I can't believe what my neo-con Uncle just sent me.

[Maestro]

Actually I can. I "snoped" the article and it had a good explanation as to why this is so simple-minded, typical freeper mentality, but the veracity of the article is undetermined. I am going to check around and see if this is true myself. Either way, this would not solve any problems.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. Your uncle...

Is apparently quite disturbed.

[Maestro]

3. He and I barely speak much anymore

It's really too bad. If he only knew how "to the left" I have taken his brother, my father. ;)

[cynatnite]

2. Snoped

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pershing.htm

[Maestro]

4. Yes, I know. I made reference to that in my post.

Unless I dreamed it. ;)

[cynatnite]

18. I think I slept through that part

sorry :)

[Name removed]

21. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alfredo]

32. Read "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi

She speaks of homemade vodka and ham sandwiches eaten in the privacy of the home.

[kineneb]

45. My Islamic stepfather

says about bacon: "My religion says no, but my stomach says yes." So he has bacon if he wants. He says those rules were put into place because in the ME there was often not enough fuel (wood) to properly cook the pork. Also that pigs need a lot of water for cooling, and water has always been in short supply in the desert. Sheep, goats and cattle are much more practical for that environment.

Now he pops the bacon in the microwave and has it for breakfast. He still won't eat much ham, but is known to eat the occasional well-cooked pork chop.

[alfredo]

54. My wife is Jewish and she has a very hard time turning down my

BLT's. Living in the south, it is difficult to avoid pork.

[teach1st]

5. Probably not..

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_black_jack_pershing.htm

Comments: According to Dr. Frank E. Vandiver, professor of history at Texas A&M University and author of "Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing," the above tale is apocryphal. "This story is hard to stop!" he wrote in answer to my email query. "I never found any indication that it was true in extensive research on his Moro experiences. This kind of thing would have run completely against his character."

http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/pershing.html

There are no documented accounts of these events ever happening in the Philippines or anywhere else in 1911 or at any other time. Even experts who have studied "Black Jack" have no record of it. Pershing biographer, Dr. Frank E. Vandiver, told Urban Legends expert, David Emery, that he has found no historical account of such a strategy and feels that such actions would run counter to what is know of Pershing's character.

Chains like this one demonstrate the western world's general ignorance of Muslims and Islam. Muslims (and others, including many Jews) do not eat or use any part of the pig - not because they feel they are "pigs of the devil," but because the animals are generally considered unclean, and thus unhealthy. Few believe that merely touching swine will close the gates of heaven to them. Also, Islam does not consider terrorists martyrs, nor do they believe they are killing for Allah and will get into "muslim heaven." The concept of the "endless supply of virgins" is a mystery to most Muslims - it is not a facet of their faith.

[Maestro]

11. Cool thanks.

I'll pass it on to my uncle and wait for the freak-out.

[bonzotex]

19. Thank you! saved me the trouble...

....of refuting the Pershing and Philippine nonsense. Most wingnuts don't know shit about history so it probably won't help to try and explain it.

On another note, in the 42 years following "just before WWI" there was plenty of Muslim extremist violence and Christian extremist violence too for that matter.

The examples can and have filled volumes. The thing is, our current freeper brand of conservative live in a world of their own creation, independent of facts. They won't go seeking truth nor will they accept it delivered on a platter.

[hookahjoe]

24. drives me crazy

RUMORS of shell casings lubed in pig and cow fat incited the bloody Indian Mutiny in Victorian British India. I wish the freepers would study real history and its consequences instead of emailing all their relatives this worthless propaganda, but we all know that will never happen

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

6. I had a dittohead send me the very same thing right after the war

started.

[GodHelpUsAll2]

63. You think that's bad

my oown father recited this little treasure to me. I just laughed, as I usully do. God love him he is sweet as can be but where the hell does he come up with this nonsense? I tell him all the time, "Dad you have got to watch something besides Fox News and get out a little more". LOL

[yardwork]

7. It seems to me that we're already doing this sort of thing

- and we see how well it has worked so far....

[Maestro]

12. My thoughts exactly.

Hello Gitmo!

[oneold1-4u]

22. Not till pigs fly!

They don't even allow pork to be shipped in for food for the troops!
We recognize their faith and adapt our own policy only to find insurgents using mosques and homes of Imams to hide and store arms.
But in the US today the churches are daily using their tax free pulpits and lands for their political agendas. Not much difference in religious radicals!

[yardwork]

40. We "adapt our policy" by raping their children in prison

and desecrating their holy text.

[Bouncy Ball]

65. Good save in the last part of that post, but it was too little too late.

By the way, we adapt our own policy by killing them.

:eyes:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Pershing

also pursued Pancho Villa in Mexico with the 10th Cavalry, an all-African American regiment. His nickname wasn't always the nice "Black" Jack Pershing but something more perjorative. The article simply spews hate against Muslims and shows a taste for sadism and cruelty against those who "aren't like us", implying that this is the way they must be treated to behave.

[Maestro]

13. I thought it was quite cruel myself.

And the jaunts into Mexico were complete failures. He never found Villa. In fact, just after the Revolution of 1910, Villistas kicked my American family out of Mexico. Pershing didn't scare Villa at all.

[Ms. Clio]

17. And, like Bush and Bin Laden, Pershing never got his man, either

[BrotherBuzz]

57. Pershing was a racist....in spades!

He thought so much of African-American soldiers, he dumped them the first chance he got. During WWI, the all-black 93rd division, a rag-tag outfit that was initially issued Civil War uniforms, were assigned to French command by General John Pershing. The French desperately needed fresh troops and Pershing was able to satisfy France's needs by getting rid of his own problem - black soldiers. The 93d Division turned in their American equipment and were issued French rifles, bayonets, helmets, packs, and other equipment of the French soldier. They were then organized, trained, and commanded as a French unit, the first unit in US history to serve under foreign command, even though the US sent directives to the French on how to treat them:

"The French were horrified by the segregation, and by all these directives that came from the American high command instructing them not to praise the black troops, not to socialise with or speak to black officers outside of the line of duty," says Gail Buckley, author of American Patriots, a study of African-Americans in war. "The French command apparently ordered Pershing's directives to be burned." http://www.aftermathww1.com/johnson.asp

The 93nd division fought as part of the French army, where, ironically, it found acceptance, respect, and glory, eventually winning the Croix de Guerre, only to return to America and find Jim Crow laws alive and well.

[Mz Pip]

9. That's quite a leap of logic

Whoever wrote this basically assumes that if we execute a bunch of terrorist with pig blood encrusted bullets our problems will disappear (at least for 42 years.)

Even if it is true, which I kind of doubt, giving this guy credit for a terrorist attck free world for 42 years is just silly.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[NeoConsSuck]

60. Well, we haven't progressed much..

now we drop napalm on them, and think that is the way to victory.

We did that in Vietnam, and ran home with our tails between our legs. And we'll be doing the same thing, very soon.

[CountAllVotes]

10. I had an uncle but ...

the only differnece was that he was a Democrat actually but wow, he was nuttier than a fruitcake. He once told me that he didn't really think that what Hitler did during WWII was really "that bad".

I put up with the old nut until he died. It took a lot to deal with him, especially towards the end of his life as he became nuttier and nuttier. When he died I found a prescription for a drug given to psychotic people. That did explain it, I think!

Ack!

:kick:

[Maestro]

15. This uncle isn't mental,

just ignorant. His racism is really what blinds him. My wife is 50% Mexican and he regularly goes on rants about how Mexicans are ruining the Southwest, blah, blah, blah. I finally told him to STFU because he was talking indirectly about my family! He never noticed and insists that he wasn't talking about my wife, the Mexican; just others. He also rents a house from a complete racist landlord who told him that if he ever caught a black man in the house he would consider that a breach of contract. My uncle actually has some African-American friends whom he has to sneak in at times.

[Cleita]

48. Isn't that always what the racist friends and relatives say.

Oh your wife, son, daughter, etc. are okay. I wasn't speaking about them but the rest of their tribe.

Lived with that shit all my life. :puke:

[Maestro]

70. I don't get it. He didn't even

offer an apology. Heck I am a bilingual teacher and work with some of the hardest working people around, the parents of the children I serve. I tried to explain this to him; that I worked with Hispanics, married one, my kids are now partly Hispanic. It just didn't compute with him. Blind he is by ignorance.

[FreedomAngel82]

59. That's horrible

I think it's so disgusting after all these years people are still very racists and ignorant. *sigh* :( Oh and also I wanted to comment I'm glad this article isn't true.

[Stirk]

14. I don't believe newspapers were using sans-serif fonts back then, btw.

I believe they started using sans-serif fonts (namely Futura, which that is not) in the early 30's.

[mr blur]

39. I believe you're absolutely right! (nt)

[mrdmk]

16. Muslims are the new communist of the 50's and so on

Besides, putting fat or blood into a barrel of a gun or rifle is suicide. If the slug gets stuck in the barrel of a firearm the breach will blow apart thus wounding or killing the shooter. Stupid story.

[ElectroPrincess]

38. Ya know, THESE PEOPLE, are less than human, they only want

to come over here (why? there's not much oil) and cut our heads off. The need to BE TAUGHT how to run a representative government. That's why we're going to build a stadium sized Embassy and 14 bases in Iraq. We must, as THE EMPIRE, teach the poor heathen BROWN skinned natives how the WHITE rulers have done this trough the ages. :puke: :sarcasm:

[Gay Green]

53. Then some freeper recruited into the Army or Marines will try this in Iraq

and cull himself out of the gene pool.

[EVDebs]

20. Send him back info on USMC Gen Smedley D. Butler

http://democracyrising.us/content/view/191/164/

[deutsey]

23. That's my suggestion. Send him "War is Racket"

http://lexrex.com/enlightened/articles/warisaracket.htm

[Straight Shooter]

25. Oh, that shit again. The freepers never learn, do they?

:eyes:

[sakabatou]

26. To answer the last sentence:

In hell, is were you'd find them.

[welshTerrier2]

27. Dear Uncle

a little studying of the Spanish-American War would indeed, as you have suggested, yield some interesting similarities to the situation we find ourselves in today ... but unfortunately not for the reasons you cited ...

the USS Maine exploded in Havana Harbor on 2/15/1898 ... the US Government seized the opportunity to blame the Spanish for the explosion ... they did this primarily to weaken the influence of the Spanish with the Cuban people warning that the US had a vested interest in Cuba ... this was later voted into law in the US via the Platt Amendment ...

the only problem with the US claim that the Maine exploded because of mines planted by the Spanish was that Admiral Rickover (a US Navy Admiral), who investigated the explosion that killed 262 Americans, suggested that it MAY have been caused by spontaneous combustion in a coal bunker inside the ship ... the truth will never be known ...

the following is excerpted from "Sorrows of Empire" by Chalmers Johnson:

"but there was no puzzle about the reaction to the news back in the US. Asst. Secretary of the Navy Teddy Roosevelt instantly declared the sinking to be "an act of dirty treachery." <skip> William Randolph Heart's "New York Journal" published drawings illustrating how Spanish saboteurs attached a mine to the Maine and detonated it ... <skip> Hearst then sent Frederic Remington to Cuba to report on the Cuban revolt against Spanish oppression. "There is no war" Remington wrote to his boss. "Request to be recalled." In a famous reply, Hearst cabled, "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war.""

When Americans reacted to what they read in the press, Congress declared war ... a few days later, the Spanish were driven out of Manila Bay with the aid of Filipino nationalists ...

quoting again from "Sorrows of Empire":

"The Filipinos themselves (think "Iraqi insurgents" Uncle) proved less than eager to be "benevolently assimilated," as President McKinley put it, and under the leadership of a nationalist patriot, Emilio Aguinaldo, who had aided Admiral Dewey in wresting control of Manila from the Spaniards, they revolted against their new American overlords. Although American troops captured Aguinaldo in 1901 and forced him to swear loyalty to the US, the fighting went on until 1903. <skip> The army (i.e. US Army) went on to slaughter at least 200,000 Filipinos out of a population of less than eight million.<skip>

Exercising what the historian Stuart Creighton Miller calls its "exaggerated sense of innoicence," the US portrayed its brutal colonization of the Filipinos as divinely ordained, racially inevitable, and economically indispensable."

so you see Uncle, the neo-cons are really just following the old scripts that you were so good to highlight for us ... the Spanish-American war began with a precipitating event, the explosion of the USS Maine (think "World Trade Center" Uncle), the public was stirred up by false reports in the press (think WTC, Hussein meeting with terrorists and WMD Uncle), and an occupation that led to the total exploitation by the US of two new colonies, Cuba and The Phillipines ... and in the end, Uncle, both rebelled against US imperialism (think Iraq Uncle) ...

whether you understand or not, Uncle, we are involved in Iraq for reasons other than those sold by the press to an ill-informed American public ... and even the American public has come to see the folly of neo-con policy in the Middle East ... join us, Uncle ... you're rooting for the bad guys right now ...

[Maestro]

30. I didn't respond with that info

but I responded telling him that the article is less than genuine and if he really thinks that the answer is that simplistic he needs to research more exactly why some Muslims are radicalized against us.

[Frederik]

28. Disgusting

Substitute "Muslim" with "Jew", and we're back in the 30s.

[Maestro]

29. Yep.

It's horrible.

[DemBones DemBones]

33. I think you will find it at Snopes.com and

the thing I'd say to my neo-con uncle is "Yes, isn't it great that most people have become much more civilized since the days of Black Jack Pershing?"

[mzteris]

34. I think they have him confused with this guy.......

Colonel Alexander Rodgers, Governor of Jolo. (See below)

U.S. Military Meets the Moros
The Philippines were ceded to the United States under the 1898 Treaty of Paris, sparking resistance immediately in the predominately Christian north and later in the Sunni Muslim south. . . .

The latter judgement was clearly an understatement, as the U.S. Army and Navy found themselves engaged with an enemy who quickly earned a place as one of the bravest, most dedicated, and resourceful adversaries yet encountered. It also highlighted for the U.S. military the impact of Islamic religious fervor mobilized in pursuit of what many Moros still consider their wholly earned and justified right to independence.

Moros were poorly armed in comparison with U.S. soldiers, whose basic weapon was the .30 Krag-Jorgensen rifle (M1892 and M1896 models with 5-shot magazine), backed up by Gatling and Hotchkiss guns, and several models of light cannon. Moros possessed a variety of older weapons including muzzle-loaders and some primitive brass cannon. It was the Moros' skill and surprising effectiveness in using edged weapons that generated the greatest respect and fear, however. U.S. troops came to recognize and understand the capabilities of the barung with its foot-and-a-half leaf-shaped blade; the three-and-a-half foot kampilan long sword, traditional fighting weapon of the Maguindanao and Maranao Moros; and the sword most identified with the Moros, the kris, a superb weapon of varying length which often had the distinctive wavy-edged blade that became famous at the time.7

Moros were extremely effective at jungle, forest, and swamp ambushes and also fought well from their forts, called cottas (or kutas). Moro attacks on moving columns or sleeping encampments were sudden, often involving bloody hand-to-hand fighting, as kris- and spear-wielding Moros closed quickly with better-armed Americans and used their edged weapons and spears to great effect. As one specialist from the period noted, "American troops had not participated in such fighting since Revolutionary War days."8 Traditional problems associated with counter-insurgency operations made their early appearance. For example, distinguishing Moro male combatants from females--who sometimes were combatants as well--was an enduring problem since women were attired in much the same way as male fighters. In an effort to reduce non-combatant casualties, U.S. Army orders forbade firing on groups of Filipinos which contained women. This order prompted one derisive soldier rhyme a la Kipling that captured the way some troops saw the dilemma:

If a lady wearin' britches is a-hidin' in the ditches,
An' she itches fer me ears as souvenirs,
Must I arsk, afore I twists 'er, "Air you miss or air you mister?"
How shall a bashful man decide the dears?9

Another phenomenon noted by many U.S. military and other official observers was the extraordinary vitality of many Moro fighters and their capacity to continue coming even after being shot multiple times. While attributable in large measure to the character of a brave and determined warrior people, there was another dimension rooted in the Moros practice of Islam that in various forms has resonance today in the "suicide-attacks" or "constructive self-destruction" around the world undertaken by Muslim fighters in varying interpretations of Qur'anic imperatives to oppose infidels.10

Juramentado and jihad
Americans quickly came to be more familiar with this dimension, which the Spanish earlier had learned well--Spanish soldiers and officials called it juramentado, roughly translated into "oath-taking". This practice--based on Sulu Moro interpretations of jihad--consisted of elaborate dedication and purification rites conducted with family and religious authorities. Those who went through this dedication swore to kill as many Christians as possible before dying, the reward being ascent into Paradise. juramentados could attack in groups of individually, and the sudden assaults of those "running jurmamentado" became a constant concern.

From the Muslim view, this description was far from adequate. Rather, as contemporary Moro Islamic insurgent spokesmen describe it, Moro

…mujahideen took it as a personal duty to Allah to continue to fight to the death, even if a Muslim leader surrendered. It became common for a lone Muslim mujahid to attack American soldiers and camps, killing many of them before losing his life. The Spanish and Americans disparagingly called this act juramentado or amok; Muslims refer to this as sabil or prang sabil, from the Arabic jihad fi sabilillah.11

In any case, accounts abounded of seemingly peaceful Moros suddenly drawing kris or and killing multiple American soldiers or civilians before being killed themselves. The replacement of the .38 caliber Army revolver with the harder hitting .45 caliber automatic was in part a consequence of the difficulty in stopping juramentados. Other practices--reportedly yielding short-term results but likely generating longer-term negative consequences--were implemented by U.S. military officials unable to find other effective countermeasures. One such approach was said to have carried out by Colonel Alexander Rodgers, Governor of Jolo:

All Moros who ran juramentado were killed and laid out in the market place with slaughtered pigs placed above them. The Mohammedan abhors all contact with pork and the resulting contact of the dead juramentado with the pig neutralized the beneficial effects of the rite itself. Colonel Rodgers became known to the Moros as "The Pig," and juramentados took themselves hurriedly to other districts.12

To 21st Century Filipino commentators, the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon immediately suggested juramentado. One observer noted that "the decision of the <11 September> hijackers to kill as many people as possible and have themselves killed in the process is reminiscent of the Muslim juramentados in Zamboanga and Jolo in the southern Philippines during the American colonization of the islands in the early 1900s."13
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/sword.htm#end12



It was Colonel Alexander Rodgers of the 6th Cavalry who accomplished by taking advantage of religious prejudice what the bayonets and Krags had been unable to accomplish. Rodgers inaugurated a system of burying all dead juramentados in a common grave with the carcasses of slaughtered pigs. The Mohammedan religion forbids contact with pork; and this relatively simple device resulted in the withdrawal of juramentados to sections not containing a Rodgers. Other officers took up the principle, adding new refinements to make it additionally unattractive to the Moros. In some sections the Moro juramentado was beheaded after death and the head sewn inside the carcass of a pig. And so the rite of running juramentado, at least semi-religious in character, ceased to be in Sulu. The last cases of this religious mania occurred in the early decades of the century. The juramentados were replaced by the amucks. .. who were simply homicidal maniacs with no religious significance attaching to their acts.
http://www.bakbakan.com/junglep/jp-17.html

[LizW]

35. Oh, that is sick.n/t

[struggle4progress]

36. U.S. Genocide in the Philippines and the New Armed Intervention

<snip> Revisiting the Carnage

Except during the sixties when the Filipino-American War of 1899-1902 was referred to as the first Vietnam, the death of 1.4 million Filipinos has been usually accounted for as either collateral damage or victims of insurrection against the imperial authority of the United States. The first Filipino scholar to make a thorough documentation of the carnage is the late Luzviminda Francisco in her contribution to The Philippines: The End of An Illusion (London, 1973).

This fact is not even mentioned in the tiny paragraph or so in most U.S. history textbooks. Stanley Karnows In Our Image (1989), the acclaimed history of this intervention, quotes the figure of 200,000 Filipinos killed in outright fighting. Among historians, only Howard Zinn and Gabriel Kolko have dwelt on the genocidal character of the catastrophe. Kolko, in his magisterial Main Currents in Modern American History (1976), reflects on the context of the mass murder: “Violence reached a crescendo against the Indians after the Civil War and found a yet bloodier manifestation during the protracted conquest of the Philippines from 1898 until well into the next decade, when anywhere from 200,000 to 600,000 Filipinos were killed in an orgy of racist slaughter that evoked much congratulations and approval....”

Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1980) cites 300,000 Filipinos killed in Batangas alone, while William Pomeroy’s American Neo-Colonialism (1970) cites 600,000 Filipinos dead in Luzon alone by 1902. The actual figure of 1.4 million covers the period from 1899 to 1905 when resistance by the Filipino revolutionary forces mutated from outright combat in battle to guerilla skirmishes; it doesn’t include the thousands of Moros (Filipino Muslims) killed in the first two decades of U.S. colonial domination.

The first Philippine Republic led by General Emilio Aguinaldo, which had already waged a successful war against the Spanish colonizers, mounted a determined nationwide opposition against U.S. invading forces. It continued for two more decades after Aguinaldo’s capture in 1901. Several provinces resisted to the point where the U.S. had to employ scorched-earth tactics, and hamletting or reconcentration to quarantine the populace from the guerillas, resulting in widespread torture, disease, and mass starvation. <snip>

http://www.bulatlat.net/news/5-4/5-4-genocide.html

Here are a few of Mark Twain's bitter comments on the Moro massacre

<snip> If I know President Roosevelt -- and I am sure I do -- this utterance cost him more pain and shame than any other that ever issued from his pen or his mouth ... This is what he said:

Washington, March 10. Wood, Manila:- I congratulate you and the officers and men of your command upon the brilliant feat of arms wherein you and they so well upheld the honor of the American flag. (Signed) Theodore Roosevelt.

... Not a word of what he said came out of his heart. He knew perfectly well that to pen six hundred helpless and weaponless savages in a hole like rats in a trap and massacre them in detail during a stretch of a day and a half, from a safe position on the heights above, was no brilliant feat of arms - and would not have been a brilliant feat of arms even if Christian America, represented by its salaried soldiers, had shot them down with Bibles and the Golden Rule instead of bullets. He knew perfectly well that our uniformed assassins had not upheld the honor of the American flag, but had done as they have been doing continuously for eight years in the Philippines - that is to say, they had dishonored it.

The next day, Sunday, -- which was yesterday -- the cable brought us additional news - still more splendid news -- still more honor for the flag. The first display-head shouts this information at us in the stentorian capitals: "WOMEN SLAIN MORO SLAUGHTER."

"Slaughter" is a good word. Certainly there is not a better one in the Unabridged Dictionary for this occasion.

The next display line says:

"With Children They Mixed in Mob in Crater, and All Died Together."

They were mere naked savages, and yet there is a sort of pathos about it when that word children falls under your eye, for it always brings before us our perfectest symbol of innocence and helplessness; and by help of its deathless eloquence color, creed and nationality vanish away and we see only that they are children -- merely children. And if they are frightened and crying and in trouble, our pity goes out to them by natural impulse. We see a picture. We see the small forms. We see the terrified faces. We see the tears. We see the small hands clinging in supplication to the mother; but we do not see those children that we are speaking about. We see in their places the little creatures whom we know and love.

The next heading blazes with American and Christian glory like to the sun in the zenith:

Death List is Now 900."

I was never so enthusiastically proud of the flag till now!

The next heading explains how safely our daring soldiers were located. It says:

"Impossible to Tell Sexes Apart in Fierce Battle on Top of Mount Dajo."

The naked savages were so far away, down in the bottom of that trap, that our soldiers could not tell the breasts of a woman from the rudimentary paps of a man -- so far away that they couldn't tell a toddling little child from a black six-footer. This was by all odds the least dangerous battle that Christian soldiers of any nationality were ever engaged in. <snip>

http://faculty.uca.edu/~rnovy/MX%20Moro%20Massacre.htm

If you want to argue with your uncle, I'd recommend arguing about the right thing: the vicious, unprovoked US genocide in the Philippines in the years around 1900, designed to destroy the country's independence.

The kind of freeper crap your uncle has provided is designed to serve a very specific end: it is designed to create a cadre of people who say "We should do what we did in the Philippines" or "Our military should act more like Pershing did" -- and who (by saying this) thereby create political cover for the Dominionists who want the US to crush the less-developed world under an Iron Heel.

[Maestro]

47. I really don't think he thinks like this.

He just blindly follows the radical right like a lemming. Although I truly believe in what you say and the massacres in the Phillipines at the hands of the US are disgusting and completely uncalled for since the whole Spanish-American war was started by the US after placing blame on the Spanish after the Maine blew up.

[struggle4progress]

49. I wasn't accusing your uncle of cynicism. I was saying that the people ...

... who produce this sort of propaganda have a specific political agenda, which they further by producing a group of people to echo what they say, in a simplified way.

Your uncle may well not support the idea that the US should grind down the rest of the world, but the people who produce the sort of claptrap he's sending you REALLY DO have that point of view, and they seek legitimacy for their view by trying to create a collection of what you call "lemmings."

That's why I say you should argue with him about some bigger picture (like, unprovoked US genocide in the Philippines) rather than the details of one particular little piece of rightwing propaganda ...

[Maestro]

55. Already tried before.

He has drunk way too much Kool-aid. He's hopeless, but I totally agree with what you are saying.

[CalebHayes]

37. I just don't get it ... Arent we sopposed to be better than Cuba or China?

That sounds like something they would do.

I guess not. I guess we are no better.

[JackRiddler]

68. Cuba?

This sounds like NOTHING the Cuban regime would ever do.

Ahem.

[Terran1212]

41. Actually, muslims were fighting imperialism all over the world...

And the "muslim extremists" were fighting the US troops that were trying to conquer the Phillipines (from Spanish sphere of control).

[Maestro]

43. Yes, many times

my uncle, like most freepers, make certain comments without looking at the bigger picture. But what do you expect from narrow-minded individuals like this?

[Redstone]

42. Where do we find another man like Pershing?

In a fucking mental institution.

Or a maximum-security prison psychopath ward.

Or, sadly, in the White House.

Redstone

[Maestro]

44. Well Pershing didn't do what the article says

and Pershing was much more a man that the dolt in office. At least Pershing actually served. ;)

[Redstone]

50. I know all that. I was proposing a response to any

dumb-shit right winger who who actually believed the story.

What amazes me in this kind of right-wing jingoistic bullshit is the common element of unbelievably extreme cruelty. These are people who would douse a cat with gasoline and set it on fire, just to watch it burn.

Worse, they'd do it to a child, if that child's parent were "the enemy."

They make me want to vomit.

Redstone

[OrlandoGator]

46. The "article" is fake and the "facts" are doubted by historians.

By why should we let that stuff get in the way of some good ol' barbaric racism?

[GetTheRightVote]

51. This is really, really just sick .........

:kick:

[Radical Activist]

52. Funny thing, the US was still forced out of the Philippines n/t

[mediaman007]

56. This is very doubtful...read on

(snip)

Comments: According to Dr. Frank E. Vandiver, professor of history at Texas A&M University and author of "Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing," the above tale is apocryphal. "This story is hard to stop!" he wrote in answer to my email query. "I never found any indication that it was true in extensive research on his Moro experiences. This kind of thing would have run completely against his character."

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_black_jack_pershing.htm

[FreedomAngel82]

58. DISGUSTING!!!

Disgusting!!!

[IndyOp]

61. Torture works --

Torture won't get truthful information out of the person to whom it happens, but it will create a climate of fear so that no one who learns of that person's story will speak out or step out of line.

Torture is the ultimate, barbaric tool for controlling the masses. A very few people can torture a very few citizens and create a docile populace.

Mass media is another tool for controlling the masses.
Fear/hatred of others is another.
Patriotism/Nationalism is another.
Consumerist society is another.
Religion is another.

All of these methods work, unless the people refuse to let them work as the powerful want them to.

[CarefullyLiberal]

62. Urban legend...sorry.

Link 1
Link 2
Link 3

Not true, but pretty easy to believe.

-Fergus

[Maestro]

66. Thanks.

It's a long thread but we have debunked much earlier in the thread. ;)

[Bouncy Ball]

64. Well let's see, we've been doing such lovely things as throwing

the Koran in the toilet and forcing them to masturbate in front of people and simulate oral sex man on man in front of others, etc and yet troops are STILL being killed all the time in Iraq.

So it looks like that doesn't work. What a nasty email.

[Maestro]

67. Perhaps I should send him this response.

I was tomb-stoned

[Freedomfried]

69. I’ve seen Philippino Muslims eat pork

I've also seen Indonesian Muslims eat pork.

Island Muslims not as strict as Arab Muslims.

Freedomfried,
Southern Philippines