Wednesday, September 16, 2015

THE WAY THEY WERE IS STILL THE WAY IT IS: "Heneral Luna" and the Anglo-American Empire

It was raining and I thought a movie would be great. This was only the second Tagalog movie that I ever watched in a cinemahouse. I watched this last night, and surprisingly it was good. It was not really the story that captivated me but the storytelling. It had an enchanting texture: the images that punctuated the drama had this lingering effect the emotions generated gripped one at the core throughout the film. It was that effective. The music, editing and production design were perfect for the job.

The story was a fresh take on the life of General Antonio Luna, the Filipino revolutionary general who fought the Spaniards & Americans. But the current tumultuous drama of international politics have led to the recent discovery of many unknown facts by the alternative international press, and the story might have missed some crucial pieces. For one, it is now claimed that it was not the United States that paid the $20 million to Spain but a group of rich Filipinos  exiled in Hong Kong. On the surface, the Filipino elite, or a part of it, appeared to be the ones who bought the Philippines.

The British who were based in Hong Kong, when not trying to invade the Philippines, had always tried to sabotage the Spaniards in the Philippines by using its usual tactic of "divide and conquer" among the Filipino elite. Hong Kong, which was a Crown Colony, was not under the British Government but under the City of London, a private banker enclave in London which is not under the British Government but under the thumb of a group of private oligarchs who controlled the Bank of England and various business monopolies in the British Empire and beyond. This cabal works by subverting the comprador elite of a particular country so that it formed part of its tentacles in its imperial control of international business. It appears the compromised part of the Philippine elite who paid for the Philippines was the soft part of the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the Philippines while the Americans provided the military muscle to subjugate the country.

That still seems to be the Anglo-Saxon script that is operational in many parts of the world, & as the so-called Anglo-American Empire is challenged in many quarters, more wars are flaring up and the Americans are still seen as providing the military muscle while the financial tunes are still echoing from the City of London, a private oligarchial enclave in the middle of London.

1 comment:

  1. Very enlightening. The role of the British in Hong Kong in the affairs of Spanish Philippines was always off the radar of historians & journalists... But this little post revealed a lot were going on actually, and it changed the history of the country

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