From: no_offline_contact@example.com
On 2026-01-08 4:11 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Rhino wrote:
>> On 2026-01-08 2:43 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>> Rhino wrote:
>>>> On 2026-01-07 10:52 p.m., Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>>> BTR1701 wrote:
>>>>>> Jan 7, 2026 at 4:23:37 PM PST, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>> . . .
>>>
>>>>>>> Capturing [Maduro] and putting him on trial is a violation of
>>>>>>> international law.
>>>
>>>>>> Isn't that what they did with the Nazis at Nuremberg?
>>>
>>>>> He's saying specifically that a head of state is immune from prosecution
>>>>> by a foreign government. Killing him as an act of war is not a violatiom
>>>>> of international law. Putting him on trial is.
>>>
>>>>> It makes no sense.
>>>
>>>>> I've never studied what law Nazis were charged under.
>>>
>>>> 30 odd years ago, I read a book about the Nuremberg Trials written by
>>>> one of the American prosecutors, who was very very old at the time of
>>>> writing and publication. I still have the book: The Anatomy of the
>>>> Nuremberg Trials by Telford Taylor. (I see it is available on the gray
>>>> as an audiobook.) If I remember correctly, he acknowledged that there
>>>> really wasn't much proper legal basis for the court and its proceedings.
>>>
>>>> I've just grabbed the book and I see that Chapter 1 talks about the
>>>> legal foundations of the trials. (I'm speaking of the famous first set
>>>> of trials that dealt with the top Nazis; there were 11 other sets of
>>>> trials afterwards dealing with lesser figures.) Already I've found a few
>>>> passages that talk about precedents for the trial.
>>>
>>>> I'm not about to type out the whole first chapter or even major parts of
>>>> it but these snippets should address the point at hand.
>>>
>>> Thank you for typing this out.
>>>
>>>> ========================================================================
>>>> The ideas which led to the expanded principles of the Nuremberg Trials
>>>> were largely developed by a group of New York lawyers during the autumn
>>>> and winter of 1944-1945, most notably by Henry L. Stimson, John J.
>>>> McCloy, Murray Bernays, William C. Chanler, Samuel Rosenman, Robert H.
>>>> Jackson, and (though we do not usually think of him as a lawyer)
>>>> President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
>>>
>>>> Initially, and in my view most important, was the decision of Stimson,
>>>> then Secretary of War, to pass over the military courts-martial
>>>> generally used for the trial of military crimes and establish an
>>>> international court. On September 9, 1944, he wrote to the President: "I
>>>> am disposed to believe that at least as to the top Nazi officials, we
>>>> should participate in an international tribunal to try them." The result
>>>> was the unprecedented creation of the International Military Tribunal,
>>>> the most important and, I believe, successful new entity in the
>>>> enforcement of the laws of war.
>>>
>>> Huh. I thought Stalin had pushed for this, since they love their show
>>> trials.
>>>
>> The show trials were the exact OPPOSITE of anything resembling proper
>> judicial procedure. The defendants had essentially been tortured into
>> confessing and the defense attorneys appointed for them had a habit of
>> condemning their clients even more viciously than the prosecutors!
>>
>> The show trials didn't even miss a beat when important evidence was
>> shown to be false. For example, Trotsky's son was part of one of the
>> trials and he admitted to having met with other conspirators at the
>> Bristol Hotel in Copenhagen on a specific date. Later testimony revealed
>> that the Bristol Hotel had burned down a few years BEFORE this meeting
>> and had never been rebuilt. This was just ignored and the conviction
>> rendered regardless.
>>
>>>> ...
>>>
>>>> But what law was the International Military Tribunal enforcing? Ordinary
>>>> courts and trials were based on the statutes of sovereign nations.
>>>> However, the IMT was no ordinary court. It was established by the United
>>>> States and three major European nations, and the laws by which the IMT
>>>> was bound were not the laws of those or of any other nations. For its
>>>> rules on crime the IMT looked primarily to the international "laws of
>>>> war", violations of which are called "war crimes".
>>>
>>>> ========================================================================
>>>
>>>> At which point he launches into pages of discussion of events going back
>>>> as far as the Thirty Years war (1618-1648) that dealt with previous
>>>> attempts to deal with war crimes.
>>>
>>> I had no idea. Talk about your disaster, a war to suppress the expansion
>>> of Protestantism ended up expanding it, while killing more than half of
>>> the adult male population of central Europe. The Peace of Westphalia
>>> established the principle of international law that boundaries, no
>>> matter how disruptive they are to peace and commerce, are inviolate and
>>> you aren't allowed to go to war over them.
>>>
>>> Hahahahahahahahahahaha
>>>
>>>> ...
>> You mean the way Hamas honoured the borders of Gaza and stayed strictly
>> inside them on Oct 7, 2023? Or the way Trump honoured the borders of
>> Venezuela and left Maduro alone?
>>
>> Yeah, that's definitely not one of the better-observed principles of
>> modern nations (or wannabe nations in the case of Hamas).
>
> I wasn't even thinking of outside Europe, but of the hundreds of
> subsequent European-wide wars. The Counter-Reformation was all about
> Christians slaughtering other Christians to impose religion in war after
> war after war. Europe would be a lovely place if not for its kings, the
> Pope, and other dictators.
The Europeans never seemed to lack the desire to take things they wanted
via war, at least until the World Wars took their respective tolls.
--
Rhino
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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