Be Excellent To Each Other

Sorry to hear that

Thanks man. It got better after I took my tie off

It'll get better still after you watch the Power Rangers video.

Is that Dawson?

It is! And Starbuck!

So a 94-year old being charged in Germany with accessory to murder (3,681 times) because he served at Auschwitz.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/94-ye ... 81-n311046

That's fucking nuts, right?

Yeah, if they let Blair and Bush off with war crimes, this guy should be too.

That was pretty good...

Bush and Blair, were never tried, and what they did in concentration camps, is a tad different from a war.

It was in a war. He was a soldier.

Yes, but a lot of others were tried that worked in concentration camps. Do you think there should be a statute, when they should stop being tried?

Especially as he was a medic. So probably saved lives rather than anything else.

The Dachau trials, you mean? That was, as far as I could tell, the Americans executing people*.

I absolutely think there should be a statute for soldiers, which should be as soon as terms of surrender are drawn up.

* [edit] That's a bit mean - I don't know enough about it to say that. They did seem to kill a lot of people, though

There are loads of statues of soldiers.

We'll likely never know that, and we'll never know if he carried out his work under protest, or if he loved every minute of it.

Which is pretty much why you can't try him, in my mind.

Indeed, like there was in Germany until the law changed recently.

I thought the Nuremberg trials, is where the original war trials and hangings took place

Nuremberg was just for the (very) high-ups, wasn't it?

Not sure, I remember Pierpoint hung lots of folks..

I remember reading somewhere that Churchill would have been happy with taking the leaders round the back, but the trial format was pushed for by the other allies (citations needed). Produced a heck of a lot of documentation and evidence, even though I doubt the outcomes were ever much in doubt.

Nice writeup on Sweet Home (the inspiration for Resident Evil) on Kotaku

http://kotaku.com/the-nes-game-that-ins ... Socialflow

Christ. Trying him is taking it all a bit far, isn't it? He had no option but to serve, surely? What was the punishment for desertion...? In a world so horrible, where people did those sorts of things to other people and the whole world was literally falling apart around you, and you had a chance to be stationed there instead of the front line, what would you do?

They tried a lot that served, it is where 'I was following orders' came from.

He served in a camp that violated the Geneva Convention's rules for treatment of PoWs; not less, a camp that executed civilian non-combatants. The concept of war crimes is quite well-defined in international law and it doesn't give soldiers carte blanche to do whatever they want.

I've been trying to find information on this mysterious 2013 legal precedent the stories are quoting but I can't find anything.

Edit -- found it: NYTimes writeup; here's the case in question.

Edit x2: sounds like these are people who would never have faced any sort of legal comeback before. I'm not convinced I'm against this.

Presumably if they want to put him on trial, they have enough evidence to suggest that he did go well beyond what might be expected of a soldier doing their duty. It's kinda hard to tell without knowing what they have on him.

All that would do is legalise torture and genocide.

Probably not the best idea.

So when do we get to the people that helped turn Hiroshima and Nagasaki to glass?

Or Dresden to cinders?

Wasn't the argument there that orders of magnitude more lives would have been lost if they hadn't? Sure it's morally FUCKING dubious, but it's not an argument you can apply to someone torturing people in a concentration camp.

Yes. And weirdly, I'm OK with thaT. I read "The Old Breed" recently about the Pacific Campaign and it was harrowing.

The Operation Meetinghouse firebombing of Tokyo, at least 100000 burned to death. Beat that, ISIS!

I tend to think of Sherman's aphorism that 'war is cruelty and you cannot refine it'. What happens on the battlefield is one thing - what happens to prisoners is a different set of morals altogether.

Did Hiroshima and Nagasaki qualify as battlefields?

That's the argument the winners use, but no-one can say for sure, obviously. It's a debate that is probably going to go on for a long old time.

However, if Hitler had a pair of bombs, dropped one on Manchester and one on Houston - and still went on to lose - do you not think a few people might think it was a war crime?

Yes, because then it wouldn't have shortened the war and saved lives. It's not just intentions, it's actual results as well, that define morality. Or something.

That is fucking BRILLIANT!

To be fair, the producer and director have proper Hollywood cred (Lone Survivor, Dredd etc for the Producer, and a shitload of music videos for the director [Eminem, Taylor Swift, Dr Dre, U2 etc). They just wanted to fuck about with the concept. Producer chap has done ones before for The Punisher and Venom, though obviously they start from a very different point!

Would love that kind of reimagining though. And anything that features Van der Beek gets my vote.

Have him surrender straight after of you like , then. People would still call it an atrocity.

And it's gone.

I went to bed at 6-30 last night as I am The Poorlies and watched the of Night Garden. The theory that it is actually iggle Piggle's last dream as he lies dying of dehydration in his boat is quite sad, his mind retreating to a safe place with memories of his friends as he expires, alone, on a vast ocean.

To cheer myself up I then watched a Dan Snow documentary on the East India Company.which was very good and I dreamed fever dreams of colonial glories past.

I think I still have The Poorlies but have gone into work as I just feel exhausted.

Only the NSFW version on Tumblr. The YouTube SFW one is still up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw5vcUPyL90

Here are some NSFW mirrors:
http://sendvid.com/ppre82ml

That's really rather depressing, but explains a lot about that show.



Sounds interesting. What's it called?

Holy fuck that was good. Like, blown away-good.

"the East India company" it is on iPlayer under documentaries.

I thought Britain were the imperialist pig dogs who conquered your lush and verdant land of Kernow?

Like I said I had The Poorlies

Had hob nobs dipped in coffee for lunch, damn near a whole packet. Feel sick.

Choccy nobs? Or plain?