Spaniards in 1521 declared victory over the Aztec Empire of Mexico, which they then either massacred, sold into slavery, pillaged, or a combination of these. [*1] But this empire of American Natives, likewise, had waged war on the people of its surrounding villages, to enslave them. [*2] The Aztecs had justified this position on self-defense, just as the Romans conquered foreign lands and enslaved foreign peoples, to cut off the routes of invasion to Rome. [*3] The Spanish couldn't have made this justification, since their people were thousands of miles away from the reaches of the most aggressive soldiers of the Aztecs. Something between religion, political ambition, and wealth were the main motivating forces in this conquest.

     A similar attitude was adopted by the Spanish who had conquered the Incan Empire in 1532, where soldiers enslaved countless people to be forced laborers for wealthy landowners. [*4] Spain itself, though, was originally conquered much earlier by Muslim "conquistadors," between the period roughly of 700 and 1400. [*5] It was the typical style of these Islam armies in Spain to enslave men, women, and children, often being sold as either sex slaves or slaughtered mercilessly outright. [*6] The Catholic armies of Spain, which were to follow these Islamic invaders, behaved in an identical way: war for the purpose of taking land and turning people into forced labor. After expelling Muslims from Spain, the Spanish Catholics went further -- like the Romans or the Aztecs, they went to the homeland of these invaders, Morocco, and enslaved its people for more than 300 years. [*7]

     In 1847, France declared that members of its priesthood had been imprisoned in Vietnam. [*8] In actually, they were members of the wealthy, land-owning, Capitalist class, who during this time owned more than 1/3rd of Spain's capital, with similar estimates in France. [*9] The history books published by France will show pictures of priests, begging for water in the prisons of Native Vietnam, but they often forget that these were the biggest, criminal dealers of opium and narcotics in all of Southeast Asia. [*10] French troops responded by indiscriminately massacring the people of Vietnam, in 1847, a trend that would continue for more than a century. [*11]

     Like its other conflicts, France threw its poor into the army not so that it could protect its people, but so that it could protect the biggest of rich slaveowners -- although, in this case, it just so happened that they were Catholic slaveowners, which was the argument France presented in this war. Even into the Vietnam War of the 1960's, Catholic ministers were guilty of kidnapping members of the Vietnamese publicly -- most notoriously, children. [*12] During the American involvement in Vietnam, much claim was made about "fighting Communists." Little journalism paid attention to the wholesale exploitation of the people, especially since this was being done by wealthy, moneyed interests. The war was fought to maintain a slavery that existed for more than a century.

     This French Empire has been spread throughout Africa, to make way for trading posts to exploit indigenous labor and resources. [*13] Likewise, the French army made itself severely felt in China, so that its traders could dominate and control the local population and wealth. [*14] India, which was abused and virtually enslaved by the British, also had its turn in being dominated by the French and the Dutch. [*15] This kind of exchange occurred in Madagascar, where France in twice, in 1883 and 1894, both times to secure property rights for the wealthy French, in particular, the rights to the mines and industry. [*16] Under the pretenses of protecting the people, France launched a war against Algeria in 1920, violently repressing any independence activity. Again, this was not done for any interest of the people, but for the newly acquired industries in the area. [*17]

     The Ottoman Empire, which represents one of the largest of the Middle East empires, conquered parts of Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and most of the coastal areas of the Middle East. The wealth from taxation and pillaging was divided between the family of the Sultan, and a family of aristocrats united not by blood but by possession of wealth and a desire to expand it. [*18] Their wealth came not only from the possession of land, but from the wholesale slavery and sale of conquered peoples. [*19] This was a typical attribute of the holy wars launched by Muhammad and the followers of Islam: in one victory, Allah's prophet beheaded the men, sold the children, and kept the women as sex slaves. [*20] [*21]

     In 1505, Poland adopted the act of Nihil novi, or the "nobles' democracy." The law established the political power and dominance of the entrenched, land-owning class of aristocrats and nobility. [*22] Increasing political dominance in Poland led to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, an elective monarchy, in 1569. This was due to Lithuania feeling threaten by the armies of Russia. For several years, between 1370 and 1375, armies of Lithuania had completely pillaged and massacred villages throughout Russia. [*23] Russia launched a retaliation war from 1492 to 1494, led by Ivan the III, where the Russian monarchy was able to gain significant concessions in land and wealth. [*24] This history continued with Russian expansionist policies entering into the Second War (1500-1503), the Third War, (1507-1508) the Fourth War, (1512-1522) and the Fifth War (1534-1537) with Lithuania.

     To aid Lithuania, Poland established an alliance with the small nation, forming virtually a single nation. This was in 1569, but by 1575, Polish-Lithuanian troops were raiding villages in Russia, sometimes the exact same ones from two centuries earlier, with the intent of rape and pillage. [*25] 1605, the wealthy, landed aristocracy pushed the government to push as close as possible to Moscow, Russia's capital. This was not a war of independence, but one fought with mercenaries and calculated specifically by the nobility to be profitable. [*26]

     At about this time, from 1600 to 1611, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was also trying to conquer Sweden. [*27] The monarch of Polish-Lithuania believed that he had some ancestral right to the Swedish throne, and he regarded it as such when writing his nation's policy. Only earlier, it was Poland suffered attacks from the money-hungry mercenaries of a foreign nation, this time Turks who came with the intent of pillage and conquest in the years of 1498 to 1500. [*28] After the Polish-Muscovite War of 1605-1618, Russia slowly gained more and more dominance over the daily lives of Polish subjects. It was one of the most guarded of possessions under Russia's Tzar, and even Stalin and the Bolsheviks held it as a material possession to be used and abused. [*29]

     In Spain, the instigation of war to dominate the colony of Morocco led to Tragic Week -- a wholesale insurrection of the poor who were now burning down the property of the rich who had propelled them into war. Such rioters were considered anti-Catholic, typically, because of their willingness to burn down property owned by the Catholic Church [*30] [*31] [*32] -- even though many of these participants admitted faith in Catholicism. [*33] It was not only a reaction against the inherent corruption of the church. It was largely a reaction of the poor against the rich -- it was a reaction of those who were being sacrificed in wars so that the wealthy could possess distant colonies and incredible wealth. These campaigns were continued in 1920 with the Rif War, fought virtually on the exact same terms as the earlier war to suppress the sentiment of independence among the colonized people. [*34]

     The USS Maine was stocked with American sailors who wanted to defend their nation. At the same time, in 1898, it was also stocked with a massive, timed bomb inside, most likely placed by authorities. [*35] Very conveniently, the bomb was placed in the secure area where massive armaments were kept. An invasion surplus of ammunition exploded when this bomb detonated -- as the ship sat just outside a harbor of Cuba. [*36] [*37] A military investigation at the time, conducted by Del Paral and De Salas, found overwhelming evidence that a Spanish mine could not have detonated the ammunition bunker of the ship. [*38] The United States, in response, conducted its own study, where it fabricated facts and ignored others, claiming that Spain was responsible. [*39] It was not very long before this was used as a pretense for the invasion of Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and and Guam.

     The year 1898 was not altogether very different than 1846, and the Spanish-American War was little more than a copy of the prototype, the Mexican-American War. Instead of sending a battleship to the harbor of the enemy, the US Army sent one of its military units into Mexican territory -- under the unsupported and ridiculous claim that the territory belonged to the United States. The military unit was treated like an invader and defeated, with this event being called the Thornton Affair. [*40]

     This was the justification of the war. In 1846, the US Army sends its troops to their deaths as "a matter of principle" -- that is, the Imperialist principle of seizing land of neighbors by force. This tactic was so perfectly realized a second time during the Spanish-American War; except politicians didn't wait for the Spanish to fire, so they slaughtered their own troops themselves. Both events led to mass quantities of land being handed over to a very few, and the wealthy supporters of the United States seeing dividends on their investment.

     In 1936, the Fascist power of Italy occupied Ethiopia and parts of Northeast Africa. This resulted in pillaging, looting, and the domination of the land by wealthy, landed Italians, even if it meant killing thousands of poor, native farmers. [*41] The fascist seizure of Poland and France, by Germany, likewise was motivated by the resources that would be available to the wealthy and powerful: ore, land, and forced labor. Similarly, Japan's Fascism led it to seek out oil and metal by conquering nearby nations, including killing millions or hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians. Typically, the justifications used resembled that of the USS Maine -- Fascists would kill their own people, like US President Polk and Wilson, such as the burning of the German Parliament to justify military expansion.