Madrid hit by five ETA bombs

[DreamTone7]

All I can say, in that case, is that I certainly hope you're not teaching your slanted view of history in a school somewhere.



There is no way the US could have forced Japan to attack...bottom line. Maneuvered them into a position where they might decide to consider this atrocity? Yes. And then "allow" it to happen to drag the US into war? You bet...as I said, you obviously don't know what the Pumpkin Papers are or you wouldn't cop your attitude of "intellectual superiority". (And you have an MA in history?) But your reasoning as to the "why" is way out to lunch. The reason can be answered with one word: Hitler. Hitler WAS bent on world domination, after all.

Melody and Instruments for the soul...

[Galmin]

Quote:

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Galmin, you really do need to read some history of that period in the war regarding what was referred to as Englands Lifeline. It comes down to fact...not wishful thinking on anyones part...yours or mine.

---

Look DT, I am not disputing that convoys through the Liberty and Victory Ships meant life for every nation in the alliance. I am not disputing that other convoys meant life to every nation in the alliance. The US helped nation that otherwize would have been obliterated. This is nothing you can teach me, because I already know it.



What I am disputing is the timing of the convoys you claim US "risked it lives, ships and goods for by pushing a convoy across the Atlantic to keep Britain alive".



Many convoys went down in flames. US Convoys. But only once the US was involved in the war (as in after Pearl Harbor)!



Here's a list of the convoys:



LINK

The first American Ship in any convoy is J. Magee, loaded with Crude Oil and destined to Le Havre. It was followed by other American ships with crude oil to Le Havre. Maybe one ship every second convoy. These convoys were under UK command, secured by UK escort of the military kind.

It seems there are more Greek or Norwegian or even Finnish ships than US ships in these overwhelmingly British convoys. Was J. Magee maybe using the oppurtunity to sail in the convoy under UK protection instead of going it all by itself?



From mid 41 to the beginning of 1942 there are whopping two American ships in the convoys, there are, however, a bunch of Swedish ships in there It is understandable that the US first had to build ships to fill the empty slots of those that sank in Pearl Harbor.



However! This here shows an entirely different picture than what you tried to paint how US lives and US ships were at risk from 1939 to 1941 trying to push convoys to the Brits.



THE FIRST US AMERICAN CONVOY WAS HX 208

17.09.1942 from New York

Quote:

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So you are saying, Galmin, that Pearl Harbor is what made a disaterous war IN EUROPE advantageous for the US? Again, you need to read more carefully...especially when answering questions directed at other people.

---

No. Look, you should not mistake me for someone else.

Pearl Harbour changed everything. The NSDAP sympatisizers in the corridors of power in the US suddenly had to choose if they were to be patriots or traitors. The axis of iron pact between Germany-Italy-Japan forced these nations to declare war on each and every nation who declared war on one in the pact. Thus war on Japan automatically meant war on Germany (and Italy).



Before that happened (Pearl Harbor) Getty got his oil sold, Opel launched more Blitz than they have ever done from the manufacturing, etc, etc.



So yes, Pearl Harbor changed everything. There were no future profits to be made (not without serious juggling of books, not that noone tried) with the NSDAP Germany once war was declared.

Edited by: Galmin  at: 12/10/04 15:41

[DreamTone7]

OK Galmin...either you're pontificating, or you really need to take a history lesson. The US began shipping goods to England LONG before the US entered the war. The first Liberty ship was launched before Pearl Harbor...obviously there was a period even prior to that in which it was conceived, designed, and built. That should have been a hint to you. As compared to cargo ships, there were not nearly enough escorts to protect them from German submarine attacks on a one-on-one basis...so, the convoy came about. Now many ships could be protected by a few escorts. I am not arguing the years that you stated...but you have obviously gone to a lot of trouble to cloud the issue because you don't want to have to admit that you were wrong, or you truly don't know and are now on the cusp of learning something. Take you pick. All you have to do is research the tonnage of goods shipped to Britain from the US during the period leading up to WWII.



Here's a little article discussing the War of the Atlantic from a merchant shipping point of view:



members.tripod.com/~merch...ibute.html

Melody and Instruments for the soul...

[DreamTone7]

Here's another link that outlines things in a nice timeline. Of particular note to this thread is the US Lend-Lease Bill that was signed into law in March of 1941. This allowed Britain to purchase not only supplies but arms as well without having to pay for them immediately.



www.naval-history.net/WW2...ticDev.htm



Yes, we be the good guys.

[Galmin]

Quote:

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Yes, we be the good guys.

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As long as the customers heed the 30 days notice.

Quote:

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I am not arguing the years that you stated

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Skip the routine, DT. I have proven you false.

Edited by: Galmin  at: 12/11/04 5:10

[DreamTone7]

Galmin - "I have proven you false. "



Can I have a "reality check" for this man, please?

[Galmin]

What's the matter? I am merely applying Dreamtone (with emphasize on Dream) logic here.



You know; "I am right and he is wrong, even though I have not added one single evidence of it"

[Galmin]

Quote:

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OK Galmin...either you're pontificating, or you really need to take a history lesson. The US began shipping goods to England LONG before the US entered the war.

---

Ok, let's make the following points perfectly clear before we get any more tangled in invectives.



You wrote:

Quote:

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the US risked it lives, ships and goods pushing a convoy across the Atlantic to keep Britain alive

---

The convoys from 1939 to 1941 to UK were overwhelmingly British, all under UK command and UK escorts.

It was British ships that were torpedoed during this time, British sailors that drowned and the goods loaded and lost bought by the Brits F.O.B.



Was there a deal made that the US were to build ships for the UK to make up for the ones lost to torpedoes? Yes! The Brits placed an order for it!

Was the SS Patrick Henry launched before Pearl Harbor? Yes!

Does that mean it was planned and built before that? Yes!

Does that, in turn, mean that US convoys were pushed over the Atlantic from 1939 to 1941 where US risked it lives, ships and goods to keep Britain alive? No.

Did SS Patrick Henry sail in any US convoy to the UK before Pearl Harbor? No.

Was the first US convoy to the UK dispatched before or after Pearl Harbor? 17.09.1942, definitely after.

[DreamTone7]

Galmin - "Does that, in turn, mean that US convoys were pushed over the Atlantic from 1939 to 1941 where US risked it lives, ships and goods to keep Britain alive? No."



Wrong.



The US was part of the Merchant Marine that supplied Britain, along with Britain (of course), Canada, and a few other countries. Here is a link showing total Allied losses begining in 1939, and if you scroll down a little, US losses BEGINNING IN 1939! Also, if you had read my previous links in their entirety, you would have noted that the US also begin aiding in escort duties PRIOR TO PEARL HARBOR.



www.usmm.net/shiploss.html





But even more to the point, the US provided the actual goods that were being transported (regardless of whose ships were carrying them), for the most part...and most significantly, the oil that Britain needed.



I hope you like the taste of crow, Galmin.

[Galmin]

Quote:

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The US was part of the Merchant Marine that supplied Britain, along with Britain (of course), Canada, and a few other countries. Here is a link showing total Allied losses begining in 1939, and if you scroll down a little, US losses BEGINNING IN 1939!

---

I am not disputing that US ships sunk prior to Pearl Harbor.

It's a big world and most of it covered with water.



What we are discussing is:

you claim the the US pushed convoys 1939-1941 over the altantic risking US lives, US ships and US goods to keep britain alive during this time.





U.S. Owned Ships Attacked Before Pearl Harbor.



10/09/39 SS City of Flint Hog Island freighter Capture by pocket battleship Deutchland Released NAtlantic Casualties: None

First reported US craft to have trouble in the NAtlantic, it was captured by the German battleship Deutschland and then released!



06/12/40 Exochorda Freighter Shelled Slight damage Med-Black Sea Casualties:None



11/09/40 City of Rayville Freighter German mine Sunk Australian coast Casualties: Crew 1



05/21/41 Robin Moor Hog Islander Torpedo & Shelled Sunk Caribbean Casualties: None



08/11/41 Iberville Freighter Aerial mine from German aircraft Damaged Red Sea Casualties: None



09/05/41 Steel Seafarer Freighter Bombed by German aircraft Sunk Gulf of Suez Casualties: None



09/11/41 Arkansan Freighter Shelled Damaged Indian-Red Sea Casualties: None



10/19/41 Lehigh Freighter Torpedo Sunk ApproachMed Casualties:None



11/05/41 Montrose Freighter Collision Unknown North Atlantic Casualties: Unknown

This is the first US casualty reported in the North Atlantic, we do not know what caused it to sink, nor how many died. We have about mid 1941, by this time the UK had lost close to 20.000 lives, 1300 ships and 5000 thousand gross tons of goods in their convoys. Is it safe to say the the risk here in the convoys (in lives, ships and goods) to the UK was taken by Brits?



11/16/41 Turecamo Boys Tug Unknown Sunk North Atlantic Casualties:Crew 9



11/19/41 Del Pidio Unknown (Philippines) Mine Unknown Philippines Casualties: Crew 6



11/19/41 Edridio Mindoro (67 ton) Mine Sunk Philippines Casualties:Unknown



12/02/41 Astral Tanker Torpedo Sunk NAtlantic Casualties: Crew 37

Here! Here! Ship sunk by torpedo!! Five whole days before Pearl Harbor!



12/03/41 Sagadahoc Freighter Torpedo Sunk ApproachMed Casualties: Crew 1



12/07/41 Cynthia Olson Steam Schooner Torpedo Sunk Pacific Casualties: Crew 33; US Army 2





----------



Convallaria and Gunborg are the names of two ships (in convoy SC7 Oct. 1940 destined to Britain) that were torpedoed and sunk by U-46.

Does that make me claim that Sweden risked it lives, ships and goods pushing convoys across the sea to keep Britain alive? I would be ashamed of such boastfulness.

Edited by: Galmin  at: 12/12/04 11:08

[Conal Rehill]

Galmin is absolutely correct in his details, but of course this issue requires a broader perspective. The accepted view from systems theorists suggests that the US state's geopolitical and military strategy in the 20th century is based on manipulation of the global economic system in an attempt to establish power. It has nothing to do with altruism or liberation, which in fact were ideological justifications designed to mislead its population, the individual members of which have, quite sensibly, always shown great reluctance to sacrifice their lives in risky military adventures from which only the big corporate businesses benefit.



The following article is a brief synopsis of the systems theory view. It is crude, but it is the only thing I could find which is short enough for a message-board. Getting to grips with this issue is not simply a matter of reading a few books or web articles. It requires the systematic study of all perpectives, including this one, over a number of years.



The United States is dominant in the world - materially dominant, and not merely financially dominant. But the theories of Hilferding and Hobson on imperialism do not accurately describe the actual character of US domination unless we selectively censor a lot of information - as certain sectors of the left have been wont to do.



From the very beginning, the Hilferding-Hobson theses centered on the needs of monopoly capital as the driving force that led to inter-imperialist rivalry, and to the First World War. These theses held true for Europe and the stage of imperialism that they witnessed.



But as Michael Hudson exhaustively documents in Super Imperialism, the United States began in the First World War by exploiting this rivalry itself to gain advantage, and the predominant actor was not monopoly capital, but the US state. While there is no doubt that the state was acting on behalf of its own capitalists, it was not doing so in a largely reactive way but in a leadership role.



The US did so first in the role of national creditor, then - even more stunningly - in the role of national debtor.



While the US had employed direct conquest and domination in its own hemisphere, it was not drawn into the inter-imperialist rivalry that sparked WWI. So the US did not find itself predominantly "exporting capital" to its colonies via private institutions, but exporting it to the advanced capitalist states, particularly Great Britain, as loans for their war with the Germans and Ottomans, loans approved and guaranteed by the United States government.



The United States stayed out of the war until it became likely that without US intervention, the Allies would lose and their debts to America would remain unpaid. Once the war was over, Great Britain and France were heavily indebted, and the US - far from being the benevolent post-war ally - behaved much like any Brooklyn loan shark, bleeding its former allies so severely that they in turn wrecked the post-war German economy with reparations to assist the allies in their debts. This led directly to the rise of Nazism and the Second World War.



Whereupon, the US began its participation, again, not as a fellow combatant, but as a creditor to the other allies. It is now very clear that Franklin Roosevelt developed financial designs on the colonies of the British Empire, and that he maneuvered throughout the war to let others - particularly the Soviet Union, but also England and France - take the brunt of Hitler's aggression to weaken them, while he built up the geographically war-immune US industrial base, and positioned the US to be a post-war creditor and the new super-power.



It is a demonstrable fact that England has been a satellite of the United States ever since the First World War, and this accounts for the unsavory affinity of Tony Blair's lips for George W. Bush's faux-cowboy @#%$. Tony will eagerly jump aboard the bandwagon to attack Iran soon.



Britain was the principle (but not the only) target of US post-war loan-sharking in the 20s and 30s. Prior to the 1929 crash, the US bled the British Empire like a financial vampire, driven more by an archaic banker's ruthlessness than by any prescient self-interest. In fact, the US state had no idea at the time that they were becoming the principal cause of what would be the world's most destructive war only two decades later.



After the speculative crash of 1929, with the US in the worst economic doldrums it had ever experienced, and with significant sectors of the US working class looking with great interest at Russia's example from 1917, Franklin Roosevelt was elected the 33rd President of the United States in 1933, with a mandate to take extraordinary measures ostensibly to relive the suffering of the American working class masses, but more importantly - from the point of view of US elites - to take the increasingly revolutionary edge off of their agitations.



Roosevelt then became the first president to abandon the gold standard and conduct a cold-blooded strategic devaluation of the US currency as a weapon against its putative allies in Europe. This was a policy of deliberate inflation domestically to raise prices as part of his domestic pre-Keynesian overhaul, but it further battered the European exporters, especially Britain, who needed to export to the US in order to acquire the dollars to pay their compounding WWI debts.



This was the first intentional foray into state-initiated economic warfare using currency as a weapon, and it displayed just a glimmer of understanding that in state-to-state economic competition, the central banks would become the primary battlefield. In the competition between private capitals, the state would eventually become the referee to ensure the health of the whole, and one state would dominate the general direction of global capital accumulation. But this was only a glimmer then.



The Law of Unintended Consequences caused WWII, and hit the US with an even deeper economic crisis. The combined refusal of the US to negotiate new terms with the Europeans for repayment of war debts and the strategic devaluation of the gold-free dollar led to a series of competitive devaluations of European national currencies - a destructive race to the bottom - that ended up hitting the United States like a tsunami.



Consistent with the arguments of later world systems theorists, this period of economic disaster in the capitalist metropoles loosened their exploitative grip on the under-developed periphery. Andrew McKillop wrote that:



Through 1929-35 or 1929-36 in some countries of the "civilized world" there were unremitting falls of activity in 'key sectors.' The uncivilized world was however less than concerned by the event ... it gained. (A. Gunder Frank, S. Amin and suchlike will give you… the related and unrelated sequences of economic change governing metropole-colony relations). Simple facts and figures show considerable economic growth in the 'colonial South' of the 1929-39 period.



This strengthened many of the colonies even as their colonial ruler-states were being weakened, and contributed to the creation of conditions that would lead to the wave of national liberation movements that were folded into the Cold War dynamic later on. This was unanticipated by the US, even as its assault on the British was coldly calculated. The American intent was never to take over the formerly British (and French, German, etc.) colonies, but to replace the Pound (Sterling) as the world reserve currency, bringing not only the peripheral "South" under its sway, but Europe itself, beginning with Great Britain.



Michael Hudson writes:



It would be false to say that the United States provoked World War II out of malice or out of knowledge of the results of insisting on repayment of its war debts by a world utterly unable to repay them… intolerable burdens that the United States imposed on its allies of World War I and, through them, on Germany. Every US administration from 1917 through the Roosevelt era employed the strategy of compelling repayment of these war debts, above all Britain's. The effect was to splinter Europe so that the continent was laid open politically as a possible province of the United States.



Private finance capital could not have achieved that end… [but] the world tumbled into a depression. Not only did the United States not escape the Great Depression, it became the principle sufferer from a collapse of its own creating… The first great foray of U.S. governmental finance capital into world power politics thus ended in ignominious failure, and ultimately in a war [with] dimensions vaster even than World War I.



Roosevelt was a determined man, and after implementing heroic Keynesian measures to ensure the political stability of the United States, he turned the lemon into lemonade through his carefully calculated commitments of the US to World War II.



The Lend-Lease Act, by which the US supported the Allies without troops in the Second Word War for almost two years before it intentionally provoked the Japanese into the attack on Pearl Harbor, was an instrument that just as intentionally broke down the British Empire with debt for the purpose of dissolving the Imperial Preference - a set of relaxed trade rules within the British Empire - in the commonwealth. This set the stage for the post-war displacement of the Sterling as the global reserve currency by the dollar.



The intent was never to destroy the British, any more than it was to replace the direct European colonial rule that World War II would mortally wound. It was to bring Europe and ascendant Asia under the sway of the United States as sub-imperial powers in a new global hierarchy that would extend the influence of the US state beyond anything ever yet imagined by former empires - in a qualitatively new way.



The British were subsumed by the United States into the financial pole of capital, and were eventually reduced to a US financial satellite on the border of Europe. This goes a long way toward explaining the seemingly inexplicable subservience of successive British governments in toadying to the US - even in harebrained military adventures like the current Iraq quagmire. The UK has now been transformed into a financial and military appendage of the US state

[DreamTone7]

Galmin - "you claim the the US pushed convoys 1939-1941 over the altantic risking US lives, US ships and US goods to keep britain alive during this time."



No...that is what YOU claim that the US did NOT do...NOT what I claim we did do. Big difference. I said the US pushed convoys, and I said that the US sacrificed lives and ships 1939-1941(many more than in your incomplete list...take a look at the chart in the link I provided). I did NOT say that the convoys that the US participated in were purely US prior to Peal Harbor...they were not, but rather a mixture of many countries. I am not even sure that there were EVER any pure US convoys...I believe the course of action was for US escorts to handle things until the middle of the Atlantic, where British ships took over escort duties (something that, again, DID occur prior to Pearl Harbor). And, not the mention that the crucial supplies of oil were coming mainly from the US. However, I have found it typical of you, Galmin, to play down Americas participation in WWII...and Mike Burns to do the same. Hmmm...must be a European thing...don't like to admit anything good about the US. But, you can't argue with the facts, Galmin. How does that crow taste?

[conalrehill]

"It is interesting how you have tried to turn around Hitlers attempt a world domination into a US attempt a world domination, though. Twisted, but interesting...and hopefully not typical for a European mindset."



Here you fall into the trap of 'self-innocence', where you think that ambitions of imperialism have been held by all other states except your own. The cannon-fodder of all empires have been beset by these beliefs in the past.



As my post suggests, US imperial ambitions date back to the late 19th century, during the time when many other powerful nations harboured exactly the same ambitions. I cannot see why you are embarrassed about this and need to think of yourselves as the 'defenders of freedom'. You are big bullies, just like all powerful nations tend to be.



The US supplies to Britain were part of a credit deal, and that loan had to be repaid, which suggests that early US input into the war in Europe was just an extension of its loan-sharking activities that had emptied the coffers of Germany, France and Britain in the 1920s - which, of course, was a major cause of WWII. When things in Europe didn't quite go the way they wanted, they needed a tangible excuse to persuade their reluctant population to go to war, so they goaded Japan into attacking them.



Pearl Harbour performed the same function as 9/11, because of course the US corporate-state has every intention of establishing complete political control of the Middle East. As usual, the US corporate-state has no moral inhibitions about using its own working classes as cannon-fodder, killing civilians or inflicting massive damage on the physical infrastructure of the 'enemy' territory.



With Europe and the Soviets out of the way, China still some way behind and the Islamic States divided and under-developed, we are now seeing the purposeful and brutal moves of what will be seen by future historians as one of the most cunning and evil empires in history - the Corporate USA.

[DreamTone7]

Glad you decided to join us, conalrehill. But I disagree with your comparison between WWII and the modern war against terror...or the War in Iraq, to be more specific. In WWII, the US had to win public approval for entry into a war that, due to the number of US lives lost in WWI, the US public was not generally interested in. But the government knew a lot that the general public did not...specifically, about Hitler. In spite of Pearl Harbor causing us to be at war with Japan, how do you explain why Hitler (Germany) was put as the #1 priority to defeat by the US government? It was because the US government knew about the attempts to build the atom bomb, and what it could mean. YOU see, though the Japanese were not interested in world domination...Hitler was. And now you try to suggest that it was the US who was really interested in world domination when they were mainly interested in stopping Hitler? You're out to lunch, comrade...so far out to lunch that I really wonder about just where it is you are coming from, and what axe it is you have to grind.

Melody and Instruments for the soul...

[conalrehill]

"It was because the US government knew about the attempts to build the atom bomb, and what it could mean."



Well, that's one reason, certainly. One amongst the many I have suggested, none of which you have yet refuted with evidence or argument.



You see, I think it's much more complex than that. It's not that the American state was against Hitler becase of what he and his party was. In fact, the US had allowed his government to borrow a lot of money and it had no moral qualms about trading with Nazi Germany.



The fundamental reason is that at that time the USA and Germany were rival imperialists. The USA has never been concerned with anything other than its own interests. Just like the others.