More crazy quotes from "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradley

Quotes from Chairman James "Mau-mau" Bradley on the Philippine-American War (1899-1902):

Factual Errors and outright lies: 

1. Error: The Philippines first Independence day was celebrated on June 12, 1898. The Filipinos would not celebrate another Independence day for another sixty-four years (!) - Page 91

Fact:  The Philippians became Independent in 1946.  48 years after their 1st Independence day.

Lie:  On the Battle of Manila 1899 -  US forces killed more than 3,000 Filipino freedom-fighters in the first twenty-four hours.  Photos of Filipino dead heaped in American dug ditches,  recalled the US Army burial scene at Wounded knee... few remember that more Filipinos defending their country than Americans died on D-Day. - Page 102

Fact: The Filipinos lost 238 men killed - not 3,000. 

Lie: Most US history books claim they killed 20,000 to 30,000 freedom-fighters and 200,000-300,000 civilians; other sources estimate the US Military sent one million to three million to early graves. - Page 127

Fact:  No reputable historian believes we killed "one million Filipinos" The total population of Philippines was only 8 million and increased substantially from 1900 to 1910.  Comparison of the Census records shows no decrease in any age group. 

Lie: US Military action reduced the Carabaos population by 90 percent, result in mass hunger throughout the Philippines. -Page 120

Lie: The  US army had systematically executed 1,300 Filipino Prisoners in just one camp. Americans brought in a priest to hear the condemned men's confessions.  The US forces marched the Filipino prisoners to the killing grounds, made them dig their own graves, then shot them.  The body of the priest swung from a noose overhead. - page 129

Lie: On September 14, 1900, just two weeks after he assumed office, TR responded to the worst military crisis since the Battle of Little Big Horn.  51 American soldiers had died in Balangiga massacre. - Page 122

The US Army-Nazi Killing machine exposed or More Bradley Lies:

1. "Inside the fetid and poorly supplied camps, many uprooted civilians died. US soldiers shot captured freedom-fighters as common criminals..."
2. On Election day, November 4, 1900, the public gave the Republicans their biggest victory since Grant's re-election in 1872.  Robert Austill,  a soldier in the Philippines wrote: "The people of the United States want us to kill all the men, F- all the women, and produce a new race for these islands."
3. [While Taft enjoyed life in his Manila mansion...]Outside Manila, the US Military were still forcing civilians into Concentration camps, vultures grew too fat to fly as they feasted upon the corpses of dead Filipinos, torture was routine,  and the smoke of burned towns filled the air. - Page 120
4. In one letter that surfaced, one soldier stated he had water-boarded 160 Filipinos, of whom 134 died. Other evidence made it undeniably clear that atrocity warfare had been condoned and encouraged from the top.
5. US fought WW II for 56 months and lost about 400,000 dead.  So Hitler and Tojo killed about as many about the same per month - 7,200 - as the US did in the Philippines.
6. Ingenious Yankees employed a variety of other gruesome tortures, including flogging, scorching bound prisoners over open fires, and the rope cure.  A private from Utah summed things up in a letter home to his parents "No cruelty is too severe for these brainless monkeys..."
7. Captain Fred Macdonald ordered every native in the Hamlet of LaNong killed, save a beautiful mestizo woman, whom the officers repeatedly raped, prior to giving her over to the enlisted men. - page 106
8. General Smith gave residents of Samar 10 days to abandon their homes and enter US Concentration camps or be shot on site.  In field reports, Major Waller enumerated many civilian deaths, but no US casualties.

A random slam against Booker T Washington

1. He (Taft) held elections but allowed only three percent of the population to vote... he modeled Filipino education after the Tuskegee institute where Blacks learned to work with their hands and say "Yes, sir" at every opportunity.

Teddy Roosevelt - Racist Zoo-keeper

1. Roosevelt called his zoo-like freak show [1904 St. Louis World's Fair Exhibition], the "Philippine reservation".  Roosevelt had his minions search the wilds of the Philippines and ship 1,200 Filipinos to St. Louis,  where he presented them as closer to monkey's than humans.  Fair-goers viewed more than 1,000 photographs showing the Filipinos as robbers, murderers and rapists.  The Philippine exhibit had 18 million visitors.
2. But the future of the Philippines would be decided in the American Aryan Capital. The very idea of that a Pacific Negro [Aguinaldo] was capable of ruling eight million people was unthinkable.

The Imperial Cruise by James Bradley = Shoddy, Leftwing Lunacy

Suggested subtitle:  Teddy Roosevelt was a Racist - a dirty, rotten, AmeriKKKan, White- Christian racist.

One the stupidest, and shoddiest 'history' books I've ever read.  The book covers the 1905 cruise from San Francisco to Japan via China and the Philippines by William Howard Taft and TR's daughter Alice.  The book claims Taft negotiated "secret" treaties with Japan that "sold-out" Korea and eventually lead to the attack on Pearl Harbor, a Maoist China, and the Korean war. At every stop, Bradley gives us a little story of how "White Christians" had destroyed/oppressed/exterminated everyone.

Here are a few samples of the prose:

On the American West:

1. "The Indian survivors of the American race cleansing were locked up as noncitizens, nonvoting prisoners in squalid reservations. And while Lincoln had technically freed the slaves, ...restrictive Jim Crow laws had invisibly re-shackled the American black man, and the lynching tree had plenty of branches left"  (page 34).
2. "Buffalo Bill was the embodiment of the blond Aryan who sowed civilization as he race-cleaned his way west"
3. General Sherman - who commanded the Indian wars from 1866-1884 ordered his troops "During an assault soldiers cannot determine between male and female..." They did not, and through the decade the Indian dead included thousands of mothers, children, elderly, some killed merely for sport, their private parts sliced off and used to make wallets or decorative hats, their scalps and genitals displayed as trophies  Page 67 
4. With his own Indians, the American Aryan had been quick to make treaties that Congress would later disregard.
5. The US Army had waged a race war in the American West, shooting civilians, killing women and children, executing prisoners, raping women, torturing captives,  looting and burning village, and herding the defeated into concentration camps. Now, they would chew through the agricultural, pre-industrialized Philippines. - page 118

On the US-Mexican War 

1. Polk ordered Taylor into Mexican territory between the two rivers [Rio Grande and Nueces]... Mexican historians refer to the US actions as "the American Invasion".  Taylor's incursion was brutal, with massacres of Mexican civilians and rapes of local women.  (page 63).

On the Spanish-American War and Cuba

1. Not one shred of evidence ever existed to suggest that the Spanish blew up the Maine.  Page 77 
2. McKinley conjured up the fantasy that when an American soldier pointed a gun at a Foreign other he was there to help.  Page 79
3. In contrast to the American Revolution, the Cuban freedom fighters would've won their independence without foreign help.  Page 80
4. Instead Americans  informed shocked Cuban freedom fighters that the old Spanish Civil authorities - white men - would remain in charge.  No Cubans would be allowed to confer on the surrender or sign it.

Theodore Roosevelt on the "Tyranny of the Majority"

From his introduction to "Majority Rule and the Judiciary" by William Lynn Ransom

"There are sincere and well-meaning men of timid nature who are frightened by the talk of the "tyranny of the majority." Those worthy gentlemen are nearly a century behind the times. It is true that De Tocqueville, writing about eighty years ago, said that in this country there was great tyranny by the majority. His statement may have been true then, although certainly not to the degree he insisted, but it is not true now. That profound and keen thinker, James Bryce, in „ "The American Commonwealth," treats of this in his chapter on the "tyranny of the majority," by saying that it does not exist. His own words are that:

"It is no longer a blemish on the American system, and the charges against democracy from the supposed example of America are groundless. The fact that the danger once dreaded has now disappeared is no small evidence of the recuperative forces of the American government and the healthy tone of the American people."

I shall protest against the tyranny of the majority whenever it arises, just as I shall protest against every other form of tyranny. But at present we are suffering in no way from the tyranny of the majority. We suffer from the tyranny of the bosses and the special interests—that is, from the tyranny of minorities. Our respectable opponents among the leaders of business and the bar are acting as the servants and spokesmen of the special interests and are standing cheek by jowl with the worst representatives of politics, when they seek to keep the courts in the grasp of privilege and of the politicians; for this is all they accomplish when they prevent them from being responsible in proper fashion to the people. These worthy gentlemen speak as if the judges were somehow imposed on us by Heaven, and were responsible only to Heaven. As a matter of fact, judges are human just like other people, and in this country they will either be chosen by the people and be responsible to the people, or they will be chosen by and be responsible to the bosses and the special interests and the political and financial beneficiaries of privilege. In die course they are taking, the great corporation lawyers are, in some cases certainly unconsciously, and in other cases I fear consciously, acting in behalf of the special interests, political and financial, and in favor of privilege, and against the interests of the plain people, and against the cause of justice and of human right.

I wish to keep the courts independent. But at present the independence of the courts is far more frequently menaced by special privilege than by any popular tyranny. I wish to protect them against both. The safe way to prevent popular discontent with the courts from becoming acute and chronic, is to provide the people with the simple, direct, effective, and yet limited power to secure the interpretation of their own constitution in accordance with their own deliberate judgment, by the method I have above outlined."

TR on South Carolina

In a 1906 letter to Owen Wister regarding his new Novel "Lady Baltimore" :

"The South has retained some barbaric virtues which we in the North which we have tended to lose in the North... On the other hand, the Southerners have developed traits of a not very healthy kind. They are not as dishonest, they do not repudiate their debts as their predecessors did... but they do not send as valuable men into the national councils as the Northerners. They are not as efficient, and they exaggerate the common American tendency to use bombastic language which is not made good by performance. Your particular heroes the Charleston aristocrats, offer as melancholy an example I know of people whose whole lives have been warped by their own wilful perversity.

In the early part of South Carolina history, there was a small federalist party and a later small and dwindling union party of which I cannot speak too highly. But the South Carolina aristocrats, the Charleston Aristocrats and there kinfolk, have never made good their pretensions.

They were no more to blame then the rest of the country for the colonial slave trade but when the rest of the country awoke they shut their eyes tight to the horrors, they insisted the slave trade be kept, and succeeded in keeping it open for 25 years after the Revolution and they went into succession, partly to re-open it.

They drank, and dueled and made speeches but they contributed very, very, little toward anything Americans are now proud of. Their life was not as ignoble as that of the Newport people whom you (Wister) condemn, yet I think it was really an ignoble life.

South Carolina and Mississippi are very much alike. Their two great men of the deified past were Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and I confess I unable to see how any conscience-less financier of the present day is worse than these two slave owners who spent their years trying to feed their thirst for personal power by leading their followers to the destruction of the Union.

Remember that the Charleston Aristocrats wanted to re-open the the slave trade at the start of the Civil War. Reconstruction was a mistake as it carried out., and there is very much to reprobate in in what was done by Sumner and Seward and their followers. But the blame attached to them is nothing compared to the blame attaching to the Southerners for forty years preceding the Civil War and for the years immediately succeeding it. There never was a war, so far as I know, where it can be honestly said that right was wholly on one side, and wrong wholly on the other. Even the courage and prowess the South Carolina aristocrats was shown only at the expense of their country and only in an effort to tear in sunder their own flag.

In the revolutionary war, in the remote past which you idealize, as compared to the present, the South Carolinans made as against the British a fight which can only be called respectable. There was little heroism; and Marion and Sumter show at a disadvantage when compared to the Boer leaders. In the War of 1812 South Carolina did nothing. She reserved her strength until she could strike for slavery and against the Union.

As for Reconstruction, they brought the punishment absolutely on themselves and are in my judgment not entitled to one particle of sympathy. The North blundered, but the blunders were in trying to do right in impossible circumstances, which the South had itself created, and which the South was solely responsible. "

A book Review by Mr. Dooley

"Well sir," said Mr. Dooley, "I jus' got hold iv a book, Hinnissy, that suits me up to th' handle, a gran' book, th' grandest iver seen. Ye know I'm not much throubled be lithrachoor, havin' manny worries iv me own, but I'm not prejudiced again' books. I am not. Whin a rale good book comes along I'm as quick as anny wan to say it isn't so bad, an' this here book is fine. I tell ye 'tis fine."

"What is it?" Mr. Hennessy asked languidly. "'Tis 'Th' Biography iv a Hero be Wan who Knows.' 'Tis 'Th' Darin' Exploits iv a Brave Man be an Actual Eye Witness.' 'Tis 'Th' Account iv th' Desthruction iv Spanish Power in th' Ant Hills,' as it fell fr'm th' lips iv Tiddy Rosenfelt an' was took down be his own hands. Ye see 'twas this way, Hinnissy, as I r-read th' book. Whin Tiddy was blowed up in th' harbor iv Havana he instantly con-cluded they must be war. He debated th' question long an' earnestly an' fin'lly passed a jint resolution declarin' war. So far so good. But there was no wan to carry it on. What shud he do? I will lave th' janial author tell th' story in his own wurruds.

"'Th' sicrety iv war had offered me,' he says, 'th' command of a rig'mint,' he says, 'but I cud not consint to remain in Tampa while perhaps less audacious heroes was at th' front,' he says. 'Besides,' he says, 'I felt I was incompetent f'r to command a rig'mint raised be another,' he says. 'I detarmined to raise wan iv me own,' he says. 'I selected fr'm me acquaintances in th' West,' he says, 'men that had thravelled with me acrost th' desert an' th' storm-wreathed mountain,' he says, 'sharin' me burdens an' at times confrontin' perils almost as gr-reat as anny that beset me path,' he says. 'Together we had faced th' turrors iv th' large but vilent West,' he says, 'an' these brave men had seen me with me trusty rifle shootin' down th' buffalo, th' elk, th' moose, th' grizzly bear, th' mountain goat,' he says, 'th' silver man, an' other ferocious beasts iv thim parts,' he says. 'An' they niver flinched,' he says. 'In a few days I had thim perfectly tamed,' he says, 'an' ready to go annywhere I led,' he says. 'On th' thransport goi'n to Cubia,' he says, 'I wud stand beside wan iv these r-rough men threatin' him as a akel, which he was in ivrything but birth, education, rank an' courage, an' together we wud look up at th' admirable stars iv that tolerable southern sky an' quote th' bible fr'm Walt Whitman,' he says. 'Honest, loyal, thrue-hearted la-ads, how kind I was to thim,' he says."

“'We had no sooner landed in Cubia than it become nicessry f'r me to take command iv th' ar-rmy which I did at wanst. A number of days was spint be me in reconnoitring, attinded on'y be me brave an' fluent body guard, Richard Harding Davis. I discovered that th' inimy was heavily inthrenched on th' top iv San Juon hill immejiately in front iv me. At this time it become apparent that I was handicapped be th' prisence iv th' ar-rmy,' he says. 'Wan day whin I was about to charge a block house sturdily definded be an ar-rmy corps undher Gin'ral Tamale, th' brave Castile that I aftherwards killed with a small ink-eraser that I always carry, I r-ran into th' entire military force iv th' United States lying on its stomach. 'If ye won't fight,' says I, 'let me go through, 'I says. 'Who ar-re ye?' says they. 'Colonel Rosenfelt,' says I. 'Oh, excuse me,' says the gin'ral in command (if me mimry serves me thrue it was Miles) r-risin' to his knees an' salutin'. This showed me 'twud be impossible f'r to carry th' war to a successful con-clusion unless I was free, so I sint th' ar-rmy home an' attackted San Juon hill. Ar-rmed on'y with a small thirty-two which I used in th' West to shoot th' fleet prairie dog, I climbed that precipitous ascent in th' face iv th' most gallin' fire I iver knew or heerd iv. But I had a few r-rounds iv gall mesilf an' what cared I? I dashed madly on cheerin' as I wint. Th' Spanish throops was dhrawn up in a long line in th' formation known among military men as a long line. I fired at th' man nearest to me an' I knew be th' expression iv his face that th' trusty bullet wint home. It passed through his frame, he fell, an' wan little home in far-off Catalonia was made happy be th' thought that their riprisintative had been kilt be th' future governor iv New York. Th' bullet sped on its mad flight an' passed through th' intire line fin'lly imbeddin' itself in th' abdomen iv th' Ar-rch-bishop iv Santiago eight miles away. This ended th' war.'

"I have thried, Hinnissy," Mr. Dooley continued, "to give you a fair idee iv th' contints iv this remarkable book, but what I've tol' ye is on'y what Hogan calls an outline iv th' principal pints. Ye'll have to r-read th' book ye'ersilf to get a thrue conciption. I haven't time f'r to tell ye th' wurruk Tiddy did in ar-rmin' an' equippin' himself, how he fed himsilf, how he steadied himsilf in battle an' encouraged himsilf with a few well-chosen wurruds whin th' sky was darkest. Ye'll have to take a squint into th' book ye'ersilf to l'arn thim things."

"I won't do it," said Mr. Hennessy. "I think Tiddy Rosenfelt is all r- right an' if he wants to blow his hor-rn lave him do it." "Thrue f'r ye," said Mr. Dooley, "an' if his valliant deeds didn't get into this book 'twud be a long time befure they appeared in Shafter's histhry iv th' war. No man that bears a gredge again' himsilf 'll iver be governor iv a state. An' if Tiddy done it all he ought to say so an' relieve th' suspinse. But if I was him I'd call th' book 'Alone in Cubia.'"