Cinco de Mayo marks the Mexican army victory over the larger, better trained and better equipped French forces at the Batalla de Puebla in 1862.
The holiday is often mistaken for Mexican Independence Day which actually falls on September 16 and celebrates Mexico’s independence from colonial Spain. In fact, Cinco de Mayo is more popular and widely celebrated in the United States than in Mexico.
The History Channel updates visitors on historic events throughout world history with “This Day in History.” There were a number of notables for April 30:
1789: President George Washington was sworn in as the first President of the United States in New York City and delivered the nation’s first inaugural address.
1803: The land deal between the United States and Napoleonic France known as the “Louisiana Purchase” was concluded. The purchase doubled the size of the U.S. at the cost of $15 million. The Louisiana Territory “comprised most of modern-day United States between the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains, with the exceptions of Texas, parts of New Mexico, and other pockets of land already controlled by the United States.”
1945: Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin days before Nazi Germany’s formal surrender to Allied forces. Hitler’s Third Reich was proclaimed to last 1,000 years but collapsed after a dozen under Nazi rule.
1948: Organization of American States (OAS) was officially established with the United States and twenty Latin America nations signed on.
1975: South Vietnam surrendered to communist forces.
Think Progress posted the findings of a recent Brookings Institution survey on Arab attitudes towards the United States. The results showed 80 percent of those survey cited American foreign policy as the root of their criticisms of the United States. Only 12 percent cited “American values” as the primary reason.
These findings contradict the central thesis of the craptacular Dinesh D’Souza book blaming anti-Americanism and the September 11 terrorist attacks on liberals and popular culture. (And, of course, liberals are responsible for popular culture because conservatives are major tools and produce lame programming like this.)
D’Souza wrote in his Washington Post op-ed that he has faced an “onslaught” of criticism because his book “argue[s] that the American left bears a measure of responsibility for the volcano of anger from the Muslim world that produced the 9/11 attacks.” In his January 25 op-ed in The Christian Science Monitor, D’Souza asserted that Muslim distaste for the “popular culture” of “blue” America “can blossom into the kind of anti-American pathology that partly fueled the 9/11 attacks.” Yet in the book itself, D’Souza does not argue that the cultural left “bears a measure of responsibility” for provoking the anger of the 9-11 hijackers or that it “partly fueled” 9-11. Rather, he asserts that the “cultural left” is the “primary cause” of the “visceral rage” that produced the terrorists who attacked America, and that “without the cultural left, 9/11 would not have happened.” [emphasis added]
The History Channel updates visitors on historic events throughout world history with “This Day in History.” Here are a few notables for April 15:
1865: President Abraham Lincoln died from the gunshot wound he sustained six days earlier from actor and Confederate sympathizer, John Wilkes Booth.
1912: The once thought “unsinkable” Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean after striking an iceberg two and a half hours before. The ship, spanning 883 feet long, was en route from Southampton, England to New York City in the United States carrying 2,200 passengers and crew.
1947: Infielder Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball when he signed and played for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Boston Braves.
Mmmm . . . I am in no way unhappy with the outcome of Nuremberg, but my understanding is that most international lawyers regard them basically as show trials. I’m not sure they’re a great example to use.
The Nuremberg trials had a great influence on the development of international criminal law. The International Law Commission, acting on the request of the United Nations General Assembly, produced in 1950 the report Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II[30]). The influence of the tribunal can also be seen in the proposals for a permanent international criminal court, and the drafting of international criminal codes, later prepared by the International Law Commission.
Matt Browner-Hamlin adds more historical background to one of the biggest landmark international criminal court cases that, according to Megan McArdle, is not a great example to use.
Senator Dodd’s father, Tom Dodd, was a lead prosecutor at Nuremberg. Dodd recently published his father’s living history of his experience at the trials in a living history titled Letters From Nuremberg. On the campaign trail, Senator Dodd would frequently reference Nuremberg when talking about the necessity to defend the rule of law here in America. His favorite quote, something that I have since committed to memory, was from chief American prosecutor at Nuremberg, Justice Robert Jackson:
“That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum called the trials a “watershed moment in international justice.” Sixty years after the trials, the Anti-Defamation League cited the significance of Nuremberg.
Avoid looking as ridiculous as Megan McArdle and read up on the Nuremberg Trials. Harvard Law School maintains digital copies of documents relevant to the trials.
In the meantime, check out the judgment scene from the 1961 Academy Award winning film, Judgment at Nuremberg:
October 10, 2008
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