France is the most beautiful country in Europe, where more liberty exists, where the lights of reason shine. 

In other words, the supposed intellectual vanguard of Spain in the eighteenth century actually assumes a foreign doctrine.

The Spanish intellectuals of the eighteenth century, which were persecuted much less than in France, repeat as a mantra the French topic that Spain is a country in which there is no liberty, and culture and science are persecuted. This has created a tradition which keeps alive today.

To what extent did the decline of the Empire in America exert an influence?

The end of the American colonies did not help, either; and towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Spanish elites justify the national crisis resorting to the topics of the black legend: Spain deserves it, this had to end badly because we have been the most intolerant, the champions of the lack of liberty. And so, it is assumed that the blame for the fall of the empire falls on those who built it in the sixteenth century. An absurdity, of course; what would have been logical was to analyze what was occurring in our nineteenth century to explain the collapse of the Empire.

Did the pessimism after the Disaster of 1898 come to stay forever?

The generation of 1898 was incapable of facing the problem which history placed in front of them, and ended up assuming the topics on Spain. But if we analyze the arguments against the Empire one by one, it is not too difficult to dismantle the absurdity of the black legend. What was easier for the relief of that generation was to blame the Inquisition. All except me!

Is it impossible to build up an Empire without having to bear a black legend?

It is almost impossible. I have not studied all of the empires, but in general lines, all share that shadow propitiated in great part by envy. Something happens now with the United States, that we even dress our kids for Halloween, we copy their catastrophic cuisine. There is also a fever for the language, and not because the Sixth Fleet has come to force us to open an academy in our neighborhood. We do it because we want it. And all this at the end generates sentiments of resentment or envy which require a simple explanation. All this generates empire-phobia. Well, that same thing happened with Spain in sixteenth century Europe: Spanish ways were imitated, the Spanish language was studied, and all this distilled an enormous unease.

Would the Black Legend exist had the first conquerors of America not been Spaniards?

The example is in North America, where there had been a conquest, and that has neither been an argument for thinking that all of the English are barbarians nor for thinking that the North Americans have been so since the independence of the thirteen colonies. Spanish America is full of Indians and blood mixing, whereas that does not exist in the North, and what little there exists comes from the pre-existing Spanish population, since one half of the US territories had belonged to the Spanish Empire. A half-Navajo friend of mine from Texas once told me: "I have never emigrated. It were the United States the ones who came to my home" Few Indians were able to survive in the territories that they occupied from the East to the West.

Not all colonizations were the same, of course.

The Enlightened never saw the Spanish cities, hospitals, universities or cathedrals in America. Nor the Leyes de Indias (laws of the indies), nor the mixing, nor the population growth; neither did they talk of the French taste for scalping, or of the French having never been capable of building a city in America in a century and a half. Nothing did the French ever leave in America. Nevertheless, they spent their life talking of the shame which Spain supposedly meant for humanity.

"The idea that Spain colonized the southern part of America and the result is poverty whereas the British colonized the North and the result is wealth is false."

In contrast, Spain left universities and cathedrals, You may be right in that about envy.

Only in Spanish America were there universities. The British empire during its second expansion left only four. Spain left a spectacular educational infrastructure. The pain and sorrow is that it was destroyed in great part after the independence, period during which Spanish America suffers total impoverishment. The idea that Spain colonized the southern part of America and the result is poverty whereas the British colonized the North and the result is wealth is false.

Another myth?

When the wars for independence started, the Spanish Viceroyships were much richer than the thirteen North American colonies. And this can be measured in terms of population, demography, justice, speed of mail, purchasing power, educational system... After the independence from Spain, however, everything collapsed in a few decades: the South impoverished itself by leaps and bounds, while the Anglo-Saxon North grew fast. The supposed 'liberation from Spanish tyranny' resulted in a brutal impoverishment of the population. In fifty years they passed from being at the head of the train to the tail.

In just one day during the French Revolution, more people were murdered than in the almost four centuries of the Inquisition. Why is it that some do all the misdeeds and others are given the blame?

We study the French Revolution as if it had been a great achievement for humanity. I perceive a certain ineptitude among Catholics in dealing with the propaganda and controlling the public opinion prevailing over them. This battle was lost at the moment Protestantism got the peoples of Southern Europe assume their moral inferiority. Spain gets the beating mostly because of its ineptitude. We don't get to see that, on the other side, a self-interested and manipulated public opinion is being generated This staging is not casual.

"Protestants grew with the notion that a perverted religion had existed, a wicked Christianity and a degraded message from Jesus Christ had existed (the Roman Church)"

Do we keep seeing this today?

That all of Europe should have gone to Germany to put their money during the last crisis, when it has been the Germans the ones responsible for three successive bankruptcies, says it all. The Germans have never in their life paid their debts. Since the time of Bismarck, they drag a history of non-payments. But nonetheless, the whole world knocks on the doors of the German banks to leave their money there. Spain, on the contrary, paid her debt with the United States after the war of 1898, assuming the Cuban one in addition.

Is the black legend built against Spain comparable to that of other empires, such as Rome, the United States or Russia?

It is very difficult to try to measure the virulence of any propaganda against Rome, but we can measure the one against the USA. But I would like to emphasize that the only case of empire-phobia in Europe is that against Spain, and the importance it has in our setting is decisive: Protestants grew with the notion that a perverted religion had existed, a wicked Christianity, and a degraded message from Jesus Christ had existed (the Roman Church).

By happenstance, could Catholicism be what inspired the enemies of Spain to construct the Black Legend?

No, not at all. It is all the way around. They use Catholicism as an alibi. Had it not been Catholicism it would have been something else; they needed to fabricate something to put them in a position of moral superiority. It was necessary to attack Spain and the bases of its morality insofar as it was a powerful empire. Spain had a position in the world contrary to the national churches such as that existing in England. Spain could do nothing more than defend Catholicism which in turn defends a supranational morality; that is to say, it does not belong to any nation nor to any king. On the contrary, the protestant churches are property of the nations to the front of which kings or Lutheran princes had put themselves. The Spanish Empire always defended the position that religion is above all nations.

A Sonnet to Death

To my mother´s death

By Amalia de Estrada

Taken from http://lascadenasdeobligado.blogspot.com/

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

You are pictured without flesh, wielding a scythe
With your ugliness hidden a black cloak behind 
You're looked at with great fear as well as fright
Just like the vermin are commonly looked at.

Your name is uttered with rancor and with rage
You are greeted with weeping and with wail!
Only the Christian soul, that of the saint
By your fiery appearance is not beguiled.

A messenger from God, who calls all men, 
So as to give them that life which never dies,
Beatific vision for those who love Him.

I am not going to sing you a Miserere
With its lugubrious tone, but a Hossana!
Unless we die,  we cannot go to Heaven.

Se cierne la tormenta

Tomado de Christian Order, febrero de 2019

Traducido del ingles por Roberto Hope

Macron: "¿Por qué hay miles de personas allá afuera?"

Funcionario: "Son el pueblo de Francia, que viene a decirle adiós, Señor Presidente."

Macron: "¿Y a dónde van?

Podemos disfrutar de un chiste aun cuando percibimos su gravemente seria alusión a la brigada del Nuevo Orden Mundial. Pinta a Monsieur Président de la République como un retroceso al feudalismo: un orquestador del caos del siglo veintiuno quien, ante los campesinos sublevados despliega el mismo sentido de superioridad, privilegio y egoísmo que ellos siempre le han atribuido a sus bêtes noires, los monarcas del pavoroso Ancien Regime, como si dijera: "¡ustedes, hordas engreídas, pueden comer lodo, pero nosotros nos mantenemos apegados a nuestro foie gras y Sauterne añejo! ¡Largo de aquí!

Insufrible y peligrosa, esta pomposidad distintiva conforma la ventajosa actitud criminal de los globalistas a costa del bien común, aislándose de las masas que ellos despiadadamente manipulan y explotan, a la vez que venden a sus naciones y sus derechos naturales. De hecho las protestas de éstas últimas que ahora estallan por todo el Occidente, son incomprensibles para los ricos, apátridas, trans-nacionalistas, faltos de sentimientos patrióticos y ajenos a la vida y a las preocupaciones ordinarias.

Emmanuel Macron es el epítome del tipo.

Ex-banquero de inversión de Rothschild & Cie. (banco francés perteneciente a Rothschild & Co), hasta el mismo predecesor presidencial de Macron y camarada socialista de champaña, Francoise Hollande lo ha llamado "el presidente de los muy ricos" o, lo que es lo mismo, el más reciente autonombrado títere producido por la Casa Rothschild para promover sus intereses.

¿Qué esperanza tiene esa criatura fabricada, de privilegio masónico, de comprender a los gilets jaunes (chalecos amarillos) y a los millones de personas por todo el país, que éstos representan, hartados de la injusta, interesada, incompetente clase dirigente personificada por el propio Emmanuel?

Como lo alude nuestro chiste; exactamente cero.

Que es por lo que el movimiento sigue avanzando: 27,000 manifestantes reunidos en el décimo fin de semana consecutivo al momento en que esto escribo. Haciendo eco de estos puntos, el comentarista francés independiente, François Maceron, observó que el único sorprendido es el gobierno.

"Mientras sigan las causas, el movimiento va a persistir. Hasta ahora no ha habido una respuesta seria a las inquietudes expresadas por los chalecos amarillos. Todo lo contrario."

"En tanto que los chalecos amarillos son gente de clase media, que está luchando por sobrevivir, quienes exigen que se detenga el aumento del impuesto [al diesel], el gobierno se encarga de cuidar a los que no tienen dónde vivir y a los desempleados, todas las diferentes categorías que viven de la ayuda social. A mediano plazo, esto significa que las clases medias habrán de ser todavía más castigadas. [Así, el gobierno] hará lo contrario de lo que se le pide."

"Debe de pasada observarse que este gobierno, y los tecnócratas que lo apoyan, no son seres superiores como tratan de hacer creer, sino amateurs que no tienen idea de la realidad social ni del terreno que han visto sólo desde las ventanas del ENA. [Medias-Presse.Info, 10/1/19].

La escuela élite para los servidores públicos, de los cuales Macron es un producto de vía rápida típico [habiendo sido lanzado en paracaídas a un alto cargo en el servicio civil a la corta edad de 27 años], L’Ecole d’Administration Nationale (ENA) representa "el interminable ciclo protegido de patronazgo, promoción, favoritismo y amiguismo." Como lo observa el blog Quid Verum, "la ENA tiene un completo y absoluto control sobre el estado francés. Sólo cien estudiantes se gradúan cada año." Como consecuencia, la ENA se ha vuelto una "casta élite auto-replicante — y un pase de admisión a la clase gobernante francesa."

Sorprendentemente, todo presidente francés desde de Gaulle ha sido un graduado de la ENA, con la excepción de Georges Pompidou, que estudió en Sciences Po [Institut d'Études Politiques de París, la segunda escuela élite]. Ocho de los últimos diez primeros ministros han sido enarques. Todos los departamentos del gobierno/servicio civil son dirigidos por enarques, ¿Y qué hay de los negocios? El 84% de los 546 altos ejecutivos de las 40 compañías más grandes de Francia son graduados de un puñado de escuelas élite. El 48% provienen de la ENA y de Sciences Po.

Esta connivencia sistémica es lo que produjo el movimiento de protesta, que meramente fue desencadenado por un impuesto al diesel, pero que ha estado gestándose durante décadas. Quid Verum sigue diciendo:

"Las élites francesas son hombres y mujeres jóvenes a quienes se les ha dicho no solamente que son la créme de la créme de los intelectuales, sino que son moralmente superiores. Seres humanos mejores que sus inferiores.

Esta gente es arrogante, pero también es ignorante. Criados en familias muy adineradas y mimados en las redes de las que son parte esas familias, no tienen idea de lo que es la gente común ni de cómo es su vida.

La arrogancia unida a la ignorancia producen una mezcla muy tóxica. El echar mano al cambio climático por parte de Macron para justificar los impuestos al diesel, así como su indignante sugerencia de que los franceses comunes viajen menos en auto, son un ejemplo clásico del problema.

Et voilá, el meollo del asunto en países por todo el orbe.

Élites culpando a la gente ignorante por los problemas que las mismas élites han causado. Élites jamás siendo llamadas a cuentas por su incompetencia. Y élites jamás teniendo que experimentar en carne propia las condiciones causadas por sus ideas fallidas.

Los franceses están cansados de ser sujetados en cadenas por la clase gobernante. Están cansados de ser pobres y de estar desempleados.

Quieren una nueva dirección para su amada nación.

¿Suena familiar?

Traición y disgusto

¡Pudiera decirse!

Detrás del 'nacionalismo' y del 'populismo' que se desata por todas partes está una exasperación semejante con la 'clase gobernante' globalista. Los mismos tipos que han tratado de hacer fracasar el Brexit — en muchos casos escupiéndoles en la cara a la mayoría de sus propios electores.

Deprimidos por el temor de que Gran Bretaña deje a sus 'mejores compañeros del mundo' — los australianos — 'desamparados' por otros 40 años, el ex-Alto Comisionado Alexander Downer recalcó recientemente la farsa que hemos tenido que aguantar desde las 4:40 de la mañana del 24 de junio de 2016, cuando fue confirmado extraoficialmente el resultado del referendo. En el Sunday Express del 20 de enero, Downer se lamentaba de que:

Él pueblo inglés votó por abandonar la Unión Europea, pero dos tercios del parlamento no estuvo de acuerdo con la decisión del pueblo. Docenas de arteras estratagemas están siendo utilizadas para desafiar la voluntad del pueblo.... ¿El plan? hacer que se cancele el Brexit.

En tanto que reprochan a quienquiera que asocie las raíces Nazis de la Unión Europea con sus frutos dictatoriales, la clase dirigente simultáneamente ha organizado una campaña de propaganda digna de Goebbels — el Proyecto Pavor..

Interminables escenarios del peor de los casos al dejar la Unión Europea son pregonados por los globalistas de arriba a abajo, desde el gobernador del Banco de Inglaterra (el canadiense Mark Carney, ex funcionario de Goldman Sachs) hasta los desalmados socialistas de champaña de extrema izquierda del grupo Momentum del Partido Laborista, y todo utópico 'progresista' de sofá que haya entre unos y otros.

La vida británica fuera de la Unión Europea (léase Bruselas-Berlín-Paris) se pinta en términos apocalípticos, haciendo caso omiso de los intereses comerciales de regiones tan importantes como Baviera; o sea, las regiones de la Unión Europea que por necesidad económica exigirán que se logre un arreglo con la rica Gran Bretaña, sea antes o después de la fecha límite del 29 de marzo. Pronósticos nefastos (que nunca se materializan) son aceptados sin crítica alguna por la BBC y los medios controlados de comunicación corporativos, que luego se los imponen a un público mal servido y terriblemente engañado,

Y, sin embargo, a pesar del caos artificial que ha embrollado al Brexit desde el principio gracias al histérico empecinamiento de los medios ultra-eurófilos; una reciente encuesta de ComRes determinó que la mayoría de los votantes (53%) siguen queriendo que se respete el resultado del referéndum: Menos de un tercio de los votantes (31%) quiere que se cancele el Brexit o que se haga un segundo referéndum sobre las relaciones entre el Reino Unido y la Unión Europea [Daily Express, 17 ene 2019]

Considerando las circunstancias adversas, éstas son cifras notables. Además, la nauseabunda traición bipartita produjo juicios condenatorios. 

Sólo el 10% de los votantes encuestados piensa que los políticos están al tanto del estado de ánimo del país, en tanto que el 74 % expresó su desacuerdo con esa afirmación.

Casi cuatro de cada cinco (79%) está en desacuerdo con la afirmación de que el Parlamento está saliendo con buena cara del proceso Brexit', con sentimientos similares entre los votantes conservadores y los laboristas.

Todavía más al punto; en respuesta al planteamiento: "El proceso Brexit ha demostrado que la generación actual de políticos no está a la altura de su cargo" el 75% estuvo de acuerdo. 

Además, grandes mayorías consideran que el actual sistema político no ha dejado que su voz sea escuchada (67%) y quiere una lista de reformas radicales para llevar a efecto una completa reconstrucción del sistema político británico (72%). Éstas incluyen una demanda de mayor descentralización en la toma de decisiones; una perspectiva Brexit en total contraposición con la autoritaria Bruselas.

Quizás el más indicativo y portentoso de todos los resultados, el 52% de los votantes concordaba con esta afirmación: "Theresa May está en lo correcto al advertir que si Brexit se detiene, causará "una catastrófica e imperdonable violación de la confianza en nuestra democracia." Sólo el 26% de los votantes manifestaron su desacuerdo.

Distantes y carentes de todo sentido común, los ocupantes de la burbuja de Westminster se mantienen despreocupados de las consecuencias últimas señaladas en el resultado de esa encuesta — seria agitación social. De manera semejante, despreocupadamente ignoran el precedente potencialmente anárquico del parlamento secuestrando el proceso Brexit para echar abajo la voluntad expresada por 17.4 millones de votantes. Esto hace recordar el choque revolucionario que tuvo Oliver Cromwell con el parlamento, como lo observó el Presidente del Comité de Escrutinio Europeo de la Cámara de los Comunes, Sir Bill Cash, así como el ex Secretario de Brexit, David Davis durante la audiencia sobre el avance de la separación de la Unión Europea, televisada el 16 de enero.

Violencia sin límites

Por supuesto, la revolución sangrienta es más un pasatiempo francés que uno inglés. Pero los encabezados de noticias que proclaman la movilización de las fuerzas armadas en el caso de que un Brexit 'intransigente' cristalice en un aumento en la violencia contra los despreciados 'nacionalistas' de todas partes. 

Ataques brutales por toda Europa y los Estados Unidos son ahora el pan de todos los días. Considere también que la rama alemana de la 'Antifa' financiada por Soros son todavía más violentos y están mejor organizados que sus equivalentes en los Estados Unidos: la consignas que gritaban éstos últimos — "No Trump! No Wall! No USA at all!" (No a Trump! No al Muro! No a los EU en absoluto!) — conduciendo la estrategia de 'divide y vencerás' del Nuevo Orden Mundial que busca convertir a Occidente en una distopia comunista sin fronteras.

Sin embargo, tal como la prensa cómplice deja a los mecenas de Antifa, como Soros, que prosigan con su proyecto devastador año tras año, enriqueciendo a los oligarcas (incluyendo a los dueños de los medios masivos de comunicación) y al mismo tiempo endilguen niveles insostenibles de deuda nacional sobre la generación actual y las futuras, de la misma manera, los camisas cafés operan también impunemente. Son raros los arrestos y las reacciones policiales enérgicas.

De manera típica, el pasado noviembre, un grupo afiliado a Antifa ("Smash Racism DC") cayó en la residencia del conductor de noticias de Fox News, Tucker Carlson con la misión, que ellos mismos reconocieron, de provocar 'temor' en su familia. Gritando en el jardín frente a su casa, "Tucker Carlson, lucharemos. Sabemos dónde duermes en la noche," también se lanzaron contra la puerta del frente, rajándola. Carlson y sus cuatro hijos habían salido. Pero su aterrorizada esposa, sola en su casa, se encerró en una alacena y llamó a la policía, que llegó minutos más tarde.

La chusma 'acabó dispersándose' informó Fox, pero no se sabe si se hicieron arrestos. Ante tan osada y extrema criminalidad, ¿cómo pudo ser eso posible? Y ¿por qué es la ausencia de una rápida y bien publicitada justicia el patrón indiferente?

No era una protesta. Era una amenaza. No protestaban nada específico que yo hubiera dicho. No me pedían que cambiara nada. No estaban protestando una política o propugnando alguna legislación. Estaban amenazándome así como a mi familia y diciéndome que abandonara mi vecindario en la ciudad donde me crié.

Despreocupada y aparentemente intocable, la chusma de Smash Racism DC había prometido públicamente en una entrada en Facebook del 3 de noviembre de 2018 que "pronto la clase gobernante va a añorar los días cuando meramente les arruinábamos la cena." Suena cómicamente Bolchevique. Como se demostró en la residencia de Carlson cuatro días más tarde, sin embargo, no son cuestión de risa las palabras y acciones cada vez más violentas de los personajes y grupos de izquierda.

Las protestas contra el Juez de la Suprema Corte Brett Kavanaugh vio gritos iracundos, intentos casi constantes de silenciar con gritos las audiencias del comité, y hasta intentos de allanar el edificio de la Suprema Corte cuando el nuevo Juez protestaba su juramento de toma de posesión del cargo. Manifestantes también persiguieron a muchos diputados Republicanos a su paso por el Reagan National Airport, y agredieron a Republicanos en los salones de los edificios de oficinas del Senado.

Varios Demócratas prominentes, incluyendo al ex-procurador general Eric Holder, Maxine Waters, y el Senador Cory Booker también han alentado a sus seguidores a confrontar personalmente a los Republicanos. La candidata presidencial fracasada Hillary Clinton declaró que los demócratas no deberían ser "comedidos" con los Republicanos hasta recuperar el Senado, y la Senadora Mazie Hirono se rehusó a declarar que los manifestantes no debieran perseguir a los Republicanos hasta sus casas o a restaurantes [Life Site News]

El punto es que no debemos esperar mucha ayuda de la prensa o de las autoridades cuando se redoblan estos ataques dirigidos a patriotas respetuosos de la ley. François Maceron cita a un oficial de policía francés que dice: "En casos de perturbaciones al público, nuestra tarea es restaurar el tráfico normal. Nuestro papel normalmente no es hacer arrestos." Esto explica, dice él, por qué los criminales gozan de gran impunidad y siempre vuelven." Por el contrario, considérese el tratamiento de las protestas de los gilets jaunes, Bajo un verdaderamente impactante fotomontaje de caras y cuerpos ensangrentados, leemos el siguiente informe francés:

Un repaso de la represión policial contra los chalecos amarillos: 6,000 arrestos, 2,000 heridos, ojos reventados, manos arrancadas, quijadas estalladas, jóvenes deformados, gaseados y aporreados.

No, no se trata de Corea del Norte ni de China, ni de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela dirigida por el terrible Maduro, ni del Imperio de Putin tan odiado por la clase dirigente políticamente correcta! Estamos en Francia donde la corrupción del mundo político contemporáneo es digna de la Tercera República. Estamos bajo el gobierno de Macron que toma la apariencia de un pequeño dictador cubano encarando la ira de los chalecos amarillos.

Además de varios cientos de manifestantes severamente heridos, diez personas han sido muertas en medio de las protestas de los chalecos amarillos, como lo comenta Macron, "algunos criminales han tratado de aprovechar la excitación causada por el movimiento de los chalecos amarillos sea con propósitos de anarquía (destrucción, ataques contra la policía o contra edificios, vandalismo) o con el propósito de saquear." Pero, fiel a las formas:

Para eludir las reformas que no quiere hacer, incluyendo una importante reforma fiscal, el gobierno está tratando de desviar la atención hacia los criminales. El gobierno, ... ha utilizado [este elemento no representativo] y seguirá usándolo para desacreditar el movimiento de los chalecos amarillos, compuesto en general por gente de paz.

Brecha peligrosa

Para entender por qué un número creciente de "gente de paz" habría de hacer peligrar sus vidas tomando las calles de Francia, Italia, Estados Unidos, Alemania y otros lados es simplemente comprender la obscena y siempre creciente brecha entre los que tienen y los que no. Como lo reconoció la ex-presidente del Banco de la Reserva Federal, Janet Yellen, hace cuatro años:

No es un secreto que las pasadas pocas décadas de creciente desigualdad puede resumirse como incrementos significativos en su ingreso y riqueza para aquéllos que están en el nivel más alto, y estándares de vida estancados para la mayoría.

Las cifras son para dejarnos boquiabiertos — y son inquietantes. Como lo explicó un observador en una entrada del 13 de diciembre de 2018:

Según un informe del 2017 del Institute for Policy Studies, tres multimillonarios — Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet y Bill Gates — han amasado tanta riqueza como la mitad inferior de la sociedad americana. Esas son 160 millones de personas! O como lo informó Oxfam en enero de este año, la riqueza de ocho hombres (incluyendo los tres antes mencionados) es igual a la de la mitad de la gente del planeta en 2017. Vóitelas! Y sólo para darles una idea de a dónde nos dirigimos a velocidad supersónica, un reporte de Oxfam de un año antes, eran 62 los multimillonarios dueños de la mitad de la riqueza del planeta. Imagínense eso: de 62 a 8 personas en un solo año.

Luego considere lo que sabemos del surgimiento de la clase de los que poseen miles de millones. También según Oxfam, apareció un nuevo poseedor de más de mil millones cada dos días en 2017, en tanto que el 82% de la riqueza generada en este planeta ya se iba al 1% más alto de la población, y la mitad inferior de la población mundial no vio aumento alguno en su riqueza. En 2017 (año más reciente del que tenemos cifras) la riqueza total de la clase de los de más de mil millones se expandió en casi el 20%.

Nomi Prins, una ex-funcionaria en Wall Street y autora de "Collusion: Cómo los Banqueros Centrales Manipularon al Mundo" [2018], también observa:

Si la economía mundial está realmente floreciendo, como lo afirman muchos políticos ¿por qué es que los dirigentes y sus partidos en todo el mundo están siendo removidos de manera tan generalizada?

Una respuesta obvia: La 'recuperación' económica posterior a la Gran Recesión estuvo reservada en gran medida a los pocos que podían participar en los mercados financieros ascendentes de esos años, no para la mayoría que seguía trabajando más largas horas, a veces en múltiples empleos, solo para mantenerse a flote. En otra palabras, las buenas épocas han dejado fuera a tanta gente, como aquéllos luchando por mantener unos cuantos cientos de dólares en su cuenta bancaria para casos de emergencia o el 80% de los trabajadores americanos que viven al día.

Esta situación, peligrosamente injusta se refleja en la Francia ruda que yace debajo de la Francia refinada. Quid Verum explica;

Muchos siguen conociendo a Francia a través de la lente de las portadas de la revista Vogue: una nación de gente afluente, feliz, que vive en casas elegantes con vacaciones interminables, vino y comida. Una utopía de elegancia, estilo y chic 24/7.

Es importante observar que esa Francia no existe. Es el mundo de la clase gobernante francesa, menos del 1% de la población.

¿Cree usted conocer la verdadera Francia? Aquí van algunos datos que podrían sorprenderle:

El estado francés ha estado en bancarrota desde el 2004. Finalmente lo reconoció un ministro en 2013.

El PIB de Francia no ha subido arriba del 2% en 50 años.

En 2018, el 14% de la población de Francia vive debajo de la línea de pobreza (ganan menos de el 60% del ingreso medio)

Peor, más del 50% de los franceses tienen un ingreso anual de menos de 20,150 euros al año (como unos $1,900 dólares al mes)

La tasa oficial de desempleo es del 10% — como 3.5 millones de ciudadanos (en realidad es mucho mayor). El desempleo en los jóvenes es del 22%. Sí, lo leyó usted correctamente,

Asombroso pero cierto: el gobierno de Francia emplea al 25% del total de la fuerza de trabajo francesa, y es imposible despedirlos.

Si tan grande y creciente desigualdad está enfilada a una seria violencia civil que hará que los choques del los gilets jaunes parezcan leves, la insensible decisión de los Eurócratas de Bruselas, de otorgarse enormes aumentos en sus propios emolumentos este año, solamente va a inflamar más la situación.

Personificación de su propio interés globalista, el jefe de la Comisión de la Unión Europea, Jean Claude Juncker y el Presidente del Consejo de la Unión Europea, Donald Tusk, son los principales beneficiados. Cada uno se embolsará más de 350,000 libras esterlinas en 2019, haciendo que parezca pequeño el salario de Theresa May como primer ministro, de 150,000 libras esterlinas. 

Adicionalmente, Juncker recibe una prestación residencial de 36,844 libras esterlinas y una generosa cuenta de gastos, cuyos detalles se mantienen secretos. Y el año próximo tendrá derecho de recibir una pensión de por vida, de 52,500 libras esterlinas.

En tanto que los contribuyentes del Reino Unido batallan para lograr ganar para sufragar sus gastos, 250 millones de libras esterlinas se envían de Londres a Bruselas cada semana, con poco que mostrar a cambio. La ampliamente aumentada paga y prestaciones de Juncker y Cía costará 124 millones de libras esterlinas adicionales,

Si alguna vez hubo un ejemplo de ordeña del presupuesto de la Unión Europea, éste es. Juncker y sus compinches son arrogantes a más no poder, respondió David Davis. Arrogancia y desconsideración características, que sólo pueden acabar en lágrimas y sangre. Nomi Prins observa que:

En última instancia, lo que trasciende la geografía y la geopolítica es un subyacente nivel de descontento provocado por la economía del siglo veintiuno y una resultante brecha de desigualdad del tamaño del Gran Cañón, que sigue ampliándose. Vengan las protestas de la izquierda o de la derecha, lo que sigue siendo el meollo del asunto es cómo las políticas fallidas y las políticas apaga fuegos implementadas por todo el mundo, ya no funcionan; por lo menos no cuando se trata del los que no pertenecen al privilegiado 1%.

Y no se equivoquen, en vez de sacrificar su gran fortuna, el 1% hará que el sistema financiero caiga y va a echarle la culpa a Trump, al Brexit, o al 'nacionalismo'. Pueden hacer esto porque tienen reservas financieras y de capital para salir librados de una crisis, y en segundo lugar, como lo demuestra la historia, siempre se recuperan de los terremotos financieros que ellos mismos provocan. Lo que el Primer Ministro del Partido Laborista, Clement Atlee, dijo en su libro Partido Laborista en Perspectiva (1937) se mantiene cierto por todos lados.

Una y otra vez hemos visto que hay en este país otro poder distinto de aquél que tiene su asiento en Westminster. La City de Londres, un término conveniente para designar a una colección de intereses financieros, es capaz de imponerse contra el Gobierno de la Nación. Aquéllos que controlan el dinero pueden seguir una política interior y exterior contraria a la que ha sido decidida por el pueblo. [p, 179]

Él hizo eco de las advertencias de los presidentes Theodore Roosevelt y Dwight Eisenhower acerca de poderes obscuros que manejan el mundo; que podrán ver sus países en llamas antes de hacerse a un lado y poner en riesgo sus mal habidas ganancias y prebendas. A cualquiera que dude de su actual desesperación, capacidad, e intención, le basta con leer nuestros despachos regulares sobre la investigación de la enteramente manufacturada 'colusión rusa': una auto profesada 'póliza de seguro' del así llamado 'Deep State' (miembros influyentes del gobierno, que secretamente manipulan y controlan la política) para destruir a Donald Trump en el caso de que fuera electo. Dos años después, esta traidora operación sigue monopolizando engañosos encabezados que evitan mencionar sus orígenes políticos, los múltiples conflictos de interés del Procurador Especial Robert Muller y su equipo, y las partes inocentes arruinadas por sus tácticas de estado policíaco. Mientras tanto, la importantísima conspiración — un golpe transatlántico contra un presidente debidamente electo — permanece fuera de las noticias, Eso se llama poder bruto!

Un mundo occidental en el que la verdad y la justicia se pervierten tan flagrantemente, en el que a los trabajadores no sólo se les niega un salario justo, sino que se les tima, manipula y maltrata por el 1% superior, está mirando al fondo del cañón. Pues, la historia regularmente demuestra que hay límites a lo que la gente puede aguantar.

Una población puede tolerar ser guiada por una casta élite, mientra esa misma casta pueda proporcionarle beneficios sobre una base continua. Una vez que se comienza a agotar la capacidad de la élite de 'comprar' su consentimiento, la agitación y desobediencia civil están garantizadas.

Pero cuando una élite incompetente cambia, de privar de beneficios a los 'deplorables', a castigarlos y culparlos por la incompetencia de las propias élites, se está aproximando a terreno inexplorado.

Papa prejuiciado

Sería bueno que nuestro pontífice hiciera algunas de estas correlaciones. Pero está demasiado ocupado reprendiendo a los temidos 'populistas' que se resisten a sus afinidades globalistas y a su insensata promoción de fronteras abiertas.

Está ciego al actual cambio consistente en un alejamiento con respecto a los partidos políticos que anteriormente eran dominantes y de los sistemas que los acompañan [como] una verdadera forma de populismo, que genuinamente pondría las necesidades de la mayoría de la gente por encima de los pocos de la élite, construir cosas reales incluyendo infraestructura, promover una distribución orgánica de la riqueza. y estabilizar las economías por encima de los mercados financieros," como lo plantea Nomi Prins.

Tan reacio es Francisco a esta tendencia, que hasta llegó a abandonar el protocolo por evitar reunirse con el político más popular de Italia, el Ministro del Interior Matteo Salvini. "La Iglesia se ha rebajado a pelear contra nosotros. Lo esperaba," dijo Salvini recientemente.

El Papa que no juzga a los sodomitas, que dice no 'hacer' política, que tan cálidamente recibe a ilegales, transsexuales y otros pervertidos, que recomienda a China y otras dictaduras, juzga en cambio intocable e inaccesible al actual hombre fuerte de Italia. ¿Por qué? porque como los Trumpianos y los Brexistas, Salvini está recuperando el control de sus propias fronteras para detener la invasión de inmigrantes ilegales y reafirmar la soberanía y la identidad italianas,

Para este papado, Salvini y las corrientes trans-europeas que él representa — tratando de afirmar la prioridad de las familias católicas y hacer retroceder el hedonismo y el delirio de género — son una afrenta al globalismo y sus 'valores' elásticos, Y así, en un mundo asolado por una perfecta tormenta de comunidades polarizadas, tensiones socio políticas intensificadas, violencia anárquica, y creciente persecución de los cristianos — un mundo en el cual se llama al martirio — no es el Vicario de Cristo en la tierra sino personas como Trump, Orban y Salvini los que se han vuelto ejemplo en las batallas culturales, morales, y religiosas, abanderados de la identidad de los pueblos y de la civilización cristiana.

Qué vergüenza para Francisco! Sin embargo, como lo observa Maceron, bajo esa dirigencia seglar "los partidarios de una Europa de Naciones están más cerca unos de otros que nunca antes."

Con los húngaros, los italianos, y ahora los alemanes, los españoles así como todos los demás europeos que quieren, en paz y amistad dentro del continente, mantener la originalidad de su nación, uno ve la posibilidad de luchar contra las utopías uniformadoras y las oligarquías financieras y cosmopolitas que las apoyan,

Los gilets jaunes y los Brexistas completan esa justa coalición.

En cuanto a nuestra parte como católicos, con el papado en eclipse, debemos mirar más allá de Roma, hacia Santa Juana de Arco y hacia los mártires, para mantener la fe y adquirir la inspiración y la fortaleza necesarias para sufrir las tribulaciones que están por venir.

Los Fines Obscuros detrás del Alarmismo del Calentamiento Global

Por Edmund Contoski

Tomado de_ https://panamazonsynodwatch.info/articles/commented-news/the-agenda-behind-global-warming-alarmism/

Publicado Originalmente por American Liberty

Traducido del inglés por Roberto Hope

He aquí una pregunta intrigante para usted. En un cuarto de 6 por 6 metros con un techo de tres metros ¿cuántos cerillos tendría usted que encender en él para alcanzar el mismo porcentaje de bióxido de carbono que es emitido a la atmósfera anualmente por todos los automóviles (unos 800 millones) en el mundo? La respuesta nos la da Ivar Giaever, premio Nobel de física, quien dice que el cálculo es relativamente sencillo. La respuesta es: un cerillo. Increíble ¿no? El número de vehículos es enorme, pero la atmósfera es tan enormemente más grande, que las emisiones de bióxido de carbono generadas por el hombre son triviales para nuestra supervivencia o la del planeta. Por supuesto, si la gente comprendiera esto, no apoyaría la regulación de los combustibles fósiles pare evitar el calentamiento global. De ahí la necesidad de provocar el alarmismo por el calentamiento global.

El alarmismo tuvo un fuerte impulso en junio de 1988 cuando James Hansen, del Instituto Goddard de la NASA, testificó ante el senado de los Estados Unidos que él estaba 99% seguro de que ya venía produciéndose un calentamiento global. Él no era más que una muy pequeña minoría dentro de la comunidad científica, pero no fue esa la impresión que han dado los medios masivos de comunicación.  Esos mismos medios, que escasamente diez años antes habían estado publicitando advertencias de la aproximación de una era de hielo, ahora se han precipitado colmando al público con advertencias de una amenaza opuesta, con el trillado argumento de que algo debe hacerse 'antes de que sea demasiado tarde.'

La comunidad científica fue menos impresionable que el público. En la convención de la American Geophysical Union en el siguiente otoño, unos cuantos meses después del testimonio de Hansen, sólo un científico pudo encontrarse que pensara que el efecto invernadero había empezado. Jerome Namias, quien pasó 30 años en el Servicio Meteorológico Nacional de Estados Unidos antes de cambiarse al Scripps Institution of Oceanography, ha dicho que otros factores explican el clima reciente "muy adecuadamente sin el efecto invernadero", William Sprigg, director de la National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ha dicho "No se ha demostrado el argumento de que los gases de invernadero expliquen lo que estamos observando."

Andrew R. Solow del Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution escribió en diciembre de 1988: "Algunos dirán que la clase científica exige un grado irrazonable de certidumbre antes de aceptar una idea nueva. Pero en el caso del cambio climático, y particularmente con respecto a detectar con los datos existentes algún cambio, no es cuestión de que la evidencia sea muy endeble. Es cuestión de que no hay evidencia alguna." No obstante eso, los medios en general siguen comentando del efecto invernadero como si representara una opinión científica ampliamente sostenida, cuando no como un hecho incontrovertible.

Luego vino el informe del Panel Intergubernamental sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC). Produjo una transformación dramática en la aceptación del calentamiento global por parte del público. El informe constaba de dos partes: una era el largo texto de la investigación, escrito por los científicos; la otra era un "Resumen para Funcionarios Públicos" — que es la única parte que la mayoría de los que lo reciben llega a leer — fue escrita por personas que recibieron nombramientos políticos. No eran políticos, sino servidores públicos que estaban recibiendo órdenes de los gobiernos que firmaron la Convención Marco sobre el Cambio Climático, de las Naciones Unidas. Se suponía que el Resumen debiera estar basado en la investigación, pero fue escrito antes de que la investigación se hubiera hecho. Y la investigación fue luego 'ajustada' para que concordara con el Resumen, en vez de que se hiciera lo contrario. He aquí una descripción del proceso, hecha por el climatólogo Vincent Gray, Ph D, quien es la única persona que haya participado en todas las publicaciones del Panel desde su inicio:

"El movimiento ambientalista es una pseudo-religión anti-científica que cree que los humanos están destruyendo 'el planeta'.... En los años 1980s, un grupo de científicos poco escrupulosos que apoyaban este dogma planteaba que el público y los gobiernos lo aceptarían más fácilmente si se constituyera en opinión 'establecida' de un grupo de científicos lo suficientemente grande. Inventaron un modelo pseudo-científico del clima, que desechaba el conocimiento científico acerca del clima que se había acumulado a lo largo de generaciones de meteorólogos. Afirmaba que el clima está controlado por emisiones de bióxido de carbono y otros gases de invernadero menos abundantes, relacionadas con las actividades del hombre.

Persuadieron a la Asociación Meteorológica Mundial y a su propio Programa Ecológico de las Naciones Unidas, de que estableciera un Panel Intergubernamental de Cambio Climático para reunir material científico que soportara el proyecto, en preparación para la Cumbre Mundial sobre la Tierra de 1991, que lanzó el embuste.

"El Panel, hasta ahora, ha emitido cinco principales Informes. Éstos han sido exitosos en grado asombroso, para persuadir a los gobiernos de todo el mundo, de que ellos pueden prevenir lo que supuestamente controla el 'calentamiento global' reduciendo las emisiones de bióxido de carbono y otros gases de invernadero menos abundantes. El mecanismo principal para asegurar la uniformidad de pensamiento se aplica mediante la inclusión de un Resumen para los Instauradores de Políticas Públicas al principio de cada Informe. Éste es, en realidad, un Resumen Preparado por Instauradores de Políticas Públicas, pues ha sido dictado, renglón por renglón, por los representantes de los gobiernos que controlan el Panel, a un grupo de 'Autores de Proyecto' de su confianza."

"Los capítulos de cada Informe están organizados de un modo tal que promueva la idea de un cambio climático causado por un aumento en los gases de invernadero. Las observaciones reales del clima, o se ocultan, o se 'suavizan', o se 'filtran' o se 'alinean', o se 'interpolan', o se eliminan las observaciones que se aparten del patrón, a fin de tratar de encontrar 'tendencias' que puedan encajar en el molde que ha sido decidido para ellas. 

Cuando la versión final del Informe del Panel de 1995 no concordaba con el Resumen, a Ben Santer, quien había sido designado por el Panel como autor principal del Informe, se le asignó la tarea de alterar todo el Informe para que concordara con el Resumen. Luego de que apareció el Informe impreso en mayo de 1996, los revisores científicos quedaron estupefactos al descubrir que se habían hecho cambios importantes después de que hubieron firmado su aprobación del contenido de los capítulos científicos. Los cambios de Santer habían invertido por completo la 'ciencia climatológica' del Informe del Panel. Aquí van ejemplos de algunos de esas alteraciones:

"Vistos en conjunto, estos resultados indican que es improbable que la tendencia observada en las temperaturas promedio durante los últimos cien años sea enteramente de origen natural."

Esta es la oración que suprimió: "Ninguno de los estudios arriba citados ha producido evidencia clara de que podamos atribuir los cambios observados a la causa específica de aumentos en los gases de invernadero."

Esta es la oración que agregó: "La parte principal de la evidencia estadística contenida en el Capítulo 8, cuando se le examina en el contexto de nuestra comprensión física del sistema climático, ahora apunta hacia una influencia humana discernible sobre el clima global."

Esta es otra que eliminó: "ningún estudio a la fecha ha atribuido de manera positiva todo o parte [del cambio climático observado] a causas [producidas por el hombre]."

Y otra que añadió: "la mayoría de estos estudios muestran que es improbable que los cambios observados en la temperatura media global promediada anualmente durante el último siglo se deban enteramente a fluctuaciones naturales en el sistema climático."

Hay mucha otra evidencia de que el CO2 es irrelevante para el cambio climático. Para comenzar, el vapor de agua es, por mucho, el gas de invernadero más importante, ya que produce del 96% al 98% del efecto invernadero. El CO2 es un gas de invernadero débil y comprende sólo el 0.04% de la atmósfera — y 97% del CO2 es producido por la naturaleza, no el ser humano. Los volcanes, los pantanos, los arrozales, las hojas caídas, hasta los insectos y las bacterias producen CO2 así como metano, otro gas de invernadero. Las termitas por sí solas emiten más CO2 que todas las fábricas y los automóviles del mundo (Ver la revista Science del 5 de noviembre de 1982). Los humedales naturales emiten más gases que todas las actividades humanas combinadas. Si pudiéramos el eliminar no solamente todos los combustibles fósiles para uso humano sino, además, todas las fuentes naturales de gases de invernadero. el 96% del efecto invernadero permanecería, ocasionado por el vapor de agua.

El bióxido de carbono solamente produce cambios minúsculos en la temperatura atmosférica; sin embargo, todos los modelos computacionales que proyectan un calentamiento global "desmedido" están basados en que el poco calentamiento causado por el CO2 es amplificado por el vapor de agua. Pero tal amplificación jamás ha ocurrido, aun con mucho mayores niveles de CO2. En la era de los dinosaurios, el contenido de bióxido de carbono en la atmósfera era de tres a cinco veces más de lo que es ahora, pero no ocurrió ningún calentamiento global desmedido. Durante el período ordovícico, el nivel de CO2 en la atmósfera, era doce veces más que el de ahora. pero la tierra pasaba por una edad de hielo. Si una teoría es contradicha por los hechos, la teoría ha de estar equivocada.

Durante el período pérmico y la primera mitad del período triásico, hace unos 250 a 300 millones de años, la concentración de bióxido de carbono era la mitad de lo que es ahora, pero la temperatura era unos 10°C más alta. Del período cretácico al eoceno, hace unos 35 a 100 millones de años, una alta temperatura venía acompañada de una reducción en la proporción de bióxido de carbono. La teoría de que la concentración de bióxido de carbono es determinante para la temperatura de la tierra es, por lo tanto, incorrecta.

La clave del clima de la tierra es el sol, no el CO2. Marte, Neptuno, Júpiter, Saturno, y aun el distante Plutón están todos experimentando un calentamiento global. ¿Es el sol el que los está calentando en tanto que nuestro calentamiento es debido al CO2?

La radiación del sol varía por los 'ciclos de manchas solares', Los campos magnéticos rompen la superficie del sol, produciendo perturbaciones violentas y cambios en el 'viento solar', que es la corriente de partículas de carga que emana del sol. El viento solar, modulando los rayos cósmicos galácticos que llegan a la atmósfera, determina tanto la formación de nubes como el nivel de bióxido de carbono en la atmósfera de la tierra. Los ciclos de manchas solares causan sólo ligeras variaciones en la radiación del sol, pero estas variaciones son amplificadas en múltiples tantos por su interacción con: 1) el ozono de la alta estratósfera y 2) las nubes en la baja tropósfera. Las nubes tienen cien veces más impacto en el clima y en la temperatura, que el CO2. Cuando el viento solar es fuerte y los rayos cósmicos débiles, la capa global de nubes se encoge. Se expande cuando los rayos cósmicos son fuertes porque el viento solar es débil. O, como lo expresó, de manera un tanto poética, el científico Zbigniew Jaworozki: "el sol abre y cierra una sombrilla de nubes controladora del clima arriba de nuestras cabezas."

Va en seguida una gráfica que muestra una fuerte correlación entre las temperaturas de la tierra y el ciclo magnético del sol, el cual es un indicador de las variaciones en su brillo (irradiación). En ningún lado puede encontrarse un diagrama que muestre una correlación así entre la temperatura de la tierra y el bióxido de carbono.

El registro histórico de la temperatura debería dejar resuelta la cuestión acerca de si está ocurriendo un calentamiento global, pero no ha sido así porque las cifras estén siendo manipuladas. El estadístico canadiense Steve McIntyre ha documentado que la NASA ha estado "reescribiendo la historia una y otra vez". El sitio de Internet climateaudit.org observa que el 20 % del registro histórico fue ajustado 16 veces en dos años y medio. Otros ajustes alteran datos de varias décadas atrás.

La US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) proporciona mediciones reales de temperatura; o sea, datos fríos. James Hansen, jefe del Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) de la NASA, tomó datos de la USHCN y les aplicó ciertos ajustes secretos. El USHCN informó de un descenso de la temperatura de cerca de medio grado centígrado, en tanto que el GISS informó de un aumento de medio grado. Hansen se rehusó a explicar cómo y por qué hizo tales ajustes. Su silencio hace surgir una cuestión ética, y quizás legal, de si el jefe de una agencia financiada por los contribuyentes, con fondos federales, puede rehusarse a revelar cómo se gastaron esos fondos. También hace surgir la duda de si los ajustes son legítimos o meramente una manipulación deliberada, ideada para producir un resultado deseado.

Hay una mucho mayor y más seria distorsión en los datos de temperatura global que la de falsificar reportes de las estaciones medidoras individuales. Los registros de temperaturas en todo el mundo han sido falsificados manipulando las ubicaciones de las estaciones que reportan. Comenzando alrededor del 1990, estaciones de mayor altitud y de zonas rurales han sido eliminadas de la red para crear una falsa tendencia hacia el calentamiento. El registro global de temperatura, que solía estar basado en 6,000 estaciones que reportaban, está ahora basado en menos de 1,500. El informe de 106 páginas de la extensa investigación hecha por Joseph d'Aleo y Anthony Watts documenta el efecto con una gráfica:

En muchos casos, las estaciones siguen informando, pero sus datos ya no se utilizan. Con frecuencia las estaciones han sido reemplazadas con otras a menor altitud o en áreas más urbanizadas, que más probablemente mostrarán mayores temperaturas; "en los países fríos, como Rusia y Canadá, las estaciones rurales en las regiones polares fueron desligadas en favor de estaciones de menor altitud o en zonas más urbanizadas. Los datos de las ciudades que quedaron fueron usados para estimar las temperaturas de más al norte. Como resultado, los nuevos promedios calculados fueron más altos que lo que habían sido cuando las estaciones en los lugares fríos formaban parte de la evaluación mensual o anual.

"En el Canadá, el número de estaciones se redujo de 600 a menos de 50. El porcentaje de estaciones a menor altitud (menos de 300 pies) se triplicaron, y las de altitudes mayores a 3,000 pies se redujeron a la mitad. El calentamiento que se ilustra viene de interpolar datos de las estaciones más al sur para suplir los cuadros vacíos de las de más al norte, aun cuando el promedio simple de las estaciones disponibles muestra un aparente enfriamiento.

Environment Canada reporta que hay 1,400 estaciones climatológicas en el Canadá, muchas que informan de sus lecturas cada hora, y que están disponibles en el Internet, pero no se incluyen en la base de datos global. El Canadá tiene 100 estaciones al norte del Círculo Ártico, pero la National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) usa sólo una."

"El numero de estaciones rusas se redujo de 476 a 121, de manera que más del 40% del territorio ruso dejó de ser incluido en los cálculos de temperaturas globales.... Los rusos se percataron de que los 121 sitios utilizados daban en su mayor parte informes de temperaturas más altas que las de los 356 que dejaron de utilizarse. En algunos casos, registros de estaciones que provenían desde el siglo diecinueve fueron desconocidos en favor de estaciones con menos datos, pero que señalaban en dirección de un calentamiento. El equipo del Institute for Economic Analysis (IEA) afirmó: "Sólo una décima parte de los sitios meteorológicos que cuentan con series completas de temperaturas son los que se utilizan."

"En Europa, las estaciones de montaña de mayor altitud fueron desechadas, y los termómetros fueron trasladados hacia el mediterráneo, a elevaciones menores, y a más ciudades. La prescindencia de estaciones fue de casi el 65% de Europa en conjunto.

"La mayoría de las estaciones de montaña en el oeste de los Estados Unidos ya no están. En California, las únicas estaciones que quedan están en San Francisco, Santa María, Los Ángeles y San Diego."

"Tan recientemente como en 1988, los datos de temperatura de China venían de 400 estaciones. En 1990, de sólo 35.

"Los datos fríos de temperatura en el norte de Australia no muestran tendencia alguna en 125 años. El Panel, sin embargo, usa datos 'ajustados'". El informe de D'Aleo/Watts dice: "Tenemos cinco distintos registros que cubren Darwin desde 1941. Todos concuerdan entre sí casi exactamente ¿Qué caso tiene ajustarlos? La NOAA agregó una enorme e imaginaria tendencia artificial hacia la mitad más reciente de los datos fríos" Las temperaturas en Darwin estaban descendiendo a razón de 0.7% por siglo. Luego de los ajustes del NOAA, las temperaturas se estaban elevando a razón de 1.2 grados por siglo.

Ni el falsificar los registros de temperatura ni el mover la ubicación de los termómetros tendrá efecto alguno sobre el calentamiento global. Tendrán efectos políticos, pero las reglamentaciones políticas no afectarán el CO2 de manera significativa alguna, ya que el 97% de las emisiones de CO2 de la tierra son producidas por la naturaleza. Tan sólo el Océano Pacífico ecuatorial produce el 72% de las emisiones de este gas en el planeta; las emisiones por la actividad humana son minúsculas, como lo demuestra la respuesta de 'un cerillo' a la pregunta del principio de este artículo. Y millones de años de evidencia geológica prueban que el efecto invernadero no controla el cambio climático. De manera que se han gastado miles de millones de dólares persistiendo en una política ambientalista que es inalcanzable (y que si se lograra sería perjudicial) — a menos de que usted piense que el dinero fue empleado en perseguir una regulación política para algún otro propósito.

En 2010, un miembro dirigente del IPCC de las Naciones Unidas reconoció: "Uno debe quitarse de la cabeza la ilusión de que la política climatológica internacional es política ambiental. Ésta ya casi nada tiene que ver con política ambiental. Ahora no se trata de proteger el ambiente sino de distribuir la riqueza" dijo Ottmar Edenhofer, co-presidente de Grupo de Trabajo de IPCC III y autor principal del Cuarto Informe de Evaluación (2007) "Redistribuimos la riqueza del mundo mediante la política climatológica"

El periódico Investors Business Daily publicó:
"Los países desarrollados básicamente han expropiado la atmósfera de la comunidad mundial" dijo Edenhofer "y por lo tanto a ellos debe expropiárseles su riqueza y redistribuirla a las víctimas de sus presuntos crímenes. Los traficantes de clima de las Naciones Unidas están buscando imponer un impuesto global de reparaciones climáticas, gravando todo, desde los vuelos por aerolínea y el transporte marítimo internacional, hasta el combustible y las operaciones financieras. Edenhofer declaró a una fuente noticiosa Alemana (NZZ am Sonntag) que la cumbre climatológica de Caracas no era una conferencia sobre el clima sino una de las mayores conferencias económicas desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial." El acuerdo de Cancún estableció un 'Fondo Verde pro Clima' para administrar la ayuda a naciones pobres que sufran de inundaciones o sequías debidas al calentamiento global. La Unión Europea, Japón, y los Estados Unidos han encabezado compromisos de cien mil millones de dólares por año hasta el 2020 para las naciones pobres, más treinta mil millones de dólares para ayuda inmediata.

"No importa que la ciencia sea toda falsa, hay beneficios ambientales colaterales.... El cambio climático [proporciona] la más grande oportunidad de traer justicia e igualdad al mundo" — dijo Cristina Stewart, la ministro ambiental del Canadá. "Debemos montarnos en la cuestión del calentamiento global. Aun cuando la teoría del calentamiento mundial esté equivocada, estaremos haciendo lo correcto en cuanto a política económica y política ambiental" — dijo Tim Wirth, anterior Subsecretario de Estado para Asuntos Globales de los Estados Unidos, y la persona más responsable de establecer el Tratado de Kyoto.

"El ambientalismo sólo simula tratar de la protección ambiental. Detrás de su gente y de su terminología amigable al ambiente, los partidarios del ambientalismo despliegan intentos ambiciosos de reorganizar y cambiar el mundo y la sociedad humana, nuestro comportamiento y nuestros valores. Nos consideran criaturas peligrosas y pecaminosas que deben estar controladas por ellos. Yo viví en un mundo semejante llamado comunismo. Y sé que condujo al peor daño ambiental que el mundo haya jamás experimentado. Los seguidores de la ideología ambientalista, no obstante, siguen presentándonos diversos escenarios catastróficos con la intención de persuadirnos de que implantemos sus ideas... Sus recomendaciones nos regresarían a la era del estatismo y la restricción de libertades ... La ideología será diferente. Su esencia, no obstante, será idéntica — la atractiva, patética, y a primera vista noble idea que trasciende a los individuos en nombre del bien común, y la enorme auto-confianza por parte de los proponentes sobre su derecho de sacrificar al hombre y su libertad a fin de llevar esa idea a la realidad... No se trata de climatología. Se trata de libertad" — dice Vaclav Klaus, ex-presidente de la República Checa.

Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., es un científico que asistió a la Conferencia de Copenhague sobre el Clima y narró una experiencia muy diferente de la que fue transmitida por los medios de comunicación al pueblo americano. En la Cornwall Alliance Newsletter de enero de 2010, escribió: "Éramos un grupo pequeño (de unas 30 o 40 personas) en medio de un mar enturbiado de manifestantes (casi todos del otro lado) probablemente unos veinte mil, en el centro de Copenhague, ondeando pancartas, gritando consignas, etc. Los grupos más grandes parecían ser del Partido Comunista (sí, sus pancartas decían eso), el Movimiento Juvenil Socialista Internacional, los Activistas Radicales pro Clima, y Greenpeace." Cuando el orador, el Presidente de Venezuela Hugo Chávez habló, la multitud aplaudió vigorosamente cuando dijo que había 'un fantasma silencioso y terrible en el salón — el capitalismo'. Pero cuando dijo 'el socialismo, el otro fantasma que está probablemente merodeando en el salón, es el camino para salvar el planeta; el capitalismo es el camino al infierno... . Luchemos contra el capitalismo y hagámosle obedecernos' la multitud de delegados oficiales se levantaron para darle una ovación."

El 23 de junio de 2008, a exactamente veinte años de su trascendental testimonio ante el Senado, en el que manifestó sin fundamento que estaba 99% seguro de que venía ocurriendo un calentamiento global, James Hansen compareció ante el Comité Selecto sobre Energía, Independencia y Calentamiento Mundial. Ahí conjuró imágenes de los juicios de Nüremberg de los criminales de guerra nazis, afirmando que los jefes de las compañías proveedoras de energía mediante combustibles fósiles "debían ser juzgados por crímenes de lesa humanidad y crímenes contra la naturaleza."

De 2010 a 2016, Christiana Figueresa fue la funcionaria de más alto rango en cambio climático en las Naciones Unidas. Era la Secretaria Ejecutiva de la Convención Marco sobre el Cambio Climático de las Naciones Unidas. En 2015, manifestó abiertamente que el objetivo era derrocar al capitalismo — en sus palabras: "para cambiar el modelo de desarrollo económico que ha estado reinando por 150 años cuando menos, desde la época de la revolución industrial."

 The Power of a Language is the Power of those who Speak it.

By Alberto Buela

taken from: http://articulosforoarbil.blogspot.com/2013/07/el-poder-de-una-lengua-es-el-poder-de.html

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

When we speak about languages and about tongues, topic about which there are thousands and thousands of written works, we are conscious that the teaching of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who said that each language fosters its own thinking scheme and its own mental structures, is still current. Tell me in which language you express yourself and I will tell you how you see the world.

Thus, speakers model a language, and language models the mind projecting a model of thinking which acquires its maximum expression in national or regional identities. In the case of Spanish, this is the expression of some twenty consolidated national identities. 

But the language is not the one learned, it is not the second language. Language as source of power is the one assumed existentially. In this way we can understand why, the French-speaking countries being 56, but only 22 the Spanish speaking ones, Spanish has a greater international weight than French.

This is because, of 56 French-speaking countries, only three or four have vitally assumed French; the rest use it as a matter of convenience, in general, to request credits from the metropolis.

Something similar happens with English, but in a smaller degree because the weight of population is greater (USA, England, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand), no matter that most of the countries which have declared English as their official language, 59 in total, actually use numberless other local languages, which reduce the expression of what is national in English. For example, in Nigeria, 521 languages are spoken. Or in India, in what does the English language express the national identity? In nothing.

Then we assert that a language is an instrument of power when it is assumed existentially, otherwise, it is a simple communications vehicle, as is English in airports.

In this sense, Spanish, as a Western language, has an infinite advantage with respect to English and French. Since aside from it surpassing English, its greatest competitor, in over one hundred million speakers, it has the infinite advantage of being the official language of twenty-two nations.

If we add to that the linguistic proximity of the Portuguese (Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, Angola, et al) a critical mass is formed of 800 million people which can communicate among themselves without any great effort and, what is of greater importance, with similar mental structures. 

This is not a joke, nor an anecdote, it is a geopolitical fact of crucial importance to understand the current world in profundity,

It is incomprehensible how, of 31 States (22 Spanish speaking and 9 Portuguese speaking), there is not at least one which follows an international policy of defense of the Castilian-Lusitanian linguistic expression. 

It is incomprehensible that French theoreticians, so subtle in other matters, have not become aware that the greater presence of Spanish as an international working language guarantees a greater presence of the French against the English language.

In this specific realm, we are surrounded by a crowd of inept leaders, like the "elegant hunter king" who, at the last Hispanic American Summit, asserted that we are four hundred million Spanish speakers, or like the authorities of the Instituto Cervantes who claim that we are 450 million Spanish speakers (when we are actually 550 million) and, to make matters worse, that Spanish is the second language after English: stultorum infinitus est numerus.

Beyond the Bourbon king and the Instituto Cervantes, habitual users of Spanish have invaded the heart of the thalattocratic empire, and thus, they number 45 million in the USA. This brute, real and indubitable fact has made strategist Samuel Huntington, in The Spanish Challenge, one of his most recent works, exclaim: 

"Americans have been allowing to transform themselves into two peoples, with two cultures (Anglo and Hispanic) and two languages (English and Spanish)...  For the first time in the history of the United States, there are more and more citizens (especially black) which cannot find work or the salary that they should expect, because they can only communicate in English... If the expansion of Spanish as the second language spoken in the US keeps on advancing, this could have grave consequences for politics and for government over time."

It is that Spanish is a multicentric language since, contrary to English or French, as to which London and Paris have constituted themselves as the centers of linguistic power, Madrid has no vocation for linguistic centrality.

It is time that our governments assume an international language policy: That Spanish be used as a working language in the international realm. Information tells us that, in China, Spanish is the most studied foreign language today; that it is not one but ten million the number of Spanish speakers in the Philippines; that Spanish is not considered as a foreign language in universities in Brazil, since its use among faculty is commonplace. In summary, we definitely count with a very powerful geopolitical and meta-political instrument that is not being exploited [1].

[1] Noblesse oblige and we should give homage here to the effort of Professor Renato Epifanio and his fellow members of the Movimiento Internacional Lusófono, who for years has been working in consolidating Portuguese as an international language (www,zefiro,pt)

The Spanish-American War

The Spanish-American War

Causes, Mysteries, Myths and Realities

By José Enrique Rovira Murillo and José María Manrique García

Taken ftom: http://articulosforoarbil.blogspot.com/2013/12/la-guerra-del-98-causas-misterios-mitos.html

Translated from the Spanish by Roberto Hope

General Index:
1st Part: The eve of the Spanish American War of 1898

1. Situation of the overseas colonies in 1897
2. The insatiable Yankee expansionism ... and its power
3. Cánovas' and other assassinations
4. The Maine
5. The armies confronted in the Splendid Little War

1st Part: The eve of the Spanish American War of 1898

1. Situation of the overseas colonies in 1897

The Restoration Regime spans the period of Spanish history between the end of the First Republic in 1874 and Miguel Primo de Rivera's coup d'etat of 1923. This long period of Parliamentary Monarchy is characterized by an alternation in power of two political parties, the Conservative and the Liberal. Alternation was attained in an apparently democratic way, but in reality the elections were directed so as to make the party which was most convenient for the Crown at that moment to win: the Crown even got to name first ministers without regard to the party to which they belonged being a minority in Congress. During the Regency of María Cristina de Habsburgo-Lorena, the widow of Alfonso XII and mother of child King Alfonso XIII, a certain inclination towards the liberals could be perceived. Up until 1897, power was monopolized by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, president of the Conservative Party, and Práxedis Mateo Sagasta, of the Liberal Party. The most palpable policy difference between the two parties regarded the overseas colonies and Morocco. 

In theory, Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines were a part of Spain, but in practice, their inhabitants enjoyed lesser rights than those of the metropolis. In Cuba, slavery had existed, especially during the reign of the House of Bourbon, up until 1886, even though the Moret Law (1870) had suppressed it; in Puerto Rico. it lived on until 1873, and in Cuba until the above mentioned year; abolition of slavery had raised in the Courts of Cadiz (1811) threats from the Cuban representatives, both Creole and Peninsular, of seceding from Spain and requesting annexation to the United States. Most Cubans wished not to secede, but to achieve autonomy and equality.

With respect to the United States, it is worth noting that, since their birth, as will be seen below, they expanded at the expense of Spain and Mexico, and that their fixation on annexing Cuba and Puerto Rico had started even before their independence from England. These attempts, worthy of a separate study, were made both by force ― by indirect aggression (fostering separatism and wars) ― and through purchase offers.

Liberals in Spain always aimed to grant wide autonomy to the colonies, whereas the Conservatives' policy was "a strong arm with the separatists", in their conviction that autonomies would derive into concessions of independence.

Sketched in this rough manner the Spanish political panorama at the end of the century, we reach the crucial year of 1898, from which point the subsequent disaster takes off. Violent revolts broke out that year in Cuba, the Philippines and Morocco, and they took place during the mandate of the Liberal Party. 

Morocco had had undergone sporadic breakouts of violence since 1891, and in Cuba, always lined up in the gun-sight of the United States, a long war had ended in 1878, but the secessionist leaders were still alive and had organized again.

We have a different situation in the Philippine uprising. The Philippine Archipelago has two large areas, one of them, Christianized and Hispanicized, comprising the Island of Luzon and the Vizaya Archipelago; the other one in which the Spanish presence was military and localized, was quasi independent; it comprised the island of Mindanao and the Sulu Archipelago. The Hispanicized region had never had any attempts of subversion; on the contrary, it expected Spain to defend it against the continued and bloody incursions of Moorish pirates. The Muslim region was always a field of action for the Spanish Army. The navy concentrated itself in the Sulu Archipelago while the land army did so in Mindanao. In 1890, Captain General Valeriano Wyler occupied effectively one fourth of the Island of Mindanao. In 1893, Weyler, who had been named by Cánovas, was replaced by Captain General Ramón Blanco y Erenas, a military of the same thinking as Sagasta. Let's leave the Philippines for a moment, and we leave her in a period in which Spain is expanding into territories in the archipelago where it had never planted its flag. The zone is more pacified than ever, and the sultans of Mindanao and the Sulus accept Spain's nominal sovereignty.

Let us talk of Sagasta, president of the liberal party, and named prime minister of government since he had "won the election". He had participated, along with Prim, in the triumph of "the Glorious" masonic revolution if there ever was one. In 1980, Sagasta was the Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Spain, the main masonic lodge in our country, position from which he resigned because it might hurt his political career. He resigned from being the Grand Master; he did not resign from being a mason. It was then not strange that a mason would rule the destiny of Spain, since some years earlier, General Juan Prim y Prats had made a coup d'etat and assumed the government responsibilities in spite of being a declared mason (casually, his code name was 'brother Washington'). One of the first measures taken by Sagasta upon assuming power was, as we have said, to dismiss Weyler as Captain General, and name General Blanco, who was also a mason, and his code name was 'brother Barcelona' [i].

From the time Lieutenant General Blanco assumed the charge of Captain General of the Philippines in 1893, he was criticized by the ecclesiastic orders, which were practically in charge of 'government', for courting with the masonic lodges of Luzon; the new governor reacted accusing them of being retrograde. Those lodges were similar to the ones in Spain, in that, in theory, they pursued their aims by pacific means, and in one of them the 'perfect master' José Rizal, a famous Philippine physician and poet, was an active member. Their objective was to attain an ample autonomy for the Philippines, since, up to that time, no independentist restlessness had taken place in Luzon. But one of these masonic lodges, named El Katipunán, began radicalizing itself; its Grand Master was murdered by his 'brothers', and Emilio Aguinaldo attained power and planned a general insurrection in Luzon. The monks kept on showing up at the Santa Potenciana Palace, warning that a coordinated revolt in the entire island was approaching, but General Blanco kept on dismissing them without paying attention, and even one of the monks was detained for spreading destabilizing intrigues. In 1895, the insurrection broke out, and caught fire with so much strength in the entire island of Luzon, that the army had to barricade itself in 'Intramuros' the walled citadel of Manila, which remained intact until the Yankees demolished it in the Second World War.
 
The events at Luzon and another insurrection which had taken place in the East of Cuba, made the Government of the Unión Liberal fall, Cánovas then assuming power. He, in his hard line, named Captains General the two best generals with which Spain counted at the time, Weyler for Cuba and Polavieja for the Philippines.

Camilo García de Polavieja arrived in Luzon in 1896, disembarked at 'Intramuros' and within six months had practically ended the insurrection. Unfortunately, the monks pointed out to him that the revolt had come from the masonic lodges, for which reason he intended to give them a lesson, and had a number of masons shot, among them Rizal, a good and innocent man. Aguinaldo took Rizal as a martyr of his revolution. Polavieja had caused an irreparable fissure between the Tagalog and the 'Castilian' people in so evident a manner that he was dismissed by the conservative cabinet itself. Too late, international masonry had already decreed that the Philippines was to become independent to punish Spain.
While these events took place, far away, in Cuba, General Weyler had defeated the insurgents , the 'mambises', and had pacified the Western half of Cuba. All the mambises leaders were Freemasons, and during the war, two 'masters' had died, José Martí and Antonio Maceo. The international lodges, who looked after their 'brothers', condemned Spain to lose all of its colonies.
 
In August 1897, Antonio Cánovas suffered a deadly attempt on his life, and the Regent resolved the crisis by carrying out the rotation of the parties, naming Sagasta Prime Minister again. The new Prime Minister named his cabinet's strong man, Segismundo Moret, a declared 33rd degree mason, for the Overseas Ministry. Moret immediately dismissed Weyler, and in his place named none other than Lieutenant General Ramón Blanco.
 
Cuba at that time was not fully pacified; almost one half of it continued to be up in arms, for which reason it seems to have been an absurd — or symbolic — decision to have said general end the Cuban War, commanding an army of 200,000 men. This, knowing full well what had happened the last time Blanco had replaced Weyler.
 
In the Philippines, the Captain General was Fernando Primo de Rivera — the uncle of Miguel, the future dictator — a general named by Cánovas and presently accepted by Sagasta, but the Liberal Government sent a new general of division to occupy the post of Army Chief of Staff in the Philippines. A man who had had a lightning-fast career in the Army and that, oddly enough, had been transferred from the Marine Infantry to the Army Staff. In his youth, being commander, he had been aide de camp to the dictator General Juan Prim, that military who boasted of being a mason, he was General Celestino Fernández Tejeiro, an obscure man from a symbolic viewpoint, who upon arriving in the Philippines hurried up to negotiate with Aguinaldo, with whom he signed the confused Biac-Na-Bato Pact. Under this treaty, Spain was required to pay 800,000 pesetas to the leaders of the Katipunán, so that they could exile themselves in Hong-Kong, even when Primo de Rivera had them encircled in the mountains of Bac-Na-Bato.

Similarly, General Blanco arrived in Cuba with the exclusive commitment of negotiating with the mambises; to the point that, having he taken command on December 26, 1897, there is official evidence that his conversations with Máximo Gómez — a mambi leader and also a mason — began on January 11, less than 20 days after his taking command.

It is evident that the Liberal Party had a plan for the colonies, which excluded war. Sagasta was a radical pacifist, to the point of having taken the symbolic name 'Paz' (Peace). This plan became evident not only by the quick negotiations with the insurgents, but also by moving the most resolute generals away from the colonies; that is, those who had stood out in the preceding wars, even when, they having no place as Captains General under the new reconciliation plan, could have stayed in warring territories as soldiers. We refer to Weyler, Polavieja, Lachambre and Andrés González Muñoz. Separate mention deserves the latter, a lieutenant general who had been born in Santiago de Cuba, and who had been Maceo's nemesis and Weyler's right hand. Since sending González Muñoz home meant sending him to Santiago de Cuba, he was appointed Captain General of Puerto Rico, and died mysteriously the same day that he arrived in the Lesser Antilles.
 
Strange things were happening, it seemed to be a perfect script drawn by some obscure hand... who had decreed that Spain lose its colonies, and at least the national lodges had accepted not to fight for them, but nobody, at least formally, had decreed that the Spanish colonies fall in Yankee hands. At that moment, something unexpected took place: the 'Maine' exploded in Havana.

2. The insatiable Yankee expansionism... and its power.

To understand the Cuban War we have to place ourselves in the situation, and recall the circumstances surrounding the neighbor to the North of the island.

The United States, first colony to become independent from its metropolis [ii] and the first nation organized under distinctly capitalist principles, followed the steps of England, which had always ambitioned the Spanish Empire and contributed resolutely to ruin it. It can be considered that the first clear and precise pronouncement to that effect was the plan of that Puritan, regicide, and resettler of Jews in England, Oliver Cromwell; plan named Western Design (1655), which took concrete form in an expedition to conquer the Hispaniola, Cuba and other Caribbean islands, to then pass on to the Continent and turn Spanish America into an English one; he conquered only Jamaica and, in some way, British Honduras (Belize, Guatemala). In the sphere of this pursuit, we must recall that the English occupied Guantanamo in 1741, and intended, unsuccessfully, to conquer Santiago de Cuba. But they did occupy Havana between 1762 and 1763, supported by men from Virginia and New England; and Manila between 1762 and 1764. They also disembarked in Puerto Rico in 1797, even though they were unable to take San Juan.
 
When the thirteen English Colonies in North America proclaimed their independence in 1776, they spanned hardly some 800,000 square kilometers, but by the end of the nineteenth century, they had grown to some 9,700,000 square kilometers.

Benjamin Franklin, one of the fathers of the American Nation, even before its independence, recommended taking Cuba and Mexico, both located at the mouth of the Mississippi, as a part of the future nation he had in mind.
 
In 1783, seven years after the Declaration of Independence, attained with the significant aid of Spain, let's not forget, even without the 13 colonies having yet become a federal political state, John Adams (later its second president, and presumably a Jew) advocated the annexation of Cuba and Puerto Rico. Facing such situation, the Count of Arana proposed to King Carlos III, transforming the American Viceroyships, with the exclusion of Cuba and Puerto Rico, into three kingdoms, with Spanish infantes at their head, taking the King of Spain the title of Emperor.
 
In 1786, Thomas Jefferson (3rd president, between 1801 and 1809, presumably a Jew and a mason, who along with Adams, his compatriots called them "Moses and Aaron") wrote: "our confederation should be considered a nest from which all of America, of the North and of the South, has to be populated... My fear is that Spain be too weak to keep its dominance over them before our population has progressed enough to gain dominion over them, inch by inch". And in 1801: "... despite our present interests holding us within our limits, it is impossible not to look beyond, to those distant times when our fast multiplication will expand us beyond those limits, and will cover not only all of the North but also all of the South of this continent, with people speaking the same language, governed in a similar way, and with similar laws".

In 1803, the USA purchased Louisiana from France. Napoleon had forced Spain to sell it back to France by the Treaty of San Ildefonso of 1800 (it had been Spanish since 1762 by virtue of the Treaty of Fontainebleau; France had obligated itself to offer it to Spain before selling it to any third country, matter which our 'ally' never honored.)
 
In 1805, President Jefferson notified the Minister of Great Britain in Washington, that, in case of a war with Spain, they would take Cuba. Jefferson took advantage of our War of Independence to, after unsuccessful purchase attempts and considering Western Florida (between the Mississippi and Perdido Rivers, and parallel 31) a part of Louisiana, invaded it without any previous war declaration. Annexation would be completed with the support of the separatists in the viceroyships.
 
Luis de Onís, plenipotentiary minister of Spain in the US, wrote to the Viceroy of the New Spain in April 1812: "...every day, the ambitious ideas of this Republic keep growing, and its hostile pursuits against Spain are confirmed... this government has proposed itself no less than fixing its limits at the mouth of the Rio Grande del Norte or Bravo, following its course up to the Pacific ocean, taking consequently the provinces of Texas, Nuevo Santander, Coahuila, Nuevo México, and part of the provinces of Nueva Vizcaya and Sonora. To any sane person this project may sound to be a delirium, but it is not less sure that the project exists, and that a map of these provinces has been expressly made by order of the government, including, within those limits, also the Island of Cuba, as a natural part of this Republic." Onis also wrote that "... The United States have formulated their plan with wise and mature reflection, they follow it with impassivity, and, along with England, regardless of who their rulers may be, do not alter it one iota."

In 1819, the USA purchased Florida from Spain for five million dollars (Adams-Onis Treaty), Florida (Eastern and Western) had been English between 1763 and 1783 (Treaties of Paris of those years); by virtue of the Treaty of San Lorenzo of 1795, Spain ceded the territory East of the Mississippi, between parallels 31° and 32° 22'; during the war of 1812-1814 between the USA and England (partly because of the intention of conquering Canada) and being Spain absorbed in the War of Independence, North Americans invaded the Floridas in persecution of Indians, and to deny them to the British; after an invasion of Anglo Saxon colonists, the North Americans occupied the territory between the Mississippi and Pensacola in 1810; then again in 1816 and 1818, menacing to annex them and to invade Cuba; the excuse had been, aside from the supposed attacks of the Hispanicized Seminole Indians, the fugitive negro slaves.
 
And in this context, Cuban trade with the US opened up in 1818. Later, facing the competence of beet sugar from Europe, the US will become the purchaser of the greatest portion of Cuban production, getting to become its economic metropolis,
In 1822, the United States became the first nation to recognize the new Hispanic American nations recently turned independent thanks to their assistance and to that of England. Almost all of the independentist leaders were Freemasons and, generally, of Anglo Saxon obedience.
 
John Quincy Adams (eldest child of President John Adams, diplomat, sixth president of the United States from 1825 to 1829, and at that time Secretary of State), formulated the "ripe fruit" thesis in 1823, according to which Cuba and Puerto Rico, on account of their geographical proximity and due to "political gravitation", would end up in the hands of the US. The famous phrase "America for the Americans" was uttered by Quincy Adams in 1823, although attributed to James Monroe (a Freemason, 5th president, from 1817 to 1825). They both were the fathers of the 'Monroe Doctrine', which was imbued in the thinking of the ruling class in the United States. Monroe would say that "to add Cuba is what the United States needs for the American Nation to attain the greatest degree of interest... I had always seen it as the most interesting acquisition for our states system."
 
In 1839, Fort Ross (California) was purchased from Russia, and Consul Nicolas Trist attempted to purchase Cuba.
 
In 1841, the aforementioned John Quincy Adams defended the black slaves who had mutinied on the Amistad ship murdering its crew, reaching port in the US, and managed to have them considered free men and not deported to Cuba, on grounds that the US had forbidden international slave trade even though it was allowed within their borders.
 
A new attempt to purchase Cuba for 50 million failed. In face of the negative, the Cuban Council in New York was founded
 
In 1844 - 45 Texas (an independent republic since 1836) was annexed
 
The old and diffuse notion of the "Manifest Destiny", a development of the Monroe Doctrine, appeared defined as such in 1845, and embodies the "God given" right of the Americans to spread at least their political institutions and trade throughout the American continent. 

In 1872, John Gast painted his famous American Progress picture. 

Between 1876 and 1890, the rest of the Indian nations are annihilated: Sioux, Blackfeet, Apaches, Comanches, Ute, Kiowa, Cheyenne, Crow, etc. and Montana, Dakota and Oregon are annexed.
 
In 1846, the Oregon territory (current states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho) is acquired from England
 
An editorial in the New York daily The Sun, of July 23, 1847, read: "Cuba has to be ours! ,,,  Give us Cuba and our possessions will be complete." In 1847 - 48 other Yankee attempts to purchase Cuba take place.
 
In 1848, after the Mexican War, Mexico loses approximately one half of its territory. President Polk, a mason, proposes Spain to sell Cuba to the US for 100 million dollars.
 
General Narciso López, a traitor and a Freemason, designer of the independentist flag, invaded Cuba from the United States in 1850 and 1851, he died before a firing squad. Practically all of the Cuban and Philippine independentist leaders were Freemasons.

In 1853, Gadsden purchased la Mesilla Territory (South of the Gila river) from Mexico. Commodore Perry (1852 - 54) forced Japan to open its borders to trade.
 
In 1854, several North American diplomats drafted a number of recommendations on foreign policy, among which was the acquisition of Cuba and Puerto Rico by means of purchase (between 100 and 130 million) or their conquest by force in case of rejection; the offer was repeated in 1857 - 58 and 1861 (presidents Pierce and Buchanan). In consequence, John A. Quitman, governor of Mississippi, offered 120 million to the Spanish Government.

In 1867, the USA purchased Alaska from Russia.

In 1869, the War of Secession having ended, and in Cuba having begun the Ten Year War or Cepeda insurrection (1868 Grito de Yara / La Gloriosa - 1878), the first independist one, President Grant (1868 - 1877) proposed a new purchase, Grant intended to annex also the Dominican Republic.
 
General Prim (President of the Council of Ministers 1869 - 70 and a Freemason) proposed to the USA and/or the USA proposed to him (through Sickles, ambassador in Madrid, authorized by Grant), the concession of Cuban independence in exchange for an indemnification, guaranteed by the United States, which would be paid by the Cubans, in a maneuver to be whitewashed with a referendum, after the pacification of the island and the amnesty of the independentists. Before his assassination, he freed the separatist leaders who had been submitted to a War Council, and sent Nicolás Azcárate and Miguel Jorro to Washington to negotiate the terms. The debt of the province was of some 400 million dollars. This attitude is consistent with the proposal he made to England that same year through ambassador A.H. Layard, of swapping Gibraltar for Ceuta.
 
On October 31, 1873, the corvette Tornado captured the American pirate ship Virginius, which carried arms, 103 Cubans and 52 Americans or Englishmen. 53 of them died in Santiago before a firing squad, including some Americans and Englishmen. This incident demonstrated that the Cuban independentists counted with the effective undercover support of the US government, and the connivance of the British; the main expeditions of contraband ships proceeding from Anglo-saxon ports had been some thirty, at least, through 1875.

1873-1874 First Spanish Republic

1879-1880 The Splendid Little War

In 1890, admiral and famous strategist Alfred T. Mahan, then Secretary of the Navy, asked to create naval bases, preferably in Cuba and Puerto Rico. That same year, the USA threatened with ceasing to buy sugar; in 1891 the USA purchased from Cuba (situated only 90 miles away from Florida, and destination of Yankee investments for 50 million dollars) 95% of its sugar and 87% of its exports (against almost 40% of the American ones) and a reciprocity trade treaty was signed between Spain and the USA. As we have said, Spain had ceased to be the "economic metropolis" of Cuba. Since 1885, the USA exceeded England in manufacturing production, and by the end of the century, it consumed a greater amount of energy than Germany, France, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Japan and Italy combined. In 1890, the US Army was inferior to the Bulgarian army, and its Navy was much inferior to the Italian navy. In summary, the USA had become the first economic power of the world and was situated to the side of Cuba, while Spain was far away from Cuba and very far away from the Philippines (twice the distance separating the Archipelago from the US). But as Dominique Soucy wrote, [iii] there still was one more 'weapon', it was no secret by then. that the US governments had used masonry in their country as one more instrument in their colonial policy in Cuba... and that Cuban Freemasons were fully integrated in the sphere of US masonry", to which it should be added that British masonry was doing likewise with a great portion of the Spanish one [iv]

1893 - 98 Annexation of Hawaii

1895 - 1898: Grito de Baird and Cuban War. Curiously, a week after the sinking of the Maine and without awaiting an investigation of the causes, President William McKinley, a Freemason, made a new purchase offer (300 million) twice the amount offered by Grant to Prim in 1869.

As colophon, let us recall that the American interventionist excuse was to favor Cuban liberty, which became embodied, after two years of military occupation, in a "controlled Republic" in which they imposed the government of Tomás Estrada Palma, and the "Platt Amendment" by which the US reserved the right to intervene in Cuba in case of it becoming necessary; in 1903, Cuba leased Guantanamo (some 182 Km2) to the US for no fixed term. That same year, the American annexation of the Panama Canal Zone took place. 

From 1906 to 1909, Cuba was formally intervened by the US. As regards the Philippines, the US converted them into a colony, arguing that "the Philippinos are incapable of self-governing... and needed to be Christianized", in spite of it having been a country with a Catholic majority for centuries; up until 1946 they did not grant them independence. Not only the independentist leaders had been masons, also three of the five presidents that Cuba had through 1929 were masons.

3. Cánovas' and other assassinations

Spain at the end of the nineteenth century was still a world power, capable of "projecting" to Cuba, to end the "War of 95", an expeditionary army of 212,717 soldiers [v] between March of 1895 and January of 1897, with an expenditure of one billion pesetas; Cánovas had, supposedly, promised to send to Cuba "to the last man and to the last peseta". General Weyler, with this army and employing realistic and efficacious tactics (the "total war" was declared by the mambises), fully dominated the insurrection in the Western half of the island, and was about to do the same with the Eastern half when the "timely" assassination of Cánovas (1897) and the consequent change of government, brought together his immediate dismissal.

The main Spanish weakness vis a vis the United States and the mambises was internal: In 1897, El Imparcial, the Liberal newspaper, criticized Weyler strongly, and the Republicans organized a plot, supporting themselves on the sergeants of several garrisons, at the same time that the socialist leader, Pablo Iglesias, openly opposed the war. Additionally, masonry flourished in Spain, with the consequent interference that this international secret society could and did induce on its Spanish members; let us recall that masonic had been the periods of the Constitutional triennium from 1820 to 1823, the Revolutionary sexenium of 1868 - 1874, with the reign of the mason Amadeo I (1871 - 1873) and the, masons as well, Presidents of Government Juan Prim y Prats (1869 - 1870), Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla (1871 and 1872) and Práxedis Mateo Sagasta (1871 and 1874), then the disastrous and tragic First Republic of 1873, and the presidential mandates of Práxedis Mateo Sagasta (1874, 1881-1883, 1892-1895; he was a 33rd degree mason and Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Spain between 1876 and 1881), not to talk of the suspicions about Alfonso XII (in 1875 he had been accepted by the masons with conditions; he had been a cadet at the British Academy of Sandhurst and his widow was dubbed "masona" by the Carlists).
The period between the Revolution of 1868 (The Gloriosa or Septembrina, which dethroned Isabel II) and the Disaster of 98 was, according to the masons themselves, the golden era of Spanish masonry, given that in those 30 years, when it was not prohibited, it formed more than 2,000 lodges (200 in Cuba, against a little more than 170 in Madrid, a like amount in Barcelona and 90 in Puerto Rico) and masonic organizations with no less than 80,000 members, among which predominated government employees, office holders, and military and navy men [vii]. But aside from the "Hispanist" obediences, others existed. In the International Masonic Congress in Lausanne of September 1875, in which the Cuban Consejo Supremo de Colón was present, but Spanish masonry was not, (the Gran Logia de Colón had been born with a letter of Dispensation from the Grand Lodge of South Carolina), it was approved that the authority over Cuba and Puerto Rico belonged to the Supremo Consejo de Colón and not to any Spanish obedience; this means that Cuba was masonically independent before being politically so. [viii] Cuban masonry was of majoritarian Yankee affiliation; the Grand Lodges of the United States, especially those of Pennsylvania and Louisiana, formed the first lodges in Cuba, after an ephemerous British action; implementation of Spanish Peninsular freemasonry occurred later. In Cuba, as in the Philippines, the independentists were either masons or belonged to clubs associated with freemasonry, which acted in favor of North American interests. [ix]

We should try to understand in this context the assassination of Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, President of the Council of Ministers, on August 8, 1897. The assassin, Michel Angiolillo, 26 years old, was an anarchist with a justice and police record in Italy and in Spain, regardless of which he entered Spain comfortably again, with efficacious false documentation. After passing through Madrid, he left supposedly to San Sebastián, and then to the Santa Águeda resort (Mondragón, three kilometers away from Vergara, Guipúzcoa). He checked in as Emilio Einaldi, bookkeeper and correspondent of the Italian newspaper "Il Popolo" of Naples; four days before Cánovas arrived there back from San Sebastián, where he had dealt business with the Queen Regent. With no difficulty, the anarchist made three revolver shots on the President while the latter, at one in the afternoon, after having gone to Mass in the town, was reading the newspaper at the entrance of the establishment, in the gallery leading to the dining room; the three shots were inescapably fatal, another sign of preparation. 

Afterwards, he practically gave himself in with no resistance; yes, after facing and serenely responding to the words of the livid and shaken wife of the victim, the first one to arrive at the site of the crime, despite her having been on the first floor, talking with a friend of hers, when the first shot was heard; she got there before any of the twenty-five civil guards and nine secret police agents of the Presidential escort. That Italian of strange behavior, the only unknown person in all the establishment, had not arisen the suspicions of those policemen; they were not tried for their inefficiency. All indicates that the criminal investigation process had no other interest than the quick sentencing and execution of the criminal, since the possible clues were hardly investigated; in just twelve days the case was closed with the execution of the assassin.

Angiolillo had arrived in Barcelona towards the end of 1895, fleeing Italian justice, after having spent some time in Marseille. In Barcelona and with a false passport with the name of José Santo, he worked in the print shop of the anarchist review "Ciencia Social". He returned to Marseille after the attack against the Corpus procession in the Barcelonian alley Arenas de Cambio on June 7, 1896, which took twelve lives (including four children) and some 35 wounded; the motive of the attack was supposedly linked to the Cuban War of 1895, and to the repression of the quarrels that were being promoted on occasion of the embarkation of troops destinated there. He was thrown out of France in October 1896, in face of the Spanish accusation of having participated in the attack, and on suspicion of being plotting another one against the Kaiser and the King of Italy on his trip to this nation, taking refuge in Brussels to pass finally to London.

On April 6, 1986, the Comitato Centrale per la Libertá de Cuba was founded by members of the Republican, Radical and Socialist parties, which got to send volunteers to fight in Cuba. According to some libertarian website, Angiolillo passed through Naples in 1897, participating in a supposed "anarchist assembly" in which volunteers for the assassination were solicited to take revenge for the fire squad executions at Montjuich. The fact is that, in London, Angiolillo made contact, at least, with the very important anarchist nucleus installed there (with the famous Malatesta and other leaders), as well as with the very active Antillean revolutionary members. The Italian, moreover, before arriving in Spain passed, by way of Lisbon! at least one week in Paris, where he visited Betances, introduced by an Italian, in the seat of his "official representation", on Rue Chateaudun N°6 bis. Betances persuaded Angiolillo of his intention of murdering a member of the Royal Family, recommending Cánovas as a victim but refusing to collaborate if not (though Cánovas was not ruling when "the Corpus bomb" incident and its subsequent trial). Betances, aside from providing him with a false identity, gave the anarchist between 500 and 1,000 francs; the anarchist also received money from anarchist Malato, from journalist Henry de Rochefort and from Antillean anarchist Fernando Tárrida del Mármol. [x]

Puerto Rican physician Betances was, since April 1896, "Diplomatic Agent of the Cuban Republic in Arms" in Paris, and contributed 200 francs to said committee, which got to send Italian volunteers to fight in Cuba. Betances answered to the Junta Cubana en Nueva York, presided by Freemason Tomás Estrada Palma.

Arrived in Madrid, again via London and Lisbon, Angiolillo got an interview with the Republican José Nakens, who had also taken part in the attack against Alfonso XIII in 1905. Nakens wrote that, after having the Italian left Madrid, an "enigmatic personage" gave him an envelope for Angiolillo, envelope which he destroyed once he learned of the success of the assassination.

Angiolillo, once he was taken in custody at Santa Águeda, said his motive was taking revenge for the five killed before a firing squad in Montjuich on May 6, 1897. But it is clear that the assassination had further explanations. Pio Moa has summarized part of the plot perfectly: "Cánovas died assassinated by an Italian anarchist behind whose hand, it has always been suspected, acted Cuban independentism and Freemasonry [...] Nakens, Betances and Morral, and probably Angiolillo too, coincided in their masonic membership," [xi] And as soon as it happened, the New York Times wrote: "The Cubans will, at last! see their dreams of liberty realized, because now, without Cánovas, the war between the United States and Spain is inevitable"

For the majority of the Spaniards of 1898, there were clear and well defined culprits: the Freemasons. The proof is that, after that year, Spanish freemasonry practically disintegrated: lodge membership declined to the point of putting the secret society at the brink of starvation, situation from which it took them two decades to recover. Freemason Sánchez Ferré has estimated that, between 1900 and 1939, Spanish lodges and similar organizations never reached 300 in number, nor Freemasons 5,000. [xiii]

Ricardo de la Cierva has declared categorically: "The loss of Hispanic America was consummated in 1898 with that of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines, through a huge masonic conspiracy, carried out in Spain and Overseas, which some delusional historians are obstinate in arbitrarily denying." [xiii] And Ferrari Billoch wrote: "Several masonic Spanish generals ...  got to hand over the Great Antille to the Yankee army ... fulfilling the resolutions of universal freemasonry, which had decreed Spain's loss of Cuba in punishment for its tenacity." [xiv]

The death of Cánovas, aside from signifying the Disaster of 1998, was the end of the Bourbon Restoration and of the Conservative Party, even though the system continued until the similar assassinations of José Canalejas and Eduardo Dato.

And talking about assassinations, modern investigations confirm the fact that Prim was the victim of a masonic conspiracy in spite of him being a mason.[xvi] But the assassination that bears the greatest similitude to the one treated herein, is that of Admiral Carrero Blanco, when President of Government who had also just gone to mass, and who was also entirely unprotected by the information and security services (even blaming him for the ease with which the attack was carried out) and, again, with the United States seeking a territory, the Spanish Sahara, which they coveted (for Morocco) and, of course, also behind a process of "political normalization" for Spain, designed to their taste.

4. The Maine

The USS Maine was a 7,000 ton United States cruiser, which for the Navy was antiquated (about 10 years old) but not so much for the Spanish Armada, since its features were similar to the 'Vizcaya' class cruisers, then the best ships of our fleet. On January 25 1898 it anchored at the Port of Havana, and exploded on February 15, causing between 255 and 266 fatal victims among the crew (according to sources). This event sparked off the United States declaration of war against Spain, Up to here the historical events; now it calls for posing three questions:

1. Who sent it there and what for?
2. Who made it explode?
3. Who benefited from the event?

The answer to the first and third questions is, without doubt, the Jingoes. The most probable answer to the second question is — as we shall try to demonstrate —: the Jingoes.

Jingo is the term used to designate those Americans who aim to have a European style empire, itself understood as the exalted a nationalism favoring a violent expansion at the expense of other nations. The term had been born in England. It refers to businessmen, military and politicians who promote imperialism; all of them members of the Republican Party. Traditionally, the Republicans have favored imperialism in the Government of the United States, while the Democrats have defended the values of liberty of the peoples. This duality forms the essence itself of American mentality, the ones cannot exist without the others. If the Republicans were the ones who always governed, they would be a powerful but hated nation. If it were the Democrats the ones who always governed, the United States would lead the rights of the peoples from a position of weakness. This may seem to be a simplistic proposition, although, seen from the inside, it is more complex: a Republican government which produces wealth is followed by a Democratic one which neither returns the territories nor revives the dead, but puts a nice face and says "it wasn't me". Every eight years, American electors redeem themselves of the ravages done by the Republican government, without which their nation would not be so powerful. Change everything so that everything stays the same.

This process became acute in 1861, during the times preceding the American Civil War. While the Democrats were in favor of granting independence to the secessionist states of the South, the Republicans favored declaring war against them. Finally, the latter were the ones who imposed their thesis, no matter how the war should be won and, in addition, their goal that the Southern States willingly accept their return to the Union after their defeat; the events seemed to confirm the imperialist argument. No consideration was given — and that's how the system works — to the possibility of victory reaping some seven hundred thousand lives.

The triumph of the Republican ideas occasioned that the White House received no Democratic occupant for the following thirty years, period during which the massacre of the Indian peoples and the conquer of Mexico's Northern provinces were perpetrated.

The streak of Republican victories was truncated by Democratic President Cleveland, who governed the USA during two mandates, 1885-1889 and 1893-1897. This character is crucial because it was just after his second mandate that the United States attacked Spain, but we have the key in his first mandate, in 1885.

In 1885, at the Berlin Conference, the Europeans divided up Africa and Asia among themselves. The United States was the only non-European country, aside from Turkey, which was invited. But precisely that year, the Democrats had won the election, and the US delegate took a position against colonialism, renouncing to its "slice of the cake". Anyway, it was agreed that, from then on, the conflicts between powers for their colonies would be resolved on a negotiated basis, instead of by force of arms. A period of peace and modernity was beginning, as a result of which, Germany signed an agreement with Spain on the Caroline Islands and Morocco some years later.

But when the Republicans returned to power, a part of them, the Jingoes, would not accept the postulates which North America had maintained at the Berlin Conference. They decided to garner an empire, but it was too late to do it by fair means; the world had already been divided up, and the United States had not gotten their share, for which reason they decided to do it by force.

The attack of the United States against Spain put dynamite under the frail international equilibrium emanated from the Berlin Conference. In 1898, British and French armies were at the brink of a showdown in Fashoda, Sudan. The following year, Great Britain declared war against the Boers in South Africa, which were supported by the Netherlands. Japan never forgave the United States for their invasion of Hawaii in 1898. The Germans had a small empire and they had renounced to extend it for the sake of international equilibrium, and they now felt cheated; in October 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II visited Jerusalem, and in November, the military alliance between Germany and the Ottoman Empire was signed. The world was divided up in blocks to mutually protect their empires, all of which responded to obscure strategic interests. The next fifty years were the most bloody humanity had ever seen; all this because North America had broken the rules of the game established at the Berlin Conference.

But let's get back to Havana in January 1898. It were the Jingoes those who pressured Republican President McKinley to send the Maine there. We don't know what they sent it for, but we know that the leader of the Jingoes was William Randolph Hearst, at the time president of the main economic lobby; Hearst was also an outstanding member of the "Illuminati" masons and, with his New York Journal, promoted enormously the Spanish American war.

What or who made the Maine explode? This question has been profusely debated; whether it was an explosion or an implosion; whether there was one or two detonations, whether it was on purpose or spontaneous... This writing would extend too much if we intended to delve to the bottom of the investigations; we will center our discussion on demonstrated conclusions, both at the time when the event took place, and the subsequent investigations made by the Navy itself twenty years ago.

It has been demonstrated that there were two detonations and that, at least the major one —the second — had an internal cause, when the munitions storeroom exploded. Of the first and smaller detonation, there is no certainty to this day whether it was internal, by the spontaneous exploding of the coal, or external, caused by a small mine.

The hole that even today can be seen in the hull of the ship is under the keel. It would not be easy to place a mine under the ship, given that it was watched over externally by the Civil Guard, and internally by the American marines themselves. This excludes uncontrolled elements, be they Spanish or Cuban, as none of them had the necessary operating capacity. The Spanish government could have done it, simply by having the Maine anchored over a previously installed mine. But, would the pacifist Sagasta government and its ultra pacifist General Blanco do something like that? At any rate, a mine planted at the bottom of the sea would have raised mud, which would have reached the adjacent ships; but this didn´t happen.

Only two options are left, a mine placed against the hull, or a spontaneous explosion of the coal, and both exclude Spain as the party responsible. However, the American investigating commission blamed Spain as the solely responsible party, without supplying any evidence. Are there any proofs to blame it on the Navy or on the Jingoes? Or on Jingoes in the Department of the Navy, as was Freemason Theodore Roosevelt? There are no proofs, but there are plenty of indications.

On January 30, the Buccaneer yacht, property of William Randolph Hearst, showed up without a Customs permit and, without requesting mooring, nor permission from the pilot. After a strange maneuver, it anchored in the military zone, between the Maine and the Legazpi. A surprising location for a recreational boat. The Buccaneer remained anchored at the same place despite the request of the port authorities to move away.

In the evening of his arrival, Mr Hearst sent an invitation to the officers of the Maine, to attend a reception for them on the Buccaneer that night. And, in turn, he was invited on board of the Maine, to make a reportage on its baseball team, which had won the Navy championship that year. Mr Hearst made use of his stay in Havana to hold several meetings with his friends and associates of the "Havana Club", name by which the businessmen sector which supported annexation with the United States was known. Finally, on February 11, the Buccaneer left the military harbor at the request of the Civil Guard, but instead of anchoring at the Nautical Club, opted for abandoning the port. Four days later, the Maine exploded.
An excuse was needed for the annexation because, up to then, the argument wielded by the United States had been the struggle of the Cuban people for their liberty, supported by the Monroe Doctrine. But the Mambi movement had acquired a personality of its own. That the Americans had given economic support to the insurrection and asylum to the Cuban Government in Exile came out to be of no use, because the insurrects did not seek annexation but independence. A reason was needed in order to draw together American public opinion and to exclude the mambises, if possible. On the other hand, the new autonomy granted by Sagasta [xvii] had given illusions to a wide spectrum of the Cuban population. 

Suddenly, nobody wanted annexation any longer. War had to be declared urgently, since at the beginning of 1898, the most important ships of the Spanish Armada came down to just three cruisers, all twins of the Vizcaya class. In contrast, all of the acquisitions programs of the US Navy had been completed, and what is more, all the units were new and in their best shape.

We have thus answered the questions: Who had the opportunity to do it? and who was benefited from it? In our opinion, Hearst had not intended to cause so many deaths. If the small mine placed against the hull had worked properly, nobody would have been hurt. Also, had the ship remained almost intact, the external participation would have been more clearly evidenced, and his own newspaper would have taken upon itself to point to the Spaniards as criminals. If all had come out right, at the end of the conflict Hearst would have boasted among his glamorous friends of having personally had to trigger the war.

Was there a connection between the Jingoes and freemasonry? Certainly, both groups converge in the Republican Party. At the time, in the United States — contrary to how it was in Spain, where masons basically militated in the Liberal Party (progressivist) — freemasonry populated the conservative wing of the political spectrum because the Democrats had been supporters of slavery. Probably the Jingoes had made use of the fact that freemasonry had decreed Spain's loss of its colonies to achieve their golden dream of building their own empire. That's why the Maine had sailed to Havana.

5 The Armies confronted in 'The Splendid Little War"

We have already said that the US Army was not, by much, an enemy to Spain, whereas the Navy was much more developed, surpassing the Spanish one in some aspects and being at a disadvantage in some others, although its main battle line was not ready until the middle nineties. But the "official version" of the disaster of 1998, invented by the politicians and the military who were responsible, and coauthors, of that disaster, has spread, and keeps on spreading, in a tortious and stubborn way, that "the Spanish Army was made up of old wooden ships" which motivated the quick defeat of Montojo in Cavite and the shameful "suicide" of Cervera in Santiago.

We are entirely in agreement with Pío Moa, influenced by the prestigious historian Agustín R. Rodríguez [xviii] when he says that the "USA not only was the first economic power in the world, but was also strategically situated next to Cuba and half the distance away from the Philippines, and Spain is quite far from Cuba (which is only 200 kilometers away from the American coast, and from seven to eight thousand from the metropolis) and very far from the Philippines: Of course, they had everything to win in a long contest, but it was not certain that they would win in a short one, and a clear setback at the beginning could have stopped them. The Spanish Armada had modern ships and was faster than its opponent, albeit somewhat inferior in artillery power and battleships; the US commands were mediocre, and on the eve of the fight numerous sailors deserted, sign of a not quite high morale. Spain could have played its best weapon, taking advantage of its speed, and attacking the coasts and the enemy's commerce, perspective which raised panic in some coastal regions in the USA, the population of which moved to the interior. There were commanders ready to carry this strategy forward.

That the probable result of the confrontation was not that clear can be demonstrated by the fact that most of the naval experts of the time thought that Spain could have a chance, given that the Yankees were superior in battleships but the Spanish were in armored cruisers and in fast attack craft. The speed of the Spanish cruisers, not to mention the Spanish destroyers (a Spanish invention, just as was the submarine, albeit obscurely "torpedoed from the inside" never crystallized and thus expedited the disaster of 1998 [xix]) made it possible to avoid direct confrontation with the American battleships, except in night combat (advocated and rehearsed in Spain by that time), allowing them to attack the smaller units, the merchant ships, and the shores. In this latter sense, San Juan Puerto Rico was an ideal base, being sufficiently far from the United States and possessing something more than a modest coastal artillery (in spite of lacking heavy cannons), all of which prevented a constant effective blockade; that was the initial plan of Minister Rear Admiral Bermejo (instructions that reached Cape Verde on the San Francisco on April 18, and telegrams of the following 21 and 22)

The US Navy was conscious of the power of the Spanish Armada in the Atlantic, for which reason it sent two fleets to Cuba and Puerto Rico, which, even when they were superior to the Spanish in number and armament, had instructions not to confront it separately; a third Yankee fleet had been assigned to the defense of the American coast, just as Spain counted with what was named the "Cámara Squadron" to protect its coasts. Concretely, when the Cervera and Sampson squadrons confronted each other, against the average speed of 7.5 knots of the American ships, Cervera could have countered with his 14 knot average speed, in addition to their greater maneuverability and dexterity in combat procedures. And this Spanish potentiality could have been greater had the Villamil squadron (three destroyers and three torpedo boats) left earlier from the Peninsula in convoy with two of Cervera's cruisers, as he could have done it, with which they all could have reached Havana or Puerto Rico with no problem.

In the Antilles, the offensive advantage of greater speed and number of torpedo boats of the Spanish ships (each armored cruiser carried three firing tubes and three torpedoes for each); to that could be added the defensive power of the coastal artillery in the naval bases, which contributed to equalize the differences. At that time, navy cannons would hit coastal targets with efficacy only at less than 2,000 meters, while the medium coastal cannons would easily hit their target at up to 5,000 meters if they counted with telemetry bases.

Cervera was in Martinique and Curacao when he learned about the Battle of San Juan, with the resulting shortage of munition which the battle would have meant for Sampson's squadron. But he was unaware of the Minister's authorization to go back to the Peninsula (which Marine General Vallarino, navy commander in Puerto Rico, apparently failed to send to Martinique and Curacao, though did send to Havana). In this context, Cervera decided to sail to Santiago, in spite of this port having hardly any defenses, and it lying in an inlet over 6 km long and less than 200 m wide; "a mousetrap from which it was impossible to escape", as it was said then.

Going back to the chronological order of the events, let's begin with Cavite, on May 1, 1898, given that such defeat, 'incomprehensibly' magnified by the Spanish military authorities in the Philippines, had enormous transcendence, even though the Spanish fleet in that 30,000 island archipelago had been basically engaged in repressing piracy, In that combat "... (the Spanish) ships were a bit older than the American ones (in a way that) it could be affirmed that most of them were at one half of their life cycle; this is a fact that we would like to stress, and which has (been) rightly noted by Don Agustín Ramón Rodríguez González, Doctor in Current History, completely rejecting the theory that the Spanish fleet made up of wooden ships had confronted an all-powerful fleet of armored battleships." [xx]

The aforementioned deceitful "strength idea" is based on the existence of the so-called cruise ships deployed basically in the Philippines and in Spanish Oceania, which were similar to those of other squadrons for like engagements and which, in the event of having to combat against other "protected" ships, could carry it out without its wooden hull entailing a decisive inconvenience. The 'Castilla' cruiser, the only one in Cavite and in Santiago with those characteristics (with internal metal structure, though),which was immobilized on account of a breakdown in its engines, and which, in great measure for that reason had not yet been painted gray (it was still white), suffered much from enemy fire and was unnecessarily abandoned by its crew, which made the fires devour it. That the Spanish ships were not so old or so bad can be demonstrated by the fact that the Americans re-floated the cruiser Don Juan de Austria and added it to its own navy, which they kept in service up until 1921, as happened also with the protected cruisers Isla de Cuba (kept in service up until 1912) and Isla de Luzón (up until 1919), sold afterwards to other navies or as merchant ships. 

Moreover, in these confrontations, theoretically of strength, two important aspects should not be forgotten: the coastal artillery and the cannon-armor duo of the great ships; this, of course, without forgetting the training of the crews and their morale (there were many desertions among the foreign sailors hired by the Americans); the state of maintenance of the ships; the proximity of the support bases (the Yankees in the Pacific had their closest base in Hawaii, though formally an independent nation, and a supply base on the Yang Tze Kiang River in China, and of course could freely avail themselves of the British base in Hong-Kong) at 3,500 miles and their Continental shores at 7,000; the quality of their commanders, etc.

With respect to the great cannons of the battleships, it must be pointed out that they were no universal panacea, since they had great limitations: their firing cadence was very slow, even one shot every ten minutes, their aiming systems were very rudimentary, with which their effective reach was quite compromised under 5000 m, which made them almost equal to our numerous González Hontoria of 120 mm and 10 km reach; they were not used for salvo firing (simultaneous shots) except at very short distances. As proof of this, remember that at Santiago de Cuba, the eighteen Yankee cannons of 30 and 32 cm made only two impacts in a discharge at point blank.

With respect to the American battleships, their armor protected the central part of their sides, the bow and stern of the ship remaining without armor, that is, one half of the ship, especially at the float line, was unprotected.

Since we have mentioned the coastal artillery in Puerto Rico, we will say that their efficacy was demonstrated on May 12, when the battleships Iowa and Indiana, the cruiser New York, the monitors (river ships) Terror and Puritan, and several auxiliary ships (armed merchant ships); 11 ships in total, from distances between 1,000 and 3,000 meters shot close to 2,000 projectiles of medium and large caliber on San Juan (and the triple or quadruple number of Nordenfelt and Hotchkiss shells of a smaller caliber), of which 250 hit the forts, 800 exploded in the city violating uses and customs of the time, and other 200 did not explode. The attack was concentrated against the castles of San Cristóbal, mainly, and El Morro, as well as its annexed batteries, and lasted for about three hours; they only put one 24 cm mortar out of action (they tore off its closing breech block) and temporarily interrupted firing of the Carmen battery (two Ordóñez 15 cm cannons) whose officer and several artillery men were wounded; that is, their firing was very poor. The cannons of the castles of San Cristóbal and San Felipe of El Morro fired 441 shots: the Iowa received between four and nine 15 cm impacts (according to sources), which made it withdraw, probably on tow, and the insignia ship New York received one. The Spanish casualties were 64: two military and five civilians dead, and 39 military and 18 civilians wounded. The American casualties were, at least, two dead and seven wounded on the Indiana, Iowa and New York.

Of the 38 very diverse coastal pieces with which the stronghold counted, almost two thirds could not fire, due to their position in relation to that of the squadron. Those which did participate in the combat were:13 C.H.E. tubular iron 15 cm cannons; Model 1885 Ordóñez; five O.H.S. hoop-reinforced iron 24 cm mortars, Model 1891 Ordóñez, seven striped, hoop-reinforced iron 21 cm mortars, Model 1872, and six C.H.S. 15 cm cannons, Mod 1878. Alone, the combined Indiana, Iowa and New York ships had eight 13-inch (33 cm) C.H.S, 22 eight-inch (20.3 cm), four six-inch (15.24 cm) and eighteen four- inch (10.16 cm) cannons, in addition to multiple low caliber ones. By the time the squadron withdrew, the Spanish fire was more regular and sustained than it had been at the start of the combat. For lack of budget, they did not count with telemetry stations.

That is, a modest coastal artillery demonstrated it could deny the sea to a squadron, no matter how powerful. And that occurred in Havana where, in 1896, 56 large caliber artillery pieces were installed, so that by 1898 the maritime front had three redoubts, 24 coastal batteries and 7 auxiliary batteries available, with a total of 193 pieces (among them two Krupp 30.5 cm cannons, two other of the same caliber Ordóñez, six Krupp of 28 cm, other similar 24 cm Ordóñez, four 15 cm CHE, etc.). four telemetry stations (with projectors and telemeters) two Nordenfelt machine guns, and 28 torpedoes/ mines for coastal defense. 

And the same, of course, could have occurred in Manila, where the means were dispersed and those which defended its port, the most powerful ones, were annulled. Even though the Dewey squadron almost doubled that of Montojo in tonnage and number of cannons, aside from its ships being more modern and faster, the combination of Spanish means could have been sufficient to win the round.

Ignoring 24 very old coastal pieces in Manila, it had four CHRS 24 cm reformed cannons, Mod 1881 (7,000 m reach and piercing projectiles); nine OHRS 21 cm mortars, Mod 1870, and 6 Ordóñez CHE 15 cm cannons, Mod 1885; all of them perfectly effective, especially the former and the latter, which could be joined by 28 ship units which had been already retired. This combination, together with that of the squadron, which was much superior to that of the American ships [xxi], both in number and in efficacy (shooting from a fixed emplacement and less vulnerable than those on ships). To that, the availability of some forty mines was added.

But the 13 mortars (of 24 cm and 21 cm) stayed in Manila and, of the six Ordóñez 15 cm cannons in Punta Sngley (Cavite), four were sent to Subic and two stayed in Cavite. The cannons disembarked from the squadron were emplaced on the islets and flanks at the mouth of the Bay of Manila. The same was done with the torpedoes and mines: 14 were sent to Subic, 22 were installed in front of the Manila Bay and the rest at Cavite. This was the distribution made.

To understand this distribution, we need to mention what was written of Cavite by First Class Ship Lieutenant Víctor Concas (later chief of staff of Admiral Cervera, and commander of cruiser Infanta María Teresa) in the Revista General de Marina in year 1882: "from a military standpoint, Cavite is an absurdity, since it is located at the bottom end of a bay, with entries, one of which is 9,700 meters wide and 72 meters deep, and are practically undefendable, neither with artillery nor with torpedoes and, as a consequence, once blockaded, it converts the harbor into a horrible mousetrap. In Cavite a disaster awaits us on the first occasion." Subic, where construction was being done since some years back, would be the planned replacement for the Cavite Arsenal, Captain General Primo de Rivera had made the agreements of Malacañang, commitments which, as will be seen later, generated all kinds of misunderstandings between the Army and the Navy. Having Primo de Rivera been replaced by Agustín, who had given arms to the rebels of Kapitunan among other "hardly explainable" actions, when Montojo arrived in Subic, as was his plan, he found out that the four 150 mm Ordóñez cannons had not been installed, and he had not been made aware thereof! Artillery emplacement was, in theory, the Army's responsibility, but there was, at least, a conflict in jurisdictions. Montojo then wanted to shelter his squadron in the Manila Harbor, under the protection of its relatively powerful coastal artillery but the Captain General prohibited him from doing this. In this obscure and wrongful way, undoubtedly embellished with lies and obscure interests, the squadron arrived in Cavite. It is easy to imagine, leaving aside the scenario of a possible defensively organized Subic, what would have happened if combat had taken place in Manila, given that Dewey, as shall be seen, was close to withdrawing after his unfruitful first attack against the almost defenseless Cavite.

This is why, both in the Pacific and in the Atlantic, the Americans pursued decisive naval combats, seeking a quick outcome by taking advantage of the superiority of their battleships: 'Casually', as we shall see, this was handed to them on a silver platter in both theaters of operations.

But even in those scenarios of face to face general combat, historically it has not always been the strongest of the contenders the one which attained victory, given that intelligence, determination (will to win) and courage, are decisive in war. Let's see two examples that do not exhaust the topic in any way:

• In 1741, Admiral Blas de Lezo, with 3,000 men and five ships, defeated two hundred British ships and thirty thousand soldiers in Cartagena de Indias.
• In 1744, Admiral Juan José Navarro, with twelve ships, defeated a British squadron of thirty-two galleons at Cape Sicié (France) where, additionally, the British doubled the Spanish in number of cannons.

On the other hand, this was demonstrated in almost all minor combats in 1989.

(To be continued)

Notes: 
[i] La Masonería al Desnudo,by F. Ferrari Billoch, Page.152, Ediciones Bergua, Madrid, 1935, citing Maurice Fara (pseudonym) in La Masonería y su Obra, published by J. Murillo, Madrid, 1934, and Editorial Tradicionalista.
[ii] The revolution in the 13 colonies was hatched in the Masonic lodges. George Washington belonged to lodge Virginia 4, and eight of the 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence were masons (and other 10 probably also were), 13 of the 33 who signed the Constitution, and 20 of their 29 generals, including Frenchman Lafayette, an important agent of freemasonry. Some of the colonists who, disguised as Indians triggered the revolution in 1773 by boarding tea-loaded ships and throwing their cargo into the sea, were also masons.
[iii] Masonería y Nación: Redes Masónicas y Políticas en la Construcción Identitaria Cubana (1811-1902), Canariy Islands, Spain, Ediciones Idea, 2006; quoted by Pedro Sánchez Farré in http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=89804511.
[iv] “America owes the first - and last - independentist impulses to Spanish masons, though this implies a lack of patriotism for certain people, to us it cannot constitute less than a seal of pride", according to Masonic review “Latomia” (published these days by the Grand Lodge of Spain; 1933, vol 2, page 265; see: “Relaciones y opiniones oficiales de las masonerías españolas sobre. Iberoamérica durante la II República (1931-1935)”.
On the other hand, it is admitted that Esteban Morín and other five Jews, founded the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (of 33 degrees) in Charleston, Virginia, in 1801, from the Supreme Council of which depended a great number of Hispanic American and peninsular lodges.
[v] According to official data published by “El Depósito de la Guerra” in 1897, between March 1895 and January 1897, 212.717 soldiers were sent to Cuba  See Monografías del CESEDEN, Nº 14, 1995 by Colonel Fernando Redondo Díaz, .Conservative Cánovas decided to end the War of 95”, using 200.000 soldiers and a billion pesetas, according to José Luis Comellas, in Historia de España Moderna y Contemporánea. Ediciones Rialp. Madrid, 1975/77.
[vi] In 1888 the Grand Orient of Spain and the National Grand Orient of Spain were merged, creating the National Grand Orient of Spain, but this is a fleeting union, and the majority of its members end up forming the Spanish Grand Orient on May 21 of that same year, Miguel Morayta y Sagrario being elected its Grand Master; in 1889, the Grand Spanish Symbolic Lodge of the Ancient and Primitive Oriental Rite of Memphis and Mizraim is founded.
[vii] José A. Ferrer Benimeli in La Masonería Española y la Crisis Colonial del 98, at the International Symposium of the History of Spanish Masonry (Centro de Estudios Históricos de la Masonería Española, Barcelona, 1997). Pedro Sánchez Ferré, mason of the Grand Spanish Lodge and professor at Universidad de Barcelona, in La Masonería y los Masones Españoles en el Siglo XX,
[viii] P. Sánchez Ferré: Nacionalismo y Masonería en España 1880-1936, pages. 71-84, Cuadernos de Investigación Histórica Brocarn nº 17, Barcelona, 1991, dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/124681.pdf . Javier Güerri en La Masonería y el Desastre del 98, Revista Arbil nº 75, http://www.arbil.org/%2875%29maso.htm.UNED: La Masonería y la Crisis Colonial del 98, extracted from Sánchez Ferré, Masonería y Colonialismo en La Masonería Española (1728-1939)- Exposición, Alicante-Valencia, 1989, pages. 81-90; http://www.uned.es/dpto-hdi/museovirtualhistoriamasoneria/5historia_masoneria_espana/m%20y%20crisis%20colonial%20del%2098.htm.
[ix] Among others, Dominique Soucy, in Masonería y Nación: Redes Masónicas y Políticas en la Construcción Identitaria Cubana (1811-1902), Canarias, España, Ediciones Idea, 2006.
[x] Félix Ojeda Reyes, in El Desterrado de París: Biografía del Dr. Ramón Emeterio Betances (1827–1898), Ediciones Puerto, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2001, páginas. 356-359. Also: El “sólido” núcleo de Betances en París y el asesinato de Cánovas, en el Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, Tomo CXCIV, nº II, Año 1997, pages. 239 a 254. And Luis Bonafoux (friend and biographer of doctor Betances), en Betances, San Juan de Puerto Rico: Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 1970.
[xi] Pío Moa Rodríguez, in no way given to conspiracy theories, in Una Historia Chocante, Pag. 75, Ediciones Encuentro, Madrid, 2004.
Connivance of freemasonry with anarchism is documented in may other cases.
[xii] Pedro Sánchez Ferré, in his above cited La Masonería y los Masones Españoles en el Siglo XX.
[xiii] Revista Época, Madrid, May 21, 2005.
[xiv] Francisco Ferrari Billoch in La Masonería al Desnudo, Pag,s. 152-3, Ediciones Bergua, Madrid, 1936. http://www.fileserve.com,  |  http://www.profitupload.com.
[xv] Prim, by the way, proposed the independence of Cuba and a compensation to Spain, guaranteed by the United States, which, already by then were supporting and financing the separatists (an undercover sale maneuver, See La Masonería al Desnudo, Pag. 152), once the island had been  pacified, and, shortly before his assassination, he sent Nicolás Azcárate y Miguel Jorro to Washington to negotiate the emancipation conditions with the independentists. His death on December 30, 1870 truncated that solution. Prim filled the Spanish efforts with difficulties; in 1870 he freed the Cuban separatist leaders which were being subjected to a War Council,
[xvi] J.A. Vaca de Osma in La Masonería y el Poder, Planeta, Barcelona, 1999/2000. Fontana Beltrán: El Magnicidio del General Prim-Los Verdaderos Asesinos, Akrón, Astorga, 2001. Diario ABC (11-II-2013): The Investigating  Commission on his assassination ratified the theory that he was finished off http://www.abc.es/cultura/libros/20130211/abci-prim-estrangulado-201302111036.html; the commission gets to affirm, textually that “Prim's assassination arises from a war between Freemasons”.
[xvii] On November 29. 1897, Spain granted autonomy to Cuba by means of a Constitution which gave it full government faculties, with the exception of international policy and military defense. The majority of members of this autonomous government were Freemasons (see: Españoles y Cubanos en la Masonería, by Janet Iglesias Cruz and Javier Gutiérrez Forte; also D. Soucy, Op. Cit.). It is said that in the Autonomous Cabinet of Puerto Rico , eight of its 11 members were masons (http://elmason.blogspot.com.es/2005_10_30_archive.html).
[xviii] Pío Moa, in La Guerra de Cuba, 24-X-2009; http://www.corunaliberal.es:80/index.php/component/content/article/1373-lengua-y-politica. Agustín Rodríguez González, basically in Operaciones de la Guerra de 1898 -Una Visión Crítica-, capítulo “Balance de Fuerzas” (Pag. 32-52), Editorial ACTAS, Madrid, 1998.
[xix] Javier Sanmateo: La Cuestión del Submarino y la Guerra del 98, http://almirantecervera.com/alm/?page_id=477. In addition to the treason (literally) which he documents, it is important because he does the same with Dewey's phrase of “had the Spaniards in Manila had one or two of the submarines invented by Peral it would have been impossible for me attain victory”.
[xx] Alejandro Anca Alamillo in Batalla de Cavite (1 de mayo de 1898):El Sol del Imperio Comienza a Ponerse
http://www.revistanaval.com/armada/batallas/cavite.htm. See also http://www.eldesastredel98.com/capitulos/barcmadera.htm#.  With respect to the wooden ships, for example, Santiago Sobreques wrote in his Historia de España Moderna y Contemporánea (página 377, Editorial Vicens Vives, 1969) that: “…Cervera had  arrived in the Antilles, where, short of fuel had to take refuge in Santiago de Cuba. He imprudently tried to sail from there to Havana, but his wooden ships were ready fuel for the fire from the American,ships, armored and with cannons of .longer reach”.
[xxi] Rodríguez-González: El combate de Cavite, Revista de Indias Vol. LVIII, Nº 213-1998