I wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
The more wild US gets with its sanction powers the more it draws other countries to move usa away from the center of the financial system.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
They literally are gangsters; look at what they're doing in Venezuela, literally stealing and selling oil tankers, extrajudicial killings and all the rest of it.
Only 33% of the population opposed it the second time (when it was already clear what their Dear Leader is like), so it's very difficult to escape the conclusion that they're gangsters and fine with that. Even here on HN they're blithely saying "might makes right"...
"Might makes right" is an observation, not a profession of moral philosophy... In other words, the mighty will generally get their way, no matter how wrong that way is.
As far as the tankers go, they're not transporting Toys for Tots, they're transporting Oil for Oligarchs, so I'm not sure how much sympathy I'm going to be able to muster on that one, even though the lawlessness leaves a bitter taste.
Not everything is absolutely black and white, but here is my best effort to convey my take:
Two wrongs don't make a right, nor does the second wrongdoer make me more sympathetic to the first.
Frankly, none of the oil wealth in Venezuela has been doing anything to improve the life of the average Venezuelan, and that is a terrible state of affairs. It has only served to drown the corrupt rich in their own champagne. Would Maduro be where he is if he were not a dictator robbing the poor of his own country of the benefit of their own natural resources?
I have great sympathy for the nation of Venezuela and its people, but also for the rule of law -- both internationally, as this was surely an illegal action, but also the rule of law internally in Venezuela for the past long while. The ICC didn't start investigating Venezuela for nothing. The people of Venezuela deserve better.
I have very little sympathy for the oligarchs, Maduro, any number of corrupt related subordinate officials and facilitators that led to the exodus of millions of Venezuelans and the precipitous decline inside Venezuela, in terms of everything from national finances to civil rights to economic opportunity for the average man.
I am not at all sympathetic to anything the Trump administration is doing. I don't believe any of it makes much sense, not even from the perspective of greed or stupidity, but I don't need to go into all of that right now. That has no bearing on my lack of sympathy for the ex-Government of Venezuela.
"Without commenting on ongoing cases, he called on European authorities to activate a mechanism that could limit the impact of US restrictions."
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ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
Using a human-rights sanctions framework against judges of a court literally created to prosecute human-rights violations is the snake eating its own tail. Sanctions used to be targeted at people trying to blow up the rule of law, now they are being used at people trying to apply it in ways that are politically inconvenient to a superpower and its allies.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
Unpopular opinion, but the US and a handful of other countries do not recognize the ICC and in their eyes it does not exist; hence the US has no obligation to support them in any way.
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The US is acting to impose sanctions on individuals with no direct ties to it by using its legal authority over American entities. The reason the US wants to do this is because the ICC is seeking to impose its legal authority over individuals whose state has not joined the ICC with novel legal theories and using its legal authority over ICC states. If the ICC had remained in areas where its legal authority is clear and not disputed, its judges and prosecutors wouldn't be facing this issue.
There’s a fundamental flaw in the concept of “international justice”.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
I am intrigued by the fact the US acts despite no US citizen having an arrest warrant put out for them.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
The US is now literally sanctioning UN experts and ICC people if they push too hard on accountability for alleged Israeli war crimes, e.g. Francesca Albanese over her Gaza reports and support for ICC cases. In Germany (and elsewhere) it often doesn’t need formal sanctions: people get disinvited, smeared, or quietly pushed out of jobs if they’re too vocal on Palestine – think Ai Weiwei, Greta Thunberg, Masha Gessen, Ilan Pappé, Ghassan Hage and others running into cancellations, funding cuts, and public delegitimisation instead of explicit legal punishment.
FWIW it's kind of refreshing to see a judicial official on the receiving end of this treatment. I know he's not one of the judges who permitted the debanking of protesters in Canada, but 1:1 of like-kind is probably all we can ask for.
Those who so flippantly censor and ostracise dissidents deserve a periodic taste of their own concoctions.
There should be no way the government can 'debank' someone in the first place. Monetary relations with other people have always been untouched by the state until very recently, even for revolutionaries. A private transaction is not anyone's business apart from the counterparties.
Assuming that someone should not be allowed to freely earn, spend, invest and participate in the economy without a proved felony is a dystopian concept.
Either have a proper fair public trial and put criminals in prison for serious violations or don't discriminate against anyone's stuff at all if you don't have any proofs. Otherwise it's massively used to give advantages to citizens of several nations to do business and earn while discriminating against others because of 'high risks' without any public court hearing, based on nationality, citizenship or organizational relations.
So many commenters here assume US global hegemony that, in reality, expired after the 1980s. Without its allies in Europe and Asia, the US can't act effectively.
This tactic broadcasts Trump's guilt, and the guilt of others by association. It's hard to imagine how this will play out. It's very worrisome that the USA is collapsing into a fascist state. I feel bad for young people who inherit the consequences of these terrible decisions.
The problem is many people — not here on HN but in general — were happy or at least unperturbed when this happened to right wing figures like Donald Trump, the trucker protestors in Canada and the 1/6 capitol riot people in the US.
It was incredibly obvious this would be inflicted in the other direction to anyone who followed what happened to Wikileaks supporters or people around Ed Snowden.
To everyone saying this is about US hegemony, note not only Canada but also UK (see Nigel Farage) has inflicted this on their own citizens - so they certainly helped lay the groundwork for what amount to extremely petty sanctions (and they too have participated in sanctions efforts).
48 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 83.3 ms ] threadI wonder if (when?) elites are going to use and support Bitcoin. Oppressive governments will force citizens - even such powerful as judges - to search for escapes.
Initially, it was created to address human rights violations[...]"
Yet here we are: it's being used to harass judges who address human rights violations.
Nobody cares when usa was sanctioning random Iranians or Russians comitting human rights abuses, but the ICC is relatively popular in europe and the optics of this makes america look like gangsters. Obviously nothing is going to happen in the short term, but i wonder how it will errode american soft power in the long term if they keep this sort of thing up.
Only 33% of the population opposed it the second time (when it was already clear what their Dear Leader is like), so it's very difficult to escape the conclusion that they're gangsters and fine with that. Even here on HN they're blithely saying "might makes right"...
As far as the tankers go, they're not transporting Toys for Tots, they're transporting Oil for Oligarchs, so I'm not sure how much sympathy I'm going to be able to muster on that one, even though the lawlessness leaves a bitter taste.
Two wrongs don't make a right, nor does the second wrongdoer make me more sympathetic to the first.
Frankly, none of the oil wealth in Venezuela has been doing anything to improve the life of the average Venezuelan, and that is a terrible state of affairs. It has only served to drown the corrupt rich in their own champagne. Would Maduro be where he is if he were not a dictator robbing the poor of his own country of the benefit of their own natural resources?
I have great sympathy for the nation of Venezuela and its people, but also for the rule of law -- both internationally, as this was surely an illegal action, but also the rule of law internally in Venezuela for the past long while. The ICC didn't start investigating Venezuela for nothing. The people of Venezuela deserve better.
I have very little sympathy for the oligarchs, Maduro, any number of corrupt related subordinate officials and facilitators that led to the exodus of millions of Venezuelans and the precipitous decline inside Venezuela, in terms of everything from national finances to civil rights to economic opportunity for the average man.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court_i...
I am not at all sympathetic to anything the Trump administration is doing. I don't believe any of it makes much sense, not even from the perspective of greed or stupidity, but I don't need to go into all of that right now. That has no bearing on my lack of sympathy for the ex-Government of Venezuela.
-------------------
ICC member states should take steps to ensure the sanctioned judges and prosecutors do not suffer as a result of U.S. sanctions. The goal should be to ensure that they feel no repercussions that might bias them one way or the other in future cases and thus maintain impartiality. If this is not done, it could create an apparent feedback loop, if only in the public's imagination. i.e. After some future ICC ruling goes against them (or Israel/Russia), the U.S. may claim that ICC judges and prosecutors are prejudiced against them and are seeking revenge. Protecting ICC personnel now could blunt such claims. Sadly, I fear that the U.S. may have need of defence from ICC rulings relatively soon.
Nothing sad about a well-deserved reckoning.
They'll come? and the fact that's a question shows American Justice has been absent for quite some time.
> Both men are indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity for their roles in the destruction of the Gaza Strip.
Role in destruction isn't a war crime they are being indicted for and as such irrelevant in this context.
This is why so many non-Western states call "rules-based order" a branding exercise: the same legal tool that hits warlords and cartel bosses is repurposed, with no structural checks, against judges whose decisions you dislike. And once you normalize that, you've handed every other great power a precedent: "our courts, our sanctions list, our enemies." The short-term message is "don't touch our friends"; the long-term message is "international law is just foreign policy with better stationery."
The ICC was warned before picking on Israel, but it did not listen. Now they’re paying the consequences.
On a nation level the power of a court to prosecute individuals is supported by a policing force that is capable of resorting to violence on a local level that is acceptable for the greater peace.
On an international level, enforcing justice would ultimately require going to war, with mass casualties and likely numerous incidents of potential breaches of the law itself.
In the example of Israel vs Hamas, the ICC warrant included the leaders of Hamas - but the ICC had zero chance of actually arresting them, they were killed by Israel though. So half of the defendants carried out the justice sought by the ICC on the other half.
Israel can't do sanctions for Israelis?
I mean, the realpolitik of these sanctions by the US is in hope that the USs involvement in Gaza doesn't get arrest warrants for their own officials / Presidents. Or for war crimes and human rights violations against Venezuelan boats.
Does make Israel look either weak or like a small person puppeteering a much bigger person though.
Additionally, tangentially, I find it interesting the reluctance the US has had, for three entirety of Trump's term so far, in extending sanctions on Russia for it's continued bombardment of Ukraine.
Speaks volumes about the (confusing, although maybe just rapid direction/ally change) motivations of the current administration.
Those who so flippantly censor and ostracise dissidents deserve a periodic taste of their own concoctions.
Assuming that someone should not be allowed to freely earn, spend, invest and participate in the economy without a proved felony is a dystopian concept.
Either have a proper fair public trial and put criminals in prison for serious violations or don't discriminate against anyone's stuff at all if you don't have any proofs. Otherwise it's massively used to give advantages to citizens of several nations to do business and earn while discriminating against others because of 'high risks' without any public court hearing, based on nationality, citizenship or organizational relations.
It was incredibly obvious this would be inflicted in the other direction to anyone who followed what happened to Wikileaks supporters or people around Ed Snowden.
To everyone saying this is about US hegemony, note not only Canada but also UK (see Nigel Farage) has inflicted this on their own citizens - so they certainly helped lay the groundwork for what amount to extremely petty sanctions (and they too have participated in sanctions efforts).