Text 35311, 101 rader
Skriven 2006-07-30 16:25:56 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
  Kommentar till text 35244 av Dan Ceppa (2:292/854)
Ärende: Israel
==============
30 Jul 06 13:27, Ward Dossche wrote to Dan Ceppa:

Man, those Italians were lucky...just think, they could have been
repatriated and then made to serve on the losing side of the war...Damned
lucky they were...by the end of the war, there were over 600k waps
interned here and the smart ones stayed...

 >> WD> In March 1941, 8 months before Pearl Harbor, the US seized 69
 >> WD> ships under German and Italian flags. 775 Italian civilian seamen
 >> WD> and 100

 >> Do you know the rules of war for interning combatant forces in
 >> neutral countried?

 WD> Certainly. Are you saying we now need to occupy every American vessel
 WD> in our waters because you guys are waging a war somewhere?

 WD> Anyway ...

 WD> Do you know WW2 started in 1939, 2 years prior? Some Americans keep
 WD> believing it started on Dec.7th 1941 ...

 WD> The Italian luxury-liner "Il Conte Biancamano" was litterally
 WD> ambushed when stuck for 19 months already in the Panama-canal on a
 WD> commercial cruise with passengers from a number of nations. Italy was
 WD> not at war with the US, there was not a single Italian or
 WD> Axis-country military person aboard in any capacity.

 WD> There was absolutely no talk about "combatant forces" in the whole
 WD> deal, I'm appaled you know your country's history that bad.

 WD> It was US Attorney General Robert Jackson (later that year to be
 WD> appointed Suppreme Court Justice and in 1945-.. chief-prosecutor of
 WD> the main trial at Nürnberg) who justified the action although there
 WD> was no state of war.

 WD> He said: "Under modern methods of warfare, the most critical period
 WD> for a nation under attack is the period preceding the actual
 WD> employment of military force. The secret weapon of the Nazis has been
 WD> the failure of nation after nation to recognise and deal with this
 WD> non-military invasion. Our statute law has in many respects failed to
 WD> take into account this non-military period of attack."

 WD> Jackson therefore stated that although the US were not in a state of
 WD> war they were under "a non-military kind of attack".

 WD> <Duh!>

 WD> Jackson's explanation was quite lame because the Espionage Act under
 WD> which the government detained those ships, permitted such detention
 WD> only in times of emergency.

 WD> Where was the emergency? Nowhere in sight!

 WD> So on March 30 1941 28 Ialian, 2 German and 35 Danish ships were
 WD> seized by military force. The US government had no clue that Denmark
 WD> was not an Axis-country BTW. But let me not dwell from the issue.

 WD> To clear the legal status of the operation Congres passed a bill on
 WD> May 6th 1941, a month and a week after the seize, to allow such an
 WD> act and use the ships for its own purposes.

 WD> By April 12th 1941 about 1,300 Italian civilians were in custody.
 WD> What to do with them? They committed no crime, they were not
 WD> military, they were not 'combatant forces' (a term which Americans
 WD> since recently like to use).

 WD> The US issued formal warrants that the merchant-seamen had overstayed
 WD> the 60-day limit permitted of alien seamen in US territories and
 WD> deported them to Ellis Island. Later in 1941 they were transported to
 WD> "Fort Missoula" in Missoula Montana...

 WD> Completely ridiculous as about all of these vessels were unable to
 WD> leave port due to either not having the fuel and/or supplies needed
 WD> for the trip and on the other side because the Royal Navy said it
 WD> would not guarantee a safe passage of these civilian ships.

 WD> Many of these sailors had been stuck for 2 years on their boat
 WD> without being able to move an inch, courtesy US authorities ... and
 WD> then were charged with overstaying their 60-day permit ...

 WD> HAH!! What a joke.

 WD> Combatant forces my ass. You don't know the first bit of your own
 WD> history.

 WD> Take care,

 WD>  \%/@rd

 WD> --- D'Bridge 2.54
 WD>  * Origin: "Leonard will be free" - http://www.leonardpeltier.org
 WD> (2:292/854)

@\%/itt



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 * Origin: Hacienda de Rio de Guadalupe * South * Texas, USA * (1:1/22)