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.
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 it's 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The entire destructionist movement is based around channeling frustrations on very real issues into mere ways of making money for Dear Leader. When you zoom in, even core issues like immigration reform fit the pattern - still giving a pass to the major employers of illegal labor, notwithstanding the performative vice signalling. Grumpism is effectively just one big arbitrage of ideals. In a sane world, the people who care most about the issues "championed" by the destructionists would be the loudest critics of them, as it's their political capital that is being destroyed! But apparently most of them are too busy "winning" to perform one iota of self-reflection.
> 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.
> "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!).
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.
Right, because we know this court is infallible, and 1000% not political?
The judges are picked by the member states, which are political. Karim khan (the former prosecutor who was kicked out because of sexual assault) asked to come to Israel as a delegation to investigate the charges. The day before he canceled the trip, and published the accusations without hearing the Israeli defense.
The ICC is geopolitical theater just the same as the UN.
Why isn’t there arrest for irans leaders? Why not for erdogan? Why not for living Hamas leaders?
> "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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
> 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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
partially agreee but also 90% of crypto is either inefficient (btc), for scams (shitcoins), or weird pseudo-CBDC garbage (xrp/ripple/chainlink/icp) that don't have a use case outside of "it'll pump when payment processors adopt us!". Monero is probably the only coin that didn't get sucked into the post 2017 cryptobro mentality of "making it rich" and instead stayed the course of giving payment processors the finger.
No, it doesn't. There already exist fully-European payment systems and that did not help at all, because those payment systems are still operated by banks and other institutions that are vulnerable to the effects of US sanctions. The Digital Euro would be no different.
The only working solution would be to shield European payment processors from US sanctions, and that means fully divesting from the USA.
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.
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.
> 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."
This will force other countries to supply their own financial and computer systems not depending on foreign entities for services if they want to stay truly independent
Looking at it from the reverse side, I am not sure many people are aware of the underlying business risk: if you do business with this individual (or others in a similar situation), you risk being associated with them and suffer similar consequences.
Question to the HN crowd that sells services online: do you check/vet every one of your customers against the Entity List?
83 comments
[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 57.4 ms ] threadFor 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.
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.
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 it's 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Vaccine mandates, for a virus that was doing multiple 9/11's daily, by a bunch of guys who sit in their trucks all day.
Change your diaper, dude.
Dilate your mutilated hole, dude.
> 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.
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.
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?
> 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!).
Funding of nearly every major USA political can only get you so far.
The judges are picked by the member states, which are political. Karim khan (the former prosecutor who was kicked out because of sexual assault) asked to come to Israel as a delegation to investigate the charges. The day before he canceled the trip, and published the accusations without hearing the Israeli defense.
The ICC is geopolitical theater just the same as the UN.
Why isn’t there arrest for irans leaders? Why not for erdogan? Why not for living Hamas leaders?
Just incredibly naked corruption.
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.
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.
This would apply no matter how justified I felt that kidnapping the leader of a nuclear state would somehow help world peace.
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.
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.
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
You'd have to scale the IT dept, especially the people answering dumb user questions, which will skyrocket.
Edit: not to mention moving our allies toward not complying with US sanctions at all, reducing American soft power
I would hope the French gov would step in and pay her claims directly.
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.
Not much outside of drugs iirc but I'm hoping this serves as a major wake up call for people.
the current ai hypewave is the same - 90% scams or useless crap, but some gems will emerge
The only working solution would be to shield European payment processors from US sanctions, and that means fully divesting from the USA.
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.
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.
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."
Question to the HN crowd that sells services online: do you check/vet every one of your customers against the Entity List?