Regardless of what one personally thinks about the ICC, this isn’t a good look for neither the US nor Europe.
For the U.S., because sanctioning an “unpleasant”, but in essence harmless individual (geopolitically speaking) is ridiculous. Falling victim to de-banking alone can really ruin one’s life.
And for the EU, because it once again showcases the dependence on U.S. systems for just about anything tech-related in everyday life and work.
It undermines the idea of the U.S. as a neutral arbiter for law, order, and free commerce. That may always have been a fiction, but it's a very useful fiction because it underpins U.S. soft power. It's much easier to get consent for being the world hegemon when you act like a benevolent, disinterested hegemon. Once you start becoming a participant - and overriding other institutions that are ostensibly providing neutral, impartial justice just because their decisions are inconvenient for you - you are essentially placing yourself below them and undermining your own legitimacy.
Neutrality and objectivity may be a fiction, but it's one of the most useful fictions that have been invented in the last 500 years.
America has apparently decided that the fiction is no longer useful. At least not to us.
I can't say I'm happy about that, but it's a fact now. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle. Even a change of leadership soon will not alter the realization that it can change back on a moment's notice.
I think we will come to realize that liberalism died in Gaza. It exposed all of the hypocrisy that had always been there, it was just hidden under a mask of propaganda. Exposure to the raw events on social media allowed people to see the difference between what was happening and what we were being told. The mask came off and it's not going back on.
That hypocrisy has been there for decades if you had looked, so it seems wrong to consider the catalyst as being "Gaza" rather than things like increased alternative media from digital communications, influence campaigns, etc. Also you're drastically overstating things by balling it up as "liberalism" rather than say the US-as-hegemon world order.
Less than "liberalism" I'd say "westernism". Liberalism out of direct western influence it's pretty much in line with what liberalism is supposed to be.
> I think we will come to realize that liberalism died in Gaza.
Utterly ridiculous. Hamas had it coming after Oct 7th. What else did they expect other than swift and brutal retaliation after doing to Israel what 9/11 was for the US?
This is a 2024 comment. We are past these talking points.
Do you know what Israel did and still is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank)? It goes way beyond “retaliation”. A genocidal, algorithmic rampage that spared no one. “Collateral damage” taken to its extreme. It is a testbed for techniques to crush armed liberation movements. For the US in particular, this is how the 2nd amendment can be rendered obsolete.
I am curious. Would you empathize more if Gaza was a Ukrainian enclave in Russia that tried to break free from its status as a blockaded strip of land? Is the involvement of non-white victims the problem? Perhaps it’s because there are Palestinians involved? Maybe if this were a fictional struggle set in some fictional universe involving some kind of “rebel” group; is that what it takes to spare an ounce of empathy?
The right to resist is not the right to commit deliberate civilian massacres.
If October 7 had been directed against the West Bank settlers then we could get behind it, but instead it was just Hamas expressing their genocidal intent.
Firstly, you are aware that Gaza is & was under full blockade, right? And that there is no way to reach the West Bank from Gaza?
Secondly, I can assure you that you would NOT have gotten behind anything Hamas did. You (not you specifically, just generally) wouldn’t have supported them because you’re conditioned to not support them. You are also more susceptible to propaganda than you think you are, and trust me, the media machine would have been in full gear regardless of what operation Hamas pulled off.
It is easy to talk about theoreticals, but if you’re missing the ongoing reality, why do you think that you would handle the theoretical scenario any differently? Same idea applies to fiction. People jump to oppose the Empire, but had they been living in the Star Wars universe, odds are that Imperial propaganda would have been extremely effective.
You know the saying: “A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war, and supports all civil rights movements except the one that's going on right now.”
Occupying forces are not civilians, that being said October 7th was primarily directed at the IDF. That Israel has mandatory conscription and deliberately inhabits stolen Palestinian land doesn't make the victims civilian. That's not even touching on the large number of people in Israel killed by the IDF under the Hannibal Directive. Deaths incorrectly attributed to Hamas:
What's your point? Are you saying that if you kill my kids then I can kill you, then kill your kids, your wife, your parents, grandparents, their brothers and sisters and their kids? And that's ok and I'm better than you? meaning I'm good and you are evil? or what are you arguing?
Generally, the point is my people are more valuable than your people. This is how Israel itself is able to maintain the injustice in Gaza and the WB. Heck, the IOF proudly operates under this model: a 1:50 combatant to civilian kill ratio is normal operating procedure.
They applied the same concept in Iran during the 12 Day War, where they performed “targeted strikes” on apartment buildings housing nuclear scientists and other top officials, while killing 10s of civilians in the process. And then they (unironically) believed that Iranians would rise up against their government instead of rallying around the flag, at least temporarily.
If you spent decades chanting "Death to Israel" and then raped, tortured, and murdered 1000+ Israeli teens and young adults, you should expect that Israel might believe the "Death to Israel" chant is serious and decide that the best option is death to you instead.
What are you talking about? Israel spent decades ethnically cleansing Palestinians and they're still doing it, at scale. They had already murdered orders of magnitude more Palestinians than Israelis killed by the IDF and Hamas combined on Oct 7th.
Hamas did expect it, just like their kindred warmongering spirits in Israel expect further retaliation. However, Palestinian civilians most certainly did not deserve it.
Hamas had the option to attack military targets. Instead they targeted a music festival full of civilians, murdering almost everyone, and raping most of the women there. (For those who doubt, there are a lot of sources. CNN, BBC, Al Jezeera, and even the UN's own fact-finding mission all confirm the rapes and murders.)
As an American, I don't think anyone informed has ever perceived the US as neutral, at least not since the 20th century. We have veto power with control of the US dollar, the ability of the US military to engage in any part of the world (historically, much less so in current year), and being a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
In my opinion, the sanctioning of these judges simply comes across as a petty tantrum of a nation in decline, using the remaining tools it has at it's disposal to try to get its way.
Everything the US does and has done is aimed at defending itself and its interests, which includes its allies, as it should, and as it must.
The extent to which these actions appeared neutral was just a product of the overwhelming power of the US and overwhelming unity - by virtue of deference - prevalent among the Western powers during the Cold War, in the shadow of a common enemy.
Global neutral institutions exist on a fictional foundation that becomes thinner by the day. For substantial matters on which there is no rational answer, the only solution is the exercise of power.
In this case, the US and Israel were never parties to the ICC, so the ICC was never neutral with respect to them. If they had submitted to the ICC, I think your point would be valid.
I'm making a subtly different point. Pre-2002, the U.S. filled the role that the ICC does now. We would work multilaterally with a lot of different countries - many of whom are signatories of the Rome Statute now - to send UN peacekeeping forces to conflict areas and bring the perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity to justice. Post-2002 (and there was a lot going around in 2002-2004 to tarnish the U.S's international reputation besides the ICC), we became one of several parties that didn't sign the ICC. And now we seem to be actively retaliating against ICC judges, and not even for their decisions - this case is because the judge held that a decision could be made.
A lot of Americans believe that power is winning. There's a fight, and the side that wins is the more powerful one. But true power comes from not having anyone question your decisions, such that there is never a fight in the first place. And that's the dynamic I'm commenting on. Eisenhower was a powerful president even though he started no new wars (indeed, he ended the Korean war). With 70%+ approval ratings domestically and unquestioned economic supremacy abroad, he didn't need to.
Ostensibly does an incredible amount of work here.
There are legitimate, serious grievances with institutions like the ICC. We're talking about an institution that believes it can override the sovereignty of nations and democratically elected governments to go after you or anyone, and the judges are chosen by a byzantine bureaucratic process that involves effectively zero input from you or the democratically determined laws of your nation. It's pretty nakedly a vehicle for the interests of various international political players.
The grievance you express here basically comes down to "Who decides?" The reason the ICC is objectionable to the U.S. (and China, and Russia, and India - there are a bunch of other non-signatories of the ICC agreement, and I'm not picking on the U.S. here, more trying to illustrate a dynamic) is because it sets up a justice system that is not accountable to the U.S. political process.
The reason I'm saying that this undermines U.S. soft power and legitimacy is because it shouldn't matter who decides. If your country actually stands for freedom, justice, and universal human rights, then another human working from those principles would reach the same conclusion you do. That's what makes them universal human rights. So the implicit message when judges are sanctioned because other nations disagree with their right to make decisions is that maybe those rights aren't universal after all, and that some people's rights are more right than others. It's telegraphing insecurity - someone who knows they are in the right will happily let others make the decision, because they trust that others will come to the same conclusion as them.
The rest of your post also comes from that frame. You may actually be right - I acknowledged that neutrality and objectivity is likely a fiction. The thing is, that fiction underpins the ideas of rule of law, democracy, freedom, justice, and peace. All of those stem from a basic trust that your fellow humans, once they are trained to think in those terms, will come to the same conclusions that you do. So yes, perhaps all of international relations is power players advancing their own interests - but once everybody believes that to be true, we will lose rule of law, democracy, freedom, justice, and peace.
> If your country actually stands for freedom, justice, and universal human rights, then another human working from those principles would reach the same conclusion you do.
These principles are not objective moral axioms that we can all reason from.
We decide, as sovereign countries, what they mean to us, how they should be implemented, or even if we (as a country) don't value this or that. There is no magical tablet of Rights that we can spiritually commune with to determine "X is a right but Y is not." These are all politically and culturally determined.
So it absolutely matters, very, very much who decides, and millions have died as a consequence of those decisions. It does not make much sense for anyone to hand those decisions over to the ICC. Unless and until we have a single global culture and moral framework the whole idea is absurd...except as a vehicle for the power plays of different factions at the international politics level.
Because they are politically and culturally determined, because they are not something that people are just born with the innate ability to find, is exactly why handing decisions over to people belonging to different cultures/societies/institutions is highly dangerous. The only way to actually protect our rights is to not accede to institutions like the ICC. It's absurd to say that because billions of people could be trained to believe in things they don't believe in we must act as though the things they don't believe in are universally true, or else we will lose our freedoms. We can simply live in sovereign countries that do hold these beliefs - and as for the countries that do things we find revolting, we can pressure them or ignore them or war with them as we see fit and as has been done since the dawn of time. But ultimately you have to accept that different cultures have different values, even if you're one of those that want to do something about it. You can't just stick your head in the sand and pretend the ICC actually adheres to these ideals.
The ICC was set up specifically to prevent national-scale criminals from hiding behind vague concepts of sovereignty and immunity, such that once someone scaled or inherited the heights of power they effectively had free rein to do whatever they want without fear of repercussions. The incentivized dictatorship as internal opposition was the only legal check on atrocity.
But the crucial point that makes the ICC work is that a country needs to submit to its jurisdiction. Once they went beyond that, they destroyed the entire legitimacy of the court. Also, they refused to arrest Putin even after he was sanctioned by the ICC, despite Russia being a formal party to the Rome Statute, so they're either hypocrites or cowards.
Right. Except national sovereignty exists for a reason. Now an unaccountable international court can hold you liable for doing things they don't like. You didn't solve the problem. You just added an extra institution that will pursue these "aims" in a partisan and particular fashion and will be responsible for its own atrocities sooner or later.
EU is not necessarily dependent on the US in all the cases that are listed in the article. Take AXA, the insurance company. They could probably survive doing business just in the EU and withdraw entirely out of the US market. But for them it's more lucrative to piss off one judge rather than lose the US share of profits. As the article describes, it's a business decision. But not one that necessarily means life or death (for the company).
My understanding from glancing at the hopefully correct sanctions statement [1] is that they are secondary in nature (see for example Sec 3). So the insurance company will face all the same sanctions that the ICC judge is facing if they serve them. They banks will cutoff the insurance company as well, because the banks themselves use US infrastructure.
The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems. Then it comes down to how the US responds and whether EU can take that hit.
The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems.
There are strong calls from the EP now for the EC to prepare the blocking statute:
There's another possible outcome as well: commerce moves to the black market, which eventually inverts the traditional national sovereignty relationship such that people learn that if they want to get anything done safely, they do it over encrypted communication channels with cryptocurrencies, and eventually the rump states of "official" governments are seen as cosplayers fighting over a pageant that people pay lip service to but don't rely on anymore.
The effect of these transitive sanctions is to create trading blocks. If you want to do business with the U.S, you don't do business with sanctioned entities. If other world powers (like China or the EU) want to negate the power of U.S. sanctions, they pass laws that people in their countries must not comply with U.S. sanctions or risk being sanctioned themselves. Now firms are stuck: if they comply with one set of sanctions they are in violation of another, and vice versa, and so it becomes impossible to comply with all of them. Their two options are: 1) comply with their local, national trading bloc and forego the benefits of globalization and trade or 2) become an outlaw, get the benefits of trade, but risk the ire of national authorities.
#2 seems rather unthinkable right now, coming off the Pax Americana, but it was actually quite common during historical periods like the one we're headed into. That's the choice made by pirates during the 1600s; by American colonists in the 1770s; oftentimes by frontier settlers in ~1860s America; and by numerous non-state nations like Jews or Gypsies throughout history. Plus, the Internet and cryptocurrencies and VPNs and Tor and residential proxies all exist. The technology is there for a market state that crosses national boundaries, and the social conditions are building.
Notice I said "outcome" rather than "solution", as I think people can see many things wrong with this. You'll kinda get whatever emerges, which probably is not an improvement on what we had from 1990-2020.
> The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems
Unfortunately, the fact that they haven't done this just makes the EU look like a paper tiger.
The EU does not work like Trump, resolving issues through diplomacy is always the preferred first option. Trump also backed down from his Greenland threats after the EU messaged that it might employ the trade bazooka and some EU countries sent some army personnel to Greenland.
They could have immediately activated the trade bazooka when Trump was threatening Greenland, but the slower diplomatic approach also worked and led to far less damage on both sides.
Maybe for most things but the EU and Trump are both fully aligned on their Israel policy, which is what the ICC sanctions are about. You will not see the EU disagree with him here.
I’ve read that at least in the case of some EU banks, not following the foreign sanctions is quite literally not an option for them.
If you don’t follow sanctions, other banks either with branches doing business in the U.S., or their partner banks, will refuse to continue banking with you out of fear for not following sanctions – which include banks enabling sanction-circumvention. Essentially, even if the bank doesn’t want to deal with USD (which most banks would still like to do!), you’re still bound by the sanctions. A bank won’t survive long or well if it’s cut off from a majority of other banks.
This is just a case of carrot vs stick. European countries need to threaten their companies with an even bigger stick if they follow foreign sanctions.
China does this via laws that say, if you do not provide services to Chinese citizens/entities citing foreign sanctions, they can send you to a gulag forever. Seems to be fairly effective, considering how heavily sanctioned Huawei is.
Which is why it would need to be a law. The only option would be for the US to take the insane move of cutting off every bank in Europe. If they did actually do that, while it would be painful in the short term, it would be incredibly beneficial for Europe in the long term.
After the last 2 years you _still_ haven't learnt that _everything_ like this is completely negotiable and can change tomorrow? That it's all might makes right? God, you must've been one of those people who in 2014 claimed it was unthinkable that a country would leave the EU, or took Trump's threats as fact even after his 20th TACO turn.
All these hard "immediate consequences" scenarios are pure fiction. Not because they can't become truth, they can. But there's a hundred other possibilities. Literally sticking to the "letter of the law" is just one of them, and not a particularly likely one.
The use of quotes indicates that that's the US perception of her under the current administration. You can read the relevant executive order/public statements if you need insight into why Trump and his appointees feel that way.
> Regardless of what one personally thinks about the ICC, this isn’t a good look for neither the US nor Europe.
> For the U.S., because sanctioning an “unpleasant”, but in essence harmless individual (geopolitically speaking) is ridiculous. Falling victim to de-banking alone can really ruin one’s life.
Not a good look sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s effective over the near term. Especially if they keep expanding this to include more of the ICC bench.
That’s the whole point of such sanctions anyway. It might feel different because it’s a Canadian judge and not a Russian oligarch. But at the core the USA wants to put pressure on something and the means is indirectly applied to an individual.
Not a good look sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s effective over the near term. Especially if they keep expanding this to include more of the ICC bench.
Yes, effective in speeding up decoupling of the EU banking system from the US and quickly reducing the use of the systems of Mastercard and Visa. Last year's sanctions on ICC individuals already had a large effect. For instance, the fear of further dependence on US companies has already caused blocking of the sale of the Dutch company Solvinity (who maintain the Dutch digital ID systems) to Kyndryl and has put some countries on the path of moving off Office 365, Exchange and even Windows.
It's just insane stupidity by the US administration. It's very unlikely that an US official would ever be arrested for the ICC, allies wouldn't go there. So, it's just putting Europe on a path to purchase less and less from US service/software companies to protect Benny, who could simply avoid being arrested by not going to a country that joined the ICC.
> IIRC most of them were "debanked" due to crypto fraud or other financial crimes.
How would you even know this? Was there a poll done across every Trump supporter where they admitted to committing financial fraud? Do you mean to say Trump's 'pundits' and not his 'supporters'?
Also, the majority of pushback to debanking that I've seen among MAGA types I know IRL is more centered around the 2022 trucker protests and the debatably unjust reaction from the Canadian government.
Depending on where you live, your country may or may not have decided to give legal force to ICC rulings by joining the Rome Statute treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute). If you live in a democracy, this was decided by democratic means, and can be changed the same way. This is not a unique situation, there will be many, many other treaties that your country has decided to sign up to.
Luckily my country is not a party. I don’t want my government (that I elect) outsourcing any decision-making power to a body I do not elect (ICC). As a voter this is a hard NO for me.
The answer is staring you in the face but I'm not surprised you never bothered even to scratch the surface. The ICC doesn't replace national courts. Actually it encourages them to do their job. But sometimes the national courts can't settle it. For example the biggest point of an international court is that they should be able to settle international disputes. Get it? Inter-national. That's when the two parties are different countries, each with their own elected representatives and their own judges to decide in each country's favor. So what do you do then? You go to an international body which has no intrinsic bias or conflict of interest, ideally.
I see how you're trying to twist this into an act of "sovereignty" but not signing up is usually a sign that the respective country is a common perpetrator of exactly the type of crime the ICC would convict (war crimes, genocide, that type of thing). And wouldn't you know it, just check out the list ;).
ICC is trying to get the elected officials in Israel on trial for enacting a defensive policy they think is vital for the country, and overwhelmingly supported by their public.
The State of Palestine is. Hamas is more like a political party, so your question is like asking if the Conservative Party is a member of the ICC, it makes no sense.
Being a political party and not a state, Hamas cannot enter into treaties, no more than the local chess club can enter into a treaty. Depending on the political processes of Palestine (of which I have no idea) it might be able to withdraw The State of Palestine from the Rome Statute, but it hasn't done that so far.
Good company, eh? The US, Israel, terrorist organization Hamas. That's what you're saying right?
You know you hit rock bottom when your defense is saying "the terrorist organization also does it". But I have full confidence in you that you will manage to dig yourself even deeper.
I'm sure Israel would love to have the Swiss as their neighbors but it's Hamas they're dealing with. And it's not a "terrorist organization", in Gaza it is a government that commits terror. The ministry of education or health in Gaza are Hamas. The police are Hamas. The tax collectors are Hamas.
Israel should have the Swiss for their neighbors but they decided to ethnically cleanse and colonize Palestine instead of creating Israel in Europe where it belongs. Palestinians are fighting for their lives and their land, Israel is fighting to ethnically cleanse the indigenous people off the land they've been living on continuously for thousands of years.
1. Around half of Israelis are not from Europe, but from Arab countries (Sephardic). Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria etc.
2. Jews have always lived on this land, for as long as history is recorded. Safed, Tiberias and Jerusalem have had continuous Jewish presence for thousands of years.
3. The land belonged to the British mandate and before to the Ottomans, never a self-governing Palestinian group (which are just Arabs).
4. Palestinians are not fighting for their lives and land; that has been offered many times before, starting in the 1930s with various plans, then with the British partition plan, then many other times culminating in Oslo accords and later in the Gaza disengagement. They could have had one state, two states, autonomy, whatever they wanted. They refused all of those, because their STATED goal is to completely and thoroughly remove Jews from that land, which is considered holy to Islam (Al Aqsa mosque is built on the ruins of the Jewish temple mount).
Now when Islam came into being, around the sixth century, Jews were a few thousand years old already. So think about this when you try to attribute the land to this group or that.
That's fine, it's democracy in action. I don't know why particularly you'd be worried about ICC rulings since they apply to very grave crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the "crime of aggression" (using large scale military forces to invade other countries). Hope you've not been doing any of those!
> "We are judges, and we are being told that rather than deciding our cases on the basis of the facts and the law before us, as we are duty bound to do, we're being asked to decide the cases or not decide them in accordance with the wishes of the U.S. government," she said.
Having seen some other texts, at least one other judge (Guillou) has really strange attitudes of the role of the court, discussing the European project, etc. in articles about the court.
The fellow does not give the impression of understand fully that he's sitting on an internal court with its own powers, and the way US/Polish/etc. crimes have been excluded from the Afghanistan investigation even though people relevant in such an investigation are particularly easy to interview since so many are in Europe I think these people genuinely do not understand their job, or have given themselves another job in their minds.
Prost is now basically doing public outreach, Guillou was doing public outreach and diplomacy trying to interact with the EU to get it to enforce its blocking statute regarding sanctions on the court-- all this stuff instead of using the powers they're granted by Rome statute to deal with this specific problem.
They have the remedy. Anyone retaliating against the court can be ordered arrested, and the signatories have to do it or they're in breach of the treaty.
The level of subservience of the judges is just ridiculous.
> One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.
Then it is high time to make the company legally required not to follow the U.S. sanctions.
I don’t think this is the right option: if the target were legitimate, then we would welcome this level of impact. But if our (US) partner countries had the option to declare themselves exempt from applying individual sanctions, that seems like a good escape hatch.
>Then it is high time to make the company legally required not to follow the U.S. sanctions.
Preach, it's not like the US is gagging for it when it comes to following EU laws and sanctions either.
Historically, we went along following US sanctions despite not always agreeing with them, because the US was the one ensuring most of our defensive capabilities in Europe, but Trump set that contract on fire and told us to pay for our own defense, and we said fine, but now that we're remilitarizing on our own dime to defend ourselves without the US, why should we still follow the whims of US politics anymore? You can't have your cake and eat it too Orange Man.
To quote Theoden from LotR: "You Have No Power Here!"
"I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
ICC judge and she has a device like this in her house. I think that she did not read any Snowden related books.
Furthermore it's a bit of a missed opportunity for her to not move to Proton, NextCloud, GrapheneOS, and show how she can still live her life with many modern conveniences. She could find some non-over-complient companies and list them, I'd go for those from now on, great PR. But alas, she is not a Techy. Maybe Meredith Whittaker can pay her a visit and show her a thing or two. I'd like to see that happen. Whittaker will be in the Netherlands soon for an Honorary degree [0]
I agree that she should not have an Alexa, but how do you pay for Proton, your ISP, your electricity bill, hosting... when you are debanked? Not having health insurance is also not solvable with technology unfortunately.
I agree it's not easy, but someone in her position could put out a call for companies that would support her (and benefit from very good PR in the process). Ie, perhaps the Dutch ethical (and low-tech) bank Triodos would be a candidate? I agree such companies would really put their behinds on the line, so maybe that won't work...
This is at once thuggish and petty. If the US Govt doesn’t recognize the ICC then…don’t? Going after individual judges is mafia tactics.
It’s also guaranteed to backfire - no judge who by definition deeply believes in the mission and legitimacy of the ICC is going to be deterred by these tactics.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu because of the genocide Israel is committing, that's what upset the Americans. I doubt even Trump would go this far if it wasn't for that.
Which Americans? I think it just upset only the Zionists, Epstein class, members of congress bought and paid for by Israel(AIPAC) including the US presidential administration, plus the boomers who've been brainwashed by decades of Zionist propaganda on TV, but I imagine a large part of US voter base, especially under-35s, don't agree with this if polled.
At least every American I know in Europe(not a representative sample size, I know) is vehemently against supporting what Israel is doing.
While there is arguably still some influence from democratic pressure on some areas of US Federal policy, foreign policy and warmaking (including financial warfare like this) are not among them. These have been insulated from public opinion since approximately the the 1940s. It took a massive organization against the draft to (arguably, possibly, maybe -- we'll never really know) shorten the Vietnam war (which, incidentally, was never declared a War by the democratically elected Congress), and that was the high water mark of democratic influence on the security state since WW2.
In short, the opinion of Americans is just not relevant to America's foreign policy decisions. Even a 100% anti-Zionist Congress would be unable to stop supporting the genocide.
>Even a 100% anti-Zionist Congress would be unable to stop supporting the genocide.
Yes, they would be able to if the majority party actually wanted to. Trump could be impeached for so many things I can't count. It's not happening because Republican members of the house and senate don't want to or are afraid to.
America is a democracy, right? Every American is 100% culpable for everything their government does.
I mean, the US is overwhelmingly the world's most dangerous rogue nation, committing terrorism, rampant piracy, making the world an infinitely more dangerous place (are HNers aware that the US has changed to a first strike nuclear policy, coupled with Trump now having tactical, low-yield nukes as an accepted policy? Do you know how unbelievably perilous both of these profoundly stupid things are?), attacking allies, undermining democracy all over the world, and just generally being a world shitheel. And look, the midterms might...maybe...slightly go against the Republicans.
>Every American is 100% culpable for everything their government does.
I disagree. I'm EU citizen and I am not culpable for everything my and the EU government does, because while being democracies on paper, I don't get to directly vote on the leadership of the EU(Ursula) nor the individual policies of my country and the EU decide to take, especially on external politics, which are often against my choices, but I have no say in it.
Sure, I can try to vote those people out, but that means a delay of at least another election cycle(provided the majority is on my side), in which time they can legally keep doing what I don't want them to do.
My point is, democracy isn't some magic wand that does the peoples' wishes at current time, but has plenty of flaws known and documented since the ancient greeks.
> are HNers aware that the US has changed to a first strike nuclear policy, coupled with Trump now having tactical, low-yield nukes as an accepted policy?
I mean if I and a group of my friends got together to plan the kidnap of a foreign leader I would not be surprised if it pissed off that leader's allies and they sanctioned me.
This would apply no matter how justified I felt that kidnapping the leader of a nuclear state would somehow help world peace.
You can’t convince me that this administration isn’t intentionally driving this country into the ground. Our whole economic growth story is basically that our tech companies can provide service to 8 billion people, not just 0.35 B Americans. Moves like this makes buying American (or even just watching YouTube) toxic.
Edit: not to mention moving our allies toward not complying with US sanctions at all, reducing American soft power
In the modern world, to deprive someone of access to the banking system, internet connectivity, or access to their digital identity, is similar to depriving someone of housing or clothing. They're necessities for participation in modern society, so this amounts to a civil death sentence or civiliter mortuus.
There is just no alternative to Microsoft. Since they push everything into cloud MS gets centralised control. Cutting MS literally cuts the person off from anything digital.
There is some movement to reduce MS dependency in Europe, but it's not yet there. Until then, this will be a huge lever available to US.
Of course there is alternative, you just have to want it. My company also had a very big dependency on Russian software and Russian employees themselves, and the invasion of Ukraine cut that Gordian knot. The incetives just have to be there and be big enough.
> One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.
I would hope the French gov would step in and pay her claims directly.
Foreign nations choose to sign the Rome Statute. Should the rest of the world be prohibited from thinking Netanyahu is a war criminal because it might offend non-signatory countries?
History will remember your actions, being against an international court is a sign you are the bad guy. Not even mentioning anything else that is magnitudes worse.
Funding of nearly every major USA political can only get you so far.
I sympathize with the ICC judge's plight, but they already violated international law by issuing an arrest warrant for a citizen of a nation that isn't a party to the ICC. Yes, I'm aware that they justify it because Palestine is a party to the ICC, but Palestine isn't an internationally-recognized state for better or worse.
> Palestine isn't an internationally-recognized state for better or worse.
Yes, it is.
From Wikipedia:
"Palestine is a permanent non-member observer state at the United Nations (UN) and is recognized as a sovereign state by 157 of the UN's 193 member states."
Regardless of the legal foundation, there isn't much point in having an ICC without the power to go after leaders of non-party states. You can't rely on heads of state to volunteer themselves for prosecution.
No, that is the only thing that makes the ICC justifiable under the anarchy of international relations. If a leader of a nation unilaterally revokes the treaty submitting themselves to the ICC's jurisdiction, that's a harder case, and I'd support the ICC going after that nation's citizens if they commit other offenses.
But if a nation decides not to submit to the ICC, then it's up to the UN Security Council to go after them, and the Security Council was set up intentionally to only allow punishment of leaders where every major power can agree. The Security Council at least tries to work with the reality of international relations, whereas the ICC in this case is way out of line.
> "You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be,"
> Her credit cards, issued in the Netherlands and Canada, were canceled. She has managed to keep some bank accounts, but says her banking services are extremely limited and even small transfers can be blocked.
> One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.
This is beyond chilling. You could conceivably self-host some alternatives, although you could easily lose your domain name and internet access. Maybe in a fictional future some sort of crypto currency could help with the de-banking. I don't think there's a solution for losing your health insurance though.
All because the US doesn't want Israel to be held accountable in the ICC. I don't think we've ever been closer to fascism and it's in service for a foreign country (not that it would be ok if it wasn't!).
How many services take Monero? It also does not solve your health insurance being taken away. This situation is a very good use-case/advertisement for anonymous crypto though.
Europeans have a superiority complex in believing their law is 'international'. It's not. American law rests on a joint agreement among the governed. The American people have never agreed to be governed by a foreign court.
> Europeans have a superiority complex in believing their law is 'international'.
Do you even know what the ICC is based on?
> American law rests on a joint agreement among the governed.
No, it doesn't.
> The American people have never agreed to be governed by a foreign court.
That's the first true statement in your reply, and it means they can simply ignore the court. It doesn't mean targeting the employees of the court. That's just the US govt. being thugs.
As an American, I never agreed to anything. Not our laws, not our system of government, not our borders or wars... I mentioned it in another comment but we live under a defacto monopoly of violence held by the state.
> It doesn't mean targeting the employees of the court.
Generally it is mean exactly that.
The judicial system is a branch of governmental authority. Any government on the planet Earth sees the establishment of unauthorize parallel branches of authority as one of the most serious crimes, and people who belong to such bodies face extremely harsh penalties up to physical elimination by the military force.
You talk as if the ICC had just appeared and asserted its authority out of nowhere and then started kidnapping people to charge them.
In reality, it was established by treaty, and 125 countries have chosen to vest authority in it. Originally that list included Israel, the US, and Russia, who supported the establishment of the court but subsequently withdrew when they perceived that being member states would constrain their strategic ambitions.
I'm American and I never once agreed to any of our laws. Countries have a monopoly on violence, that is it. You can agree, disagree and try to survive or hope some other country will let you immigrate.
That being said, I think the vast majority of Americans are ok with the ICC holding people committing genocide accountable. Most Americans also do not like the influence Israel has on our country and these sanctions are just yet more proof that we are occupied and not even operating in our government's own interests.
I don't like Israel TBH. I just don't need foreigners telling the American government who to arrest. The American law enforcement authorities should be following American laws and American court edicts.
The ICC is judging Israel on its actions. It doesn't matter that some people claim that Israel is our "ally", that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
It's hilarious how one-way the "ally" thing is. Don't worry, senior Israeli members are openly opining that the US needs to suffer another 9/11. "Ally".
Regardless of what one personally thinks about the ICC, this isn’t a good look for neither the US nor Europe.
For the U.S., because sanctioning an “unpleasant”, but in essence harmless individual (geopolitically speaking) is ridiculous. Falling victim to de-banking alone can really ruin one’s life.
And for the EU, because it once again showcases the dependence on U.S. systems for just about anything tech-related in everyday life and work.
It undermines the idea of the U.S. as a neutral arbiter for law, order, and free commerce. That may always have been a fiction, but it's a very useful fiction because it underpins U.S. soft power. It's much easier to get consent for being the world hegemon when you act like a benevolent, disinterested hegemon. Once you start becoming a participant - and overriding other institutions that are ostensibly providing neutral, impartial justice just because their decisions are inconvenient for you - you are essentially placing yourself below them and undermining your own legitimacy.
Neutrality and objectivity may be a fiction, but it's one of the most useful fictions that have been invented in the last 500 years.
America has apparently decided that the fiction is no longer useful. At least not to us.
I can't say I'm happy about that, but it's a fact now. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle. Even a change of leadership soon will not alter the realization that it can change back on a moment's notice.
So... we will find out.
I think we will come to realize that liberalism died in Gaza. It exposed all of the hypocrisy that had always been there, it was just hidden under a mask of propaganda. Exposure to the raw events on social media allowed people to see the difference between what was happening and what we were being told. The mask came off and it's not going back on.
That hypocrisy has been there for decades if you had looked, so it seems wrong to consider the catalyst as being "Gaza" rather than things like increased alternative media from digital communications, influence campaigns, etc. Also you're drastically overstating things by balling it up as "liberalism" rather than say the US-as-hegemon world order.
Less than "liberalism" I'd say "westernism". Liberalism out of direct western influence it's pretty much in line with what liberalism is supposed to be.
> I think we will come to realize that liberalism died in Gaza.
Utterly ridiculous. Hamas had it coming after Oct 7th. What else did they expect other than swift and brutal retaliation after doing to Israel what 9/11 was for the US?
This is a 2024 comment. We are past these talking points.
Do you know what Israel did and still is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank)? It goes way beyond “retaliation”. A genocidal, algorithmic rampage that spared no one. “Collateral damage” taken to its extreme. It is a testbed for techniques to crush armed liberation movements. For the US in particular, this is how the 2nd amendment can be rendered obsolete.
I am curious. Would you empathize more if Gaza was a Ukrainian enclave in Russia that tried to break free from its status as a blockaded strip of land? Is the involvement of non-white victims the problem? Perhaps it’s because there are Palestinians involved? Maybe if this were a fictional struggle set in some fictional universe involving some kind of “rebel” group; is that what it takes to spare an ounce of empathy?
The Right to resist is a well-known cornerstone of liberalism, and yes Israel has been chipping away at it since its formation and Nakba.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_resist
The right to resist is not the right to commit deliberate civilian massacres.
If October 7 had been directed against the West Bank settlers then we could get behind it, but instead it was just Hamas expressing their genocidal intent.
Firstly, you are aware that Gaza is & was under full blockade, right? And that there is no way to reach the West Bank from Gaza?
Secondly, I can assure you that you would NOT have gotten behind anything Hamas did. You (not you specifically, just generally) wouldn’t have supported them because you’re conditioned to not support them. You are also more susceptible to propaganda than you think you are, and trust me, the media machine would have been in full gear regardless of what operation Hamas pulled off.
It is easy to talk about theoreticals, but if you’re missing the ongoing reality, why do you think that you would handle the theoretical scenario any differently? Same idea applies to fiction. People jump to oppose the Empire, but had they been living in the Star Wars universe, odds are that Imperial propaganda would have been extremely effective.
You know the saying: “A liberal is someone who opposes every war except the current war, and supports all civil rights movements except the one that's going on right now.”
Occupying forces are not civilians, that being said October 7th was primarily directed at the IDF. That Israel has mandatory conscription and deliberately inhabits stolen Palestinian land doesn't make the victims civilian. That's not even touching on the large number of people in Israel killed by the IDF under the Hannibal Directive. Deaths incorrectly attributed to Hamas:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal_Directive#Claimed_use...
Did the Palestinian children sniped in the head and chest have it coming as well?
Did the 500+ teenagers and early-20-something women at the music festival Hamas stormed deserve to be raped, tortured, and murdered?
The answer to both of these questions is a resounding "NO". But the question remains of why you have contrasted them as if they are in opposition.
What's your point? Are you saying that if you kill my kids then I can kill you, then kill your kids, your wife, your parents, grandparents, their brothers and sisters and their kids? And that's ok and I'm better than you? meaning I'm good and you are evil? or what are you arguing?
Generally, the point is my people are more valuable than your people. This is how Israel itself is able to maintain the injustice in Gaza and the WB. Heck, the IOF proudly operates under this model: a 1:50 combatant to civilian kill ratio is normal operating procedure.
They applied the same concept in Iran during the 12 Day War, where they performed “targeted strikes” on apartment buildings housing nuclear scientists and other top officials, while killing 10s of civilians in the process. And then they (unironically) believed that Iranians would rise up against their government instead of rallying around the flag, at least temporarily.
This didn't happen in a vacuum.
If you spent decades chanting "Death to Israel" and then raped, tortured, and murdered 1000+ Israeli teens and young adults, you should expect that Israel might believe the "Death to Israel" chant is serious and decide that the best option is death to you instead.
What are you talking about? Israel spent decades ethnically cleansing Palestinians and they're still doing it, at scale. They had already murdered orders of magnitude more Palestinians than Israelis killed by the IDF and Hamas combined on Oct 7th.
Hamas did expect it, just like their kindred warmongering spirits in Israel expect further retaliation. However, Palestinian civilians most certainly did not deserve it.
Exactly. Oct 7th was Israel's 9/11.
Hamas had the option to attack military targets. Instead they targeted a music festival full of civilians, murdering almost everyone, and raping most of the women there. (For those who doubt, there are a lot of sources. CNN, BBC, Al Jezeera, and even the UN's own fact-finding mission all confirm the rapes and murders.)
> Oct 7th was Israel's 9/11.
And the way the US reacted to 9/11 was an enormous mistake.
As an American, I don't think anyone informed has ever perceived the US as neutral, at least not since the 20th century. We have veto power with control of the US dollar, the ability of the US military to engage in any part of the world (historically, much less so in current year), and being a permanent member of the UN Security Council.
In my opinion, the sanctioning of these judges simply comes across as a petty tantrum of a nation in decline, using the remaining tools it has at it's disposal to try to get its way.
edit: typo
As you say neutrality is a fiction.
Everything the US does and has done is aimed at defending itself and its interests, which includes its allies, as it should, and as it must.
The extent to which these actions appeared neutral was just a product of the overwhelming power of the US and overwhelming unity - by virtue of deference - prevalent among the Western powers during the Cold War, in the shadow of a common enemy.
Global neutral institutions exist on a fictional foundation that becomes thinner by the day. For substantial matters on which there is no rational answer, the only solution is the exercise of power.
In this case, the US and Israel were never parties to the ICC, so the ICC was never neutral with respect to them. If they had submitted to the ICC, I think your point would be valid.
I'm making a subtly different point. Pre-2002, the U.S. filled the role that the ICC does now. We would work multilaterally with a lot of different countries - many of whom are signatories of the Rome Statute now - to send UN peacekeeping forces to conflict areas and bring the perpetrators of genocide and crimes against humanity to justice. Post-2002 (and there was a lot going around in 2002-2004 to tarnish the U.S's international reputation besides the ICC), we became one of several parties that didn't sign the ICC. And now we seem to be actively retaliating against ICC judges, and not even for their decisions - this case is because the judge held that a decision could be made.
A lot of Americans believe that power is winning. There's a fight, and the side that wins is the more powerful one. But true power comes from not having anyone question your decisions, such that there is never a fight in the first place. And that's the dynamic I'm commenting on. Eisenhower was a powerful president even though he started no new wars (indeed, he ended the Korean war). With 70%+ approval ratings domestically and unquestioned economic supremacy abroad, he didn't need to.
Ostensibly does an incredible amount of work here.
There are legitimate, serious grievances with institutions like the ICC. We're talking about an institution that believes it can override the sovereignty of nations and democratically elected governments to go after you or anyone, and the judges are chosen by a byzantine bureaucratic process that involves effectively zero input from you or the democratically determined laws of your nation. It's pretty nakedly a vehicle for the interests of various international political players.
The grievance you express here basically comes down to "Who decides?" The reason the ICC is objectionable to the U.S. (and China, and Russia, and India - there are a bunch of other non-signatories of the ICC agreement, and I'm not picking on the U.S. here, more trying to illustrate a dynamic) is because it sets up a justice system that is not accountable to the U.S. political process.
The reason I'm saying that this undermines U.S. soft power and legitimacy is because it shouldn't matter who decides. If your country actually stands for freedom, justice, and universal human rights, then another human working from those principles would reach the same conclusion you do. That's what makes them universal human rights. So the implicit message when judges are sanctioned because other nations disagree with their right to make decisions is that maybe those rights aren't universal after all, and that some people's rights are more right than others. It's telegraphing insecurity - someone who knows they are in the right will happily let others make the decision, because they trust that others will come to the same conclusion as them.
The rest of your post also comes from that frame. You may actually be right - I acknowledged that neutrality and objectivity is likely a fiction. The thing is, that fiction underpins the ideas of rule of law, democracy, freedom, justice, and peace. All of those stem from a basic trust that your fellow humans, once they are trained to think in those terms, will come to the same conclusions that you do. So yes, perhaps all of international relations is power players advancing their own interests - but once everybody believes that to be true, we will lose rule of law, democracy, freedom, justice, and peace.
> If your country actually stands for freedom, justice, and universal human rights, then another human working from those principles would reach the same conclusion you do.
These principles are not objective moral axioms that we can all reason from.
We decide, as sovereign countries, what they mean to us, how they should be implemented, or even if we (as a country) don't value this or that. There is no magical tablet of Rights that we can spiritually commune with to determine "X is a right but Y is not." These are all politically and culturally determined.
So it absolutely matters, very, very much who decides, and millions have died as a consequence of those decisions. It does not make much sense for anyone to hand those decisions over to the ICC. Unless and until we have a single global culture and moral framework the whole idea is absurd...except as a vehicle for the power plays of different factions at the international politics level.
Because they are politically and culturally determined, because they are not something that people are just born with the innate ability to find, is exactly why handing decisions over to people belonging to different cultures/societies/institutions is highly dangerous. The only way to actually protect our rights is to not accede to institutions like the ICC. It's absurd to say that because billions of people could be trained to believe in things they don't believe in we must act as though the things they don't believe in are universally true, or else we will lose our freedoms. We can simply live in sovereign countries that do hold these beliefs - and as for the countries that do things we find revolting, we can pressure them or ignore them or war with them as we see fit and as has been done since the dawn of time. But ultimately you have to accept that different cultures have different values, even if you're one of those that want to do something about it. You can't just stick your head in the sand and pretend the ICC actually adheres to these ideals.
The ICC was set up specifically to prevent national-scale criminals from hiding behind vague concepts of sovereignty and immunity, such that once someone scaled or inherited the heights of power they effectively had free rein to do whatever they want without fear of repercussions. The incentivized dictatorship as internal opposition was the only legal check on atrocity.
But the crucial point that makes the ICC work is that a country needs to submit to its jurisdiction. Once they went beyond that, they destroyed the entire legitimacy of the court. Also, they refused to arrest Putin even after he was sanctioned by the ICC, despite Russia being a formal party to the Rome Statute, so they're either hypocrites or cowards.
Right. Except national sovereignty exists for a reason. Now an unaccountable international court can hold you liable for doing things they don't like. You didn't solve the problem. You just added an extra institution that will pursue these "aims" in a partisan and particular fashion and will be responsible for its own atrocities sooner or later.
EU is not necessarily dependent on the US in all the cases that are listed in the article. Take AXA, the insurance company. They could probably survive doing business just in the EU and withdraw entirely out of the US market. But for them it's more lucrative to piss off one judge rather than lose the US share of profits. As the article describes, it's a business decision. But not one that necessarily means life or death (for the company).
My understanding from glancing at the hopefully correct sanctions statement [1] is that they are secondary in nature (see for example Sec 3). So the insurance company will face all the same sanctions that the ICC judge is facing if they serve them. They banks will cutoff the insurance company as well, because the banks themselves use US infrastructure.
The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems. Then it comes down to how the US responds and whether EU can take that hit.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo...
The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems.
There are strong calls from the EP now for the EC to prepare the blocking statute:
https://www.politico.eu/article/block-us-sanctions-on-the-ic...
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...
There's another possible outcome as well: commerce moves to the black market, which eventually inverts the traditional national sovereignty relationship such that people learn that if they want to get anything done safely, they do it over encrypted communication channels with cryptocurrencies, and eventually the rump states of "official" governments are seen as cosplayers fighting over a pageant that people pay lip service to but don't rely on anymore.
The effect of these transitive sanctions is to create trading blocks. If you want to do business with the U.S, you don't do business with sanctioned entities. If other world powers (like China or the EU) want to negate the power of U.S. sanctions, they pass laws that people in their countries must not comply with U.S. sanctions or risk being sanctioned themselves. Now firms are stuck: if they comply with one set of sanctions they are in violation of another, and vice versa, and so it becomes impossible to comply with all of them. Their two options are: 1) comply with their local, national trading bloc and forego the benefits of globalization and trade or 2) become an outlaw, get the benefits of trade, but risk the ire of national authorities.
#2 seems rather unthinkable right now, coming off the Pax Americana, but it was actually quite common during historical periods like the one we're headed into. That's the choice made by pirates during the 1600s; by American colonists in the 1770s; oftentimes by frontier settlers in ~1860s America; and by numerous non-state nations like Jews or Gypsies throughout history. Plus, the Internet and cryptocurrencies and VPNs and Tor and residential proxies all exist. The technology is there for a market state that crosses national boundaries, and the social conditions are building.
Notice I said "outcome" rather than "solution", as I think people can see many things wrong with this. You'll kinda get whatever emerges, which probably is not an improvement on what we had from 1990-2020.
> The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems
Unfortunately, the fact that they haven't done this just makes the EU look like a paper tiger.
The EU does not work like Trump, resolving issues through diplomacy is always the preferred first option. Trump also backed down from his Greenland threats after the EU messaged that it might employ the trade bazooka and some EU countries sent some army personnel to Greenland.
They could have immediately activated the trade bazooka when Trump was threatening Greenland, but the slower diplomatic approach also worked and led to far less damage on both sides.
Maybe for most things but the EU and Trump are both fully aligned on their Israel policy, which is what the ICC sanctions are about. You will not see the EU disagree with him here.
EU politicians should grow some balls and force their companies to ignore US sanctions in cases like these
Canada did this for the Cuba sanctions years ago. There was/is a semi famous story about Walmart Canada and Cuban PJ's.
I’ve read that at least in the case of some EU banks, not following the foreign sanctions is quite literally not an option for them.
If you don’t follow sanctions, other banks either with branches doing business in the U.S., or their partner banks, will refuse to continue banking with you out of fear for not following sanctions – which include banks enabling sanction-circumvention. Essentially, even if the bank doesn’t want to deal with USD (which most banks would still like to do!), you’re still bound by the sanctions. A bank won’t survive long or well if it’s cut off from a majority of other banks.
This is just a case of carrot vs stick. European countries need to threaten their companies with an even bigger stick if they follow foreign sanctions.
China does this via laws that say, if you do not provide services to Chinese citizens/entities citing foreign sanctions, they can send you to a gulag forever. Seems to be fairly effective, considering how heavily sanctioned Huawei is.
Which is why it would need to be a law. The only option would be for the US to take the insane move of cutting off every bank in Europe. If they did actually do that, while it would be painful in the short term, it would be incredibly beneficial for Europe in the long term.
Chinese banks dont enforce american sanctions and it certainly hasnt ruined their banking system.
This is why WERO and the digital Euro are so crucial. Once the EU has a separate financial backbone, they can tell the US to go pound sand.
After the last 2 years you _still_ haven't learnt that _everything_ like this is completely negotiable and can change tomorrow? That it's all might makes right? God, you must've been one of those people who in 2014 claimed it was unthinkable that a country would leave the EU, or took Trump's threats as fact even after his 20th TACO turn.
All these hard "immediate consequences" scenarios are pure fiction. Not because they can't become truth, they can. But there's a hundred other possibilities. Literally sticking to the "letter of the law" is just one of them, and not a particularly likely one.
Why is she unpleasant?
The use of quotes indicates that that's the US perception of her under the current administration. You can read the relevant executive order/public statements if you need insight into why Trump and his appointees feel that way.
> Regardless of what one personally thinks about the ICC, this isn’t a good look for neither the US nor Europe.
> For the U.S., because sanctioning an “unpleasant”, but in essence harmless individual (geopolitically speaking) is ridiculous. Falling victim to de-banking alone can really ruin one’s life.
Not a good look sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s effective over the near term. Especially if they keep expanding this to include more of the ICC bench.
That’s the whole point of such sanctions anyway. It might feel different because it’s a Canadian judge and not a Russian oligarch. But at the core the USA wants to put pressure on something and the means is indirectly applied to an individual.
Not a good look sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s effective over the near term. Especially if they keep expanding this to include more of the ICC bench.
Yes, effective in speeding up decoupling of the EU banking system from the US and quickly reducing the use of the systems of Mastercard and Visa. Last year's sanctions on ICC individuals already had a large effect. For instance, the fear of further dependence on US companies has already caused blocking of the sale of the Dutch company Solvinity (who maintain the Dutch digital ID systems) to Kyndryl and has put some countries on the path of moving off Office 365, Exchange and even Windows.
It's just insane stupidity by the US administration. It's very unlikely that an US official would ever be arrested for the ICC, allies wouldn't go there. So, it's just putting Europe on a path to purchase less and less from US service/software companies to protect Benny, who could simply avoid being arrested by not going to a country that joined the ICC.
> Falling victim to de-banking alone
This is especially ironic given how many Trump supporters had "de-banking" as their main issue.
IIRC most of them were "debanked" due to crypto fraud or other financial crimes.
This is doubly "ironic" considering the left was all for debanking right-wing dissenters (Freedom Convoy) when they were in power.
> IIRC most of them were "debanked" due to crypto fraud or other financial crimes.
How would you even know this? Was there a poll done across every Trump supporter where they admitted to committing financial fraud? Do you mean to say Trump's 'pundits' and not his 'supporters'?
Also, the majority of pushback to debanking that I've seen among MAGA types I know IRL is more centered around the 2022 trucker protests and the debatably unjust reaction from the Canadian government.
It was a loud handful of guys, not a broad swath of vaguely republican types getting debanked.
> Regardless of what one personally thinks about the ICC, this isn’t a good look
Legitimate question. Why should a third party (whom I do not respect)’s opinion of me matter to me? Do you care what my cat thinks about you?
Depending on where you live, your country may or may not have decided to give legal force to ICC rulings by joining the Rome Statute treaty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute). If you live in a democracy, this was decided by democratic means, and can be changed the same way. This is not a unique situation, there will be many, many other treaties that your country has decided to sign up to.
Luckily my country is not a party. I don’t want my government (that I elect) outsourcing any decision-making power to a body I do not elect (ICC). As a voter this is a hard NO for me.
The answer is staring you in the face but I'm not surprised you never bothered even to scratch the surface. The ICC doesn't replace national courts. Actually it encourages them to do their job. But sometimes the national courts can't settle it. For example the biggest point of an international court is that they should be able to settle international disputes. Get it? Inter-national. That's when the two parties are different countries, each with their own elected representatives and their own judges to decide in each country's favor. So what do you do then? You go to an international body which has no intrinsic bias or conflict of interest, ideally.
I see how you're trying to twist this into an act of "sovereignty" but not signing up is usually a sign that the respective country is a common perpetrator of exactly the type of crime the ICC would convict (war crimes, genocide, that type of thing). And wouldn't you know it, just check out the list ;).
ICC is trying to get the elected officials in Israel on trial for enacting a defensive policy they think is vital for the country, and overwhelmingly supported by their public.
A 'defensive policy' put into practice in the territory of another state that is a signatory.
If you commit crimes in another state, expect to be judged according to their system of law (which in this case includes the ICC).
Is Hamas (which are the only government in Gaza) a signatory of the ICC convention?
The State of Palestine is. Hamas is more like a political party, so your question is like asking if the Conservative Party is a member of the ICC, it makes no sense.
Hamas is a party in the West Bank but in Gaza it is the government.
Being a political party and not a state, Hamas cannot enter into treaties, no more than the local chess club can enter into a treaty. Depending on the political processes of Palestine (of which I have no idea) it might be able to withdraw The State of Palestine from the Rome Statute, but it hasn't done that so far.
Good company, eh? The US, Israel, terrorist organization Hamas. That's what you're saying right?
You know you hit rock bottom when your defense is saying "the terrorist organization also does it". But I have full confidence in you that you will manage to dig yourself even deeper.
I'm sure Israel would love to have the Swiss as their neighbors but it's Hamas they're dealing with. And it's not a "terrorist organization", in Gaza it is a government that commits terror. The ministry of education or health in Gaza are Hamas. The police are Hamas. The tax collectors are Hamas.
Israel should have the Swiss for their neighbors but they decided to ethnically cleanse and colonize Palestine instead of creating Israel in Europe where it belongs. Palestinians are fighting for their lives and their land, Israel is fighting to ethnically cleanse the indigenous people off the land they've been living on continuously for thousands of years.
That's a crazy take on history!
1. Around half of Israelis are not from Europe, but from Arab countries (Sephardic). Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria etc.
2. Jews have always lived on this land, for as long as history is recorded. Safed, Tiberias and Jerusalem have had continuous Jewish presence for thousands of years.
3. The land belonged to the British mandate and before to the Ottomans, never a self-governing Palestinian group (which are just Arabs).
4. Palestinians are not fighting for their lives and land; that has been offered many times before, starting in the 1930s with various plans, then with the British partition plan, then many other times culminating in Oslo accords and later in the Gaza disengagement. They could have had one state, two states, autonomy, whatever they wanted. They refused all of those, because their STATED goal is to completely and thoroughly remove Jews from that land, which is considered holy to Islam (Al Aqsa mosque is built on the ruins of the Jewish temple mount). Now when Islam came into being, around the sixth century, Jews were a few thousand years old already. So think about this when you try to attribute the land to this group or that.
Throughly fascinating history for those who want to learn it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwN0K2ZSAoQ
There is a difference between a state and its governing party (or parties).
Also worth noting that the ICC issued arrest warrants for (now dead) Hamas leaders.
That's fine, it's democracy in action. I don't know why particularly you'd be worried about ICC rulings since they apply to very grave crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the "crime of aggression" (using large scale military forces to invade other countries). Hope you've not been doing any of those!
I would guess he supports those who do.
You wonder why I wouldn’t want unelected bureaucrats deciding my fate? I guess you never lived in USSR. The question is hilariously naïve.
> "We are judges, and we are being told that rather than deciding our cases on the basis of the facts and the law before us, as we are duty bound to do, we're being asked to decide the cases or not decide them in accordance with the wishes of the U.S. government," she said.
Just incredibly naked corruption.
She’s just rephrasing the intent of the sanctions here I believe, not claiming that anyone else is making those demands.
Having seen some other texts, at least one other judge (Guillou) has really strange attitudes of the role of the court, discussing the European project, etc. in articles about the court.
The fellow does not give the impression of understand fully that he's sitting on an internal court with its own powers, and the way US/Polish/etc. crimes have been excluded from the Afghanistan investigation even though people relevant in such an investigation are particularly easy to interview since so many are in Europe I think these people genuinely do not understand their job, or have given themselves another job in their minds.
Prost is now basically doing public outreach, Guillou was doing public outreach and diplomacy trying to interact with the EU to get it to enforce its blocking statute regarding sanctions on the court-- all this stuff instead of using the powers they're granted by Rome statute to deal with this specific problem.
They have the remedy. Anyone retaliating against the court can be ordered arrested, and the signatories have to do it or they're in breach of the treaty.
The level of subservience of the judges is just ridiculous.
> One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.
Then it is high time to make the company legally required not to follow the U.S. sanctions.
I don’t think this is the right option: if the target were legitimate, then we would welcome this level of impact. But if our (US) partner countries had the option to declare themselves exempt from applying individual sanctions, that seems like a good escape hatch.
If the target were legitimate then maybe the EU could stick to respecting legitimate sanctions.
What many people seem to forget is that the US is in the habit of issuing unilateral sanctions. They are not legitimate in the way UN sanctions are.
It's incredible how much local banks and insurances obey US rules like they were foreign entities
>Then it is high time to make the company legally required not to follow the U.S. sanctions.
Preach, it's not like the US is gagging for it when it comes to following EU laws and sanctions either.
Historically, we went along following US sanctions despite not always agreeing with them, because the US was the one ensuring most of our defensive capabilities in Europe, but Trump set that contract on fire and told us to pay for our own defense, and we said fine, but now that we're remilitarizing on our own dime to defend ourselves without the US, why should we still follow the whims of US politics anymore? You can't have your cake and eat it too Orange Man.
To quote Theoden from LotR: "You Have No Power Here!"
"I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
ICC judge and she has a device like this in her house. I think that she did not read any Snowden related books.
Furthermore it's a bit of a missed opportunity for her to not move to Proton, NextCloud, GrapheneOS, and show how she can still live her life with many modern conveniences. She could find some non-over-complient companies and list them, I'd go for those from now on, great PR. But alas, she is not a Techy. Maybe Meredith Whittaker can pay her a visit and show her a thing or two. I'd like to see that happen. Whittaker will be in the Netherlands soon for an Honorary degree [0]
[0] https://vu.nl/nl/nieuws/2026/vu-eredoctoraat-voor-voorvechte...
I agree that she should not have an Alexa, but how do you pay for Proton, your ISP, your electricity bill, hosting... when you are debanked? Not having health insurance is also not solvable with technology unfortunately.
I agree it's not easy, but someone in her position could put out a call for companies that would support her (and benefit from very good PR in the process). Ie, perhaps the Dutch ethical (and low-tech) bank Triodos would be a candidate? I agree such companies would really put their behinds on the line, so maybe that won't work...
This is at once thuggish and petty. If the US Govt doesn’t recognize the ICC then…don’t? Going after individual judges is mafia tactics.
It’s also guaranteed to backfire - no judge who by definition deeply believes in the mission and legitimacy of the ICC is going to be deterred by these tactics.
The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu because of the genocide Israel is committing, that's what upset the Americans. I doubt even Trump would go this far if it wasn't for that.
> that's what upset the Americans
Which Americans? I think it just upset only the Zionists, Epstein class, members of congress bought and paid for by Israel(AIPAC) including the US presidential administration, plus the boomers who've been brainwashed by decades of Zionist propaganda on TV, but I imagine a large part of US voter base, especially under-35s, don't agree with this if polled.
At least every American I know in Europe(not a representative sample size, I know) is vehemently against supporting what Israel is doing.
While there is arguably still some influence from democratic pressure on some areas of US Federal policy, foreign policy and warmaking (including financial warfare like this) are not among them. These have been insulated from public opinion since approximately the the 1940s. It took a massive organization against the draft to (arguably, possibly, maybe -- we'll never really know) shorten the Vietnam war (which, incidentally, was never declared a War by the democratically elected Congress), and that was the high water mark of democratic influence on the security state since WW2.
In short, the opinion of Americans is just not relevant to America's foreign policy decisions. Even a 100% anti-Zionist Congress would be unable to stop supporting the genocide.
>Even a 100% anti-Zionist Congress would be unable to stop supporting the genocide.
Yes, they would be able to if the majority party actually wanted to. Trump could be impeached for so many things I can't count. It's not happening because Republican members of the house and senate don't want to or are afraid to.
It would take a LOT of house cleaning in the DoD, making the current Hegseth purge look cute by comparison.
> Which Americans?
America is a democracy, right? Every American is 100% culpable for everything their government does.
I mean, the US is overwhelmingly the world's most dangerous rogue nation, committing terrorism, rampant piracy, making the world an infinitely more dangerous place (are HNers aware that the US has changed to a first strike nuclear policy, coupled with Trump now having tactical, low-yield nukes as an accepted policy? Do you know how unbelievably perilous both of these profoundly stupid things are?), attacking allies, undermining democracy all over the world, and just generally being a world shitheel. And look, the midterms might...maybe...slightly go against the Republicans.
GOP members should be all polling at 0%.
>Every American is 100% culpable for everything their government does.
I disagree. I'm EU citizen and I am not culpable for everything my and the EU government does, because while being democracies on paper, I don't get to directly vote on the leadership of the EU(Ursula) nor the individual policies of my country and the EU decide to take, especially on external politics, which are often against my choices, but I have no say in it.
Sure, I can try to vote those people out, but that means a delay of at least another election cycle(provided the majority is on my side), in which time they can legally keep doing what I don't want them to do.
My point is, democracy isn't some magic wand that does the peoples' wishes at current time, but has plenty of flaws known and documented since the ancient greeks.
> are HNers aware that the US has changed to a first strike nuclear policy, coupled with Trump now having tactical, low-yield nukes as an accepted policy?
Source?
I mean if I and a group of my friends got together to plan the kidnap of a foreign leader I would not be surprised if it pissed off that leader's allies and they sanctioned me.
This would apply no matter how justified I felt that kidnapping the leader of a nuclear state would somehow help world peace.
You can’t convince me that this administration isn’t intentionally driving this country into the ground. Our whole economic growth story is basically that our tech companies can provide service to 8 billion people, not just 0.35 B Americans. Moves like this makes buying American (or even just watching YouTube) toxic.
Edit: not to mention moving our allies toward not complying with US sanctions at all, reducing American soft power
That's a sacrifice Trump and his inner circle are willing to make (to get richer).
In the modern world, to deprive someone of access to the banking system, internet connectivity, or access to their digital identity, is similar to depriving someone of housing or clothing. They're necessities for participation in modern society, so this amounts to a civil death sentence or civiliter mortuus.
All of this, because one war criminal can't come to Europe anymore
There is just no alternative to Microsoft. Since they push everything into cloud MS gets centralised control. Cutting MS literally cuts the person off from anything digital.
There is some movement to reduce MS dependency in Europe, but it's not yet there. Until then, this will be a huge lever available to US.
I've written about this back in the day: https://blog.miloslavhomer.cz/microsoft-dependency-has-risks...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44381358
Of course there is alternative, you just have to want it. My company also had a very big dependency on Russian software and Russian employees themselves, and the invasion of Ukraine cut that Gordian knot. The incetives just have to be there and be big enough.
I mean sure, each individual product has an alternative. The value is in the integration and user knowledge.
You'd have to scale the IT dept, especially the people answering dumb user questions, which will skyrocket.
> One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.
I would hope the French gov would step in and pay her claims directly.
These sanctions are a prime example of influence of a foreign nation on the USA policies.
silence please, this is an antisemitic trope according to the genocide supporting Zionists: ADL
And the ICC is not a prime example of influence of foreign nations on other's politics?
Foreign nations choose to sign the Rome Statute. Should the rest of the world be prohibited from thinking Netanyahu is a war criminal because it might offend non-signatory countries?
History will remember your actions, being against an international court is a sign you are the bad guy. Not even mentioning anything else that is magnitudes worse.
Funding of nearly every major USA political can only get you so far.
If it can happen to her, it can happen to anyone. Put it on the list of wrongs that we want righted by the next US government.
I sympathize with the ICC judge's plight, but they already violated international law by issuing an arrest warrant for a citizen of a nation that isn't a party to the ICC. Yes, I'm aware that they justify it because Palestine is a party to the ICC, but Palestine isn't an internationally-recognized state for better or worse.
> Palestine isn't an internationally-recognized state for better or worse.
Yes, it is.
From Wikipedia:
"Palestine is a permanent non-member observer state at the United Nations (UN) and is recognized as a sovereign state by 157 of the UN's 193 member states."
Regardless of the legal foundation, there isn't much point in having an ICC without the power to go after leaders of non-party states. You can't rely on heads of state to volunteer themselves for prosecution.
No, that is the only thing that makes the ICC justifiable under the anarchy of international relations. If a leader of a nation unilaterally revokes the treaty submitting themselves to the ICC's jurisdiction, that's a harder case, and I'd support the ICC going after that nation's citizens if they commit other offenses.
But if a nation decides not to submit to the ICC, then it's up to the UN Security Council to go after them, and the Security Council was set up intentionally to only allow punishment of leaders where every major power can agree. The Security Council at least tries to work with the reality of international relations, whereas the ICC in this case is way out of line.
Enslaved nations should rise against the slave master.
Arguably, the US has ALWAYS been like this. The difference is that NOW, it is doing it to Western countries so people talk more about it.
> "You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be,"
> Her credit cards, issued in the Netherlands and Canada, were canceled. She has managed to keep some bank accounts, but says her banking services are extremely limited and even small transfers can be blocked.
> One of the most serious examples is her health insurance. Prost receives coverage through AXA, the French company that provides insurance for the court. She says the company has refused to pay her claims even though it is not legally required to follow the U.S. sanctions.
This is beyond chilling. You could conceivably self-host some alternatives, although you could easily lose your domain name and internet access. Maybe in a fictional future some sort of crypto currency could help with the de-banking. I don't think there's a solution for losing your health insurance though.
All because the US doesn't want Israel to be held accountable in the ICC. I don't think we've ever been closer to fascism and it's in service for a foreign country (not that it would be ok if it wasn't!).
I guess the only way out for that judge is going to Russia, repenting their sins, getting some Mir cards and a Russian passport with a patronym in it.
Maybe they can get rebanked by some Dubai establishments who for some reason will not identify their new passport with that sanctioned identity.
I'm only half-joking because all of that is absolutely possible.
Monero solves this btw.
How many services take Monero? It also does not solve your health insurance being taken away. This situation is a very good use-case/advertisement for anonymous crypto though.
everyone trashes crypto until they're the one getting debanked
Normalize hanging in the Hague again. US politicians should not be able to strongarm international law like this and freely visit Europe.
Europeans have a superiority complex in believing their law is 'international'. It's not. American law rests on a joint agreement among the governed. The American people have never agreed to be governed by a foreign court.
I think you mean Americans. Are the Europeans in the habit of issuing unilateral sanctions in an attempt to impose their domestic law internationally?
> Europeans have a superiority complex in believing their law is 'international'.
Do you even know what the ICC is based on?
> American law rests on a joint agreement among the governed.
No, it doesn't.
> The American people have never agreed to be governed by a foreign court.
That's the first true statement in your reply, and it means they can simply ignore the court. It doesn't mean targeting the employees of the court. That's just the US govt. being thugs.
> > American law rests on a joint agreement among the governed.
> No, it doesn't.
why do you say that?
As an American, I never agreed to anything. Not our laws, not our system of government, not our borders or wars... I mentioned it in another comment but we live under a defacto monopoly of violence held by the state.
> It doesn't mean targeting the employees of the court.
Generally it is mean exactly that.
The judicial system is a branch of governmental authority. Any government on the planet Earth sees the establishment of unauthorize parallel branches of authority as one of the most serious crimes, and people who belong to such bodies face extremely harsh penalties up to physical elimination by the military force.
You talk as if the ICC had just appeared and asserted its authority out of nowhere and then started kidnapping people to charge them.
In reality, it was established by treaty, and 125 countries have chosen to vest authority in it. Originally that list included Israel, the US, and Russia, who supported the establishment of the court but subsequently withdrew when they perceived that being member states would constrain their strategic ambitions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_Statute#/media/
>The American people have never agreed to be governed by a foreign court.
Unfortunately we live under the rule of a Zionist Occupied Government so that ground was ceded long ago.
I'm American and I never once agreed to any of our laws. Countries have a monopoly on violence, that is it. You can agree, disagree and try to survive or hope some other country will let you immigrate.
That being said, I think the vast majority of Americans are ok with the ICC holding people committing genocide accountable. Most Americans also do not like the influence Israel has on our country and these sanctions are just yet more proof that we are occupied and not even operating in our government's own interests.
I don't like Israel TBH. I just don't need foreigners telling the American government who to arrest. The American law enforcement authorities should be following American laws and American court edicts.
The ICC's bias against US allies like Israel is off-putting.
The ICC is judging Israel on its actions. It doesn't matter that some people claim that Israel is our "ally", that doesn't change the reality of the situation.
It's hilarious how one-way the "ally" thing is. Don't worry, senior Israeli members are openly opining that the US needs to suffer another 9/11. "Ally".