He will try but even the Supreme Court has shown they are willing to place limits on his power, ruling against him in some cases. So I don't think he has a pathway to bypassing the 22nd Amendment.
The sanctions announcement coincided with a former ICC judge, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to enlarging the scope and impact of international law. -- https://thehill.com/policy/international/6138693-rubio-impos...
The Americans got upset first because the ICC wants to take action against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.
But now it just happens to be that their president didn't get the Nobel peace price. The person who did was a judge on the ICC.
It could be a complete coincidence, of course. I mean, if it isn't, it would reinforce the notion of the USA being a clown of a country, which I'm sure Americans would prevent.
I knew we were all doomed 10 years ago when Trump was promoting his wall and claiming Mexico was gonna pay for it. Mexican officials pushed back, saying "We're not paying". Trump responded by telling his supporters that every time Mexico refuses to pay, the wall is gonna get 10 feet taller. That doesn't even make any sense, but MAGA ate it up, simply because it agitated people. That's it.
A lot of these weird actions actually build on long-simmering disagreements. Which is weird - like if a state governor got drunk and tried to shut down immigration enforcement.
Is this a legitimate policy decision? Maybe - but it sure reads like the ranting of a drunk.
The picture is much clearer when you accept that they are never jokes.
"They're trolling" is simply a juvenile defense that provides the cult and its members with plausible deniability.
The world might be slightly better off if we'd all taken them seriously from the start, but taking clowns and the accompanying circus seriously is unintuitive to most.
Right, it's the same strategy as when an animal marks territory, seeing if the other animals will resist. They are marking the constitution, many stable norms, the idea that good faith can be assumed, the idea that courts will be obeyed, etc.
Meanwhile the US now has a collapse of due process, concentration camps on domestic soil and abroad, many officials and family members who are suddenly billions of dollars richer, crony firms that are billions richer, and a docile and captive congress that seems unwilling to stop any of it.
The last round of ICC sanctions got everyone here talking about tech sovereignty, now France and Germany are rolling their own productivity suites, the Netherlands are rolling their own NixOS distro, etc etc.
This is just going to further hurt US interests. Biting the hand that feeds, burning down their own empire out of hubris. And Americans voted for this! Twice!
It's time the EU rolls out the Blocking Statute [0] to counteract this nonsense.
Also, bear in mind that the first time he won he lost the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. We have a voting system that favors less populous states. In 2024 he won the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. He has never been very popular in this country. But his party controls all branches of government and he controls his party.
It turns out electing a stupid, vengeful narcissist and liar who is at death's door is not the way to go.
This is not a perfect analogy: when I choose not to join a club, I have a reasonable expectation of that club not declaring me its member, and not fighting me for failing to follow the rules that the club established.
If you go to someone else's house who is a member of that club and has agreed to follow its rules, it's not crazy to think you'd be held to them there.
Which is all the ICC can do to nations that aren't signatories to the Rome statute.
> it's not crazy to think you'd be held to them there.
It's not crazy to think that I won't be served meat if I'm going to a house of a vegetarian. It is however crazy to think that I will be stoned in that house for having eaten meat in the past.
We're not talking about eating meat; we're talking about crimes against humanity.
And you would have had to break this law in a territory that also was a signatory of the Rome statute. This isn't some out of jurisdiction or ex post facto form of law.
So for instance, US military personnel couldn't be arrested up for crimes that occured in Iraq, because Iraq is not a signatory of the Rome statute.
So your example doesn't make sense unless you ate meat somewhere else that it was also explicitly banned, and then went to another country that had the same cross agreement to arrest people in the combined territories.
It's really not complicated. You can be prosecuted for crimes committed inside another state even if you were not physically present in that state. When that state has ratified the Rome Statute then you can be prosecuted by the ICC because that state lends its jurisdiction to the ICC.
The International Criminal Court is a farce. How can you tell other sovereign nation what is a "crime" or what "is not a crime"? It has literally zero authority to decide such matters.
So you are saying that USA is entitled to act with criminal intent and it has no one to answer to? If that is the case, why should it be a trusted entity at all as a nation which claims human rights and democratic rights and abiding by laws?
What you will see with a general read of the criticisms in the wiki are indications of bias and several nations in Africa and South America annulling the ICC influence.
The U.S. had peripheral involvement in these actions.
I am upvoting you, as I don't find your line of questioning abrasive enough to warrant down votes.
Well there is always bias but that is not just about bias but having an entity above nation state that can provide a ruling on wrong doings. For example, the most powerful nation on earth occupying some country to extract its resources without any entity than can do anything about it, is criminal wrong doing. Yes there is going to be bias but they are not providing the evidence.
I am not talking about the current ethnic conflict between Israel and Palestinians because that century worth of conflict has gone far beyond what courts can rule on. I am talking about USA absolving itself from being accountable in presence of evidence.
Republicans are an embarrassment to the country. They've got some understandable gripes, but have been led around by the nose by corporate propaganda for decades. And then they rationalize it by pointing out how the Democrats are controlled opposition (which is true), but still never perform one iota of self reflection to examine why their own movements always end up going sideways. (signed, a libertarian)
Sometimes you need to touch the stove and get burned to learn that its hot. This is something that tends to be repeated once people forget about the last time they (as a collective nation) touched the stove.
Sometimes it can be learned with a simple first degree burn. Sometimes you get blisters. Sometimes the government in power is determined to hold their hand to it and get third degree burns.
Hopefully the pain from this round of burns can be remembered for a while longer before its repeated again.
Pretty sure even a lot of the current President's voters are slowly coming to this same realization. I predict soon in casual conversation almost no one will have voted for this man.
I think Kamala would have been a terrible President but immeasurably better than Trump. She wasn’t openly, brazenly corrupt and self dealing nor an authoritarian with little interest in actual governing or the good of the nation he leads.
She wouldn't have been any better/worse than biden. Things would have improved, but not quickly or dramatically enough to threaten anyone in power or to expand the shrinking middle class. Still would have been better than the actually harmful option we ended up with though.
I'm not American but Ive been following US politics somewhat closely for a few years. And frankly, I can see where that opinion would be coming from. If I was American , I would not have been able to vote for Democrats either. Nor would I have voted for Trump... But the last election (and likely the upcoming one too) are basically down to who is less outlandishly horrendous.
Democrats seem to mostly run on literal socialism right now. And not how the US has traditionally exaggerated everything like regulated health insurance as socialism -- but actual and literal socialism... And identify politics, gender politics etc.
So if you're a working age normal person, you're kinda left with voting for the person that literally goes on air, blaming you for everything bad in the world... Or the person that's gonna fuck you over but at least tell you that you're not the issue.
The Camela Harris campaign was seriously... Insane for a lack of a better term.
Yeah, it takes right wing brain rot to come up with "Camela Harris" and "Democrats seem to mostly run on literal socialism right now". Deeply unserious takes from the most stupid people in humanity.
Corruption and criminality is brazen, prices for everything are through the roof, there's an energy shortage, it started and is losing a new war, third biggest budget deficit in history (this same regime was responsible for the #1 biggest), but sure, everything is going great, comrade.
Whats the timeline on that promised $1.99 gas, again? Or was that going to be $1.99/litre?
I have a problem with the word “thinks” in your comment. Please define the term or otherwise provide evidence for this “thinking”, especially when it comes to the majority of his base.
You seem very sensitive if you think someone asking you if you are trolling and asking you if you are being serious is "an insult". If this is what gets under your skin, I shudder at the thought of what the rest of the internet feels like to you. It must be a living nightmare.
Also, where did you get the impression that trolling required the underlying opinion to be falsely held? Whoever taught you that was doing you a disservice.
That's what I thought after he lost in 2020. And yet he came back in 2024 winning even more votes, both in absolute terms and in percentage, than he did in either 2016 or 2020.
The hubris of the party machine being wielded to prevent a challenger to Biden was the problem. There were many of us screaming that a new candidate was necessary, but nobody listened. They stayed lock step in line with the party machine.
I voted for Dean Phillips in the primary. He was blackballed. Local party officials even tried to keep him of ballots.
It even got to the point where Ezra Klein was loudly complaining about what was happening, and even he was criticized.
If you want to understand why the Dems keep losing, you have to understand the party machine. Looking at how the Phillips campaign was treated, and the Sanders campaign before that, show exactly how someone can run on exactly the issues people care about but be shut down before it ever comes to a vote, because it harms the political interests of the higher ups in the party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Phillips#2024_presidentia...
The Democratic Party's electorate aren't really paying attention.
The rational ones would have switched lilong time ago, even if it means switch to the vacuum.
The ones that remained till now are happy cheering for a constantly lying pedophile who has behavior of a spoiled child and mental capacity of even less. I am not holding my breath anything can move them. Other folks who voted for him and now understand, well drown in shame for all I care, it doesnt change anything since this was obvious years ago and you still voted a childish pedophile in.
> The ones that remained till now are happy cheering for a constantly lying pedophile who has behavior of a spoiled child and mental capacity of even less. I am not holding my breath anything can move them.
The amount of people who are still in that immovable category is what I find most horrifying. I'm not sure what the fix for that is. Less lead in the water? Better education?
Evolution has a fix for that: groups that make bad decisions will eventually come undone by them. However, the time frames are many generations long and the consequences typically collective.
Can you imagine voting for his 2024 opponent though? Someone who spent over a year arming genocide? At least Trump eventually forced a semi-ceasefire in Gaza.
Can you imagine voting in 2024 for Trump? Someone who does whatever Israel says? Over 10K Iranians and Americans have died ... for nothing except a whisper in his ear from Netenyahu. Imagine voting for that? Imagine voting for the corruption. Imagine voting for the ICE terrorists. Imaging voting for truckers and farmers losing their jobs.
This is why you are hearing a lot about his name changing of certain things as well as the go ahead for the public shooting of Hasan. These are loyalty tests. Are you okay with AI being called SI? You're one of us. Do you want to see a public execution? Again, you're one of us. History tells us this is what regimes like this do.
It’s a travesty but I think “never going to come back from this” is a stretch. There is no immediate replacement for the position the US holds in global politics. China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways, to pick one example.
Well really most of the consumers of the goodness that the US represented in international politics, including your example, are just being lazy and hoping the US will cover their arses. The sudden, stark realisation that they have been exposed by the instability of the US really kicked off the sovereign initiatives.
You're talking about some kind of projection in hard power. it's likely that the US will continue to wield the most hard power for the foreseeable future (though this war with iran has exposed logistics issues in that, as well as drained important armaments that will take years to recover).
The bigger loss is in soft power, the power that comes from economics, having the worlds reserve currency, and even the trust and respect of our allies.
> China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways
What makes you think of this? Also, why wouldn't China pick up this role, when they heavily rely on this, or why wouldn't bilateral agreements be enough?
> China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways, to pick one example.
The Strait of Hormuz has entered the chat.
So much of American "power" in the past few decades has been based on perception, not reality. And other major powers, including China, have largely played along because it has suited their interests too.
But it's a mistake to assume that just because other major powers haven't sought conflict with the US, it means they're not capable of challenging America's power credibly in certain regions and domains.
Of note: the US doesn't even have an aircraft carrier in the Pacific right now. The only thing keeping China from, say, moving on Taiwan, is Pete Hegseth's testosterone.
Yes, and then children grow up and realize that how "other people" act on "other people's opinions" has real direct and indirect effects on their lives.
It's not just this administration. The US helped create this court and pushed other countries to join, but never joined themselves and always threatened the court if they indicted or judged American people.
There's an US law that says the US will invade Belgium if the court wanted to investigate an American (???)
I remember Hillary Clinton, in the Obama administration, saying the US is an exceptional country that deserves exceptional conditions regarding this issue
My own country (Brazil) supported South Africa charges of genocide against Israel because we believe in this court and the role it fulfills.
For me, the sole problem with this court is that it's reluctant to judge American war crimes and crimes against humanity. But as Europe leaves the US sphere of influence, maybe they will grow a spine. It would be unfortunate if people like George W Bush, Dick Cheney, John Choon Yoo and Jay Scott Bybee died before they were indicted by this court.
> It's not a corrupt court. It has judged crimes against humanity cases before, and a lot of countries give credence to it.
If your justice system, as a matter of policy, refused to ever arrest any while brazilians would you say it was corrupt even if every black/brown brazilian they convicted was truly guilty and fairly sentenced? It's corrupt. If their hands truly are completely tied because of credible threats against them by the US then the US is the source of their corruption, but it's still corrupt.
From the US side there's been a long history of refusing to accept that the court has any jurisdiction over the US and some fairly threatening language including:
"We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law. We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45474864
It's worse than an embarrassment - it is an indictment of democracy itself. It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world - intentionally choosing a real villain as their duly-elected leader. They elected a man whose outrages, corruptions, selfishness, malice and outright crimes are so egregious and obvious that the problem becomes organizing so long a list into a workable taxonomy. But he's not done this alone - SCOTUS is in his pocket and truly made him above the law. The Republicans have enabled him by staying silent and riding on his coattails - the most "principled" of them have retired. Media is consolidated and owned by the oligarchs he calls friends. He has a personal paramilitary force (ICE) roaming the streets, killing people, and who will be "observing" the mid-term elections.
The root of the problem is in the collective mind of Americans. We are the problem - we've been hacked to be both stupid and proud of that stupidity, to cease recognizing "character" or "virtue" as a signal, to cease caring about reality that doesn't support opinions that were installed on us, like malware, or anything really except entertainment. Because that's the ONE thing we do get out of all this - we get to be entertained. How funny when he says outlandish things like immigrants are eating the cats, eating the dogs! How hilarious (and macho!) when he brags about grabbing women. How wonderful it is to see the discomfiture of the libs when he parrots Nazi propaganda or when he encouraged the Proud Boys to storm the capital to overturn his loss, and then his lackeys claimed it either didn't happen or was a false flag. "Hang Mike Pence!" is what an obese, fentanyl- and TikTok-addicted mind thinks is doing something! And hey, you can say "retard" again without getting canceled.
> It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world - intentionally choosing a real villain as their duly-elected leader.
Arguably the richest in terms of the GDP per capita, but I don't think Americans have ever been the most educated or healthiest in the world.
> It's worse than an embarrassment - it is an indictment of democracy itself.
Democracy is fine and well, it's an indictment of americans. Considering the 2 times this century the popular vote winner didn't get into power. And that the current president was given power twice.
> It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world -
The fact that you think these are true is part of the problem.
The qualification "on paper" was important, and seems to have been lost on you. BTW democracy itself is not okay - backsliding is rampant across the world, as are education scores, and the one commonality is the internet. The problem with America specifically is that we do have a lot of money, a lot of power and so the destruction we specifically can cause is much greater than, say, Turkey or the UK.
What are you talking about. US's congress and senate are completely silent and approving what is obvious corruption. It is very unlikely that Americans didn't know about the corruption during the first pass and it extremely unlikely that their representatives don't know. They don't act, either because they approve it or that democracy is no longer. Take your pick.
> It's worse than an embarrassment - it is an indictment of democracy itself.
The US founders—wealthy white male land and slave owners—were explicitly skeptical of democracy and enshrined many anti-democratic measures into the US Constitution, with the purpose of thwarting the will of the majority, which they accomplished successfully. The US has always been a plutocracy, not a democracy.
Only a minority of Americans consider themselves "MAGA". In contrast, the majority of Americans dislike both of the two major political parties. However, those two parties have a monopoly on fundraising, which is how they maintain their political monopoly in a system where election campaigns are privately financed. The news media is also increasingly monopolistic.
This seems like an overstatement. After all, Germany came back from Nazism.
I also think this is not a uniquely American problem. If anything, the US is a political bellwether. And I would note that Australian Rupert Murdoch for example has been funding right-wing propaganda in the US, as well as some other countries, for decades. In addition to donating massive amounts of money to US Republicans, South African Elon Musk has also taken an interest in other countries such as the UK. The Israel lobby is of course very powerful in the US. This is an international problem. As arguably the most powerful nation in the world, the US is a natural target for those who would abuse that power.
> This seems like an overstatement. After all, Germany came back from Nazism.
So all we have to do to come back from it is have Nuremberg style trials for GOP leadership and to ban their ideology and symbology from being displayed in the country?
Those extreme measures were the aftermath of a world war. We haven't reached that point, or even the equivalent of the Reichstag fire, at least not yet. We don't have quite as far to come back.
I am just one person, but until I witness fundamental changes to US society followed by at least two decades of flawless behavior, I will never again vote for a politician/party that seeks any kind of positive relationship with the US.
Sorry, I forgot that I'm talking to algorithms that cannot deal with any linguistic ambiguity. I should have remembered that I need to define every subjective word if I want to receive constructive replies.
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It is very frustrating that, as long as there's even a tiny bit of ambiguity, dismissive quips (like your response to my initial comment) are very likely to happen. They derail the discussion by deliberately choosing a weak interpretation that has obvious inconsistencies.
With regard to the HN guidelines, my personal perspective is that they're not black and white. There are shades of gray. And not every guideline is equal in importance. I don't cite the guidelines for every conceivable violation. The point in a conversation where I may feel a need to cite the guidelines is when the conversation gets personal. You can criticize my arguments all you want, and it feels like everyone on HN fails to respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, but IMO there is no place for personal attacks. So the difference here is that "This is not a thing that exists in the world" has nothing to do with you personally, whereas "I forgot that I'm talking to algorithms that cannot deal with any linguistic ambiguity" was clearly an insult, and indeed deprived me of my humanity. I will not tolerate that.
With regard to "flawless behavior", I think the issue is not just ambiguity but overlooking the long history of abhorrent behavior by the US, which has constantly bombed and invaded other countries and interfered in other inhumane ways such as supplying weapons. Given that, I have to wonder where in history you would find decades of flawless behavior. I would ask seriously where the military attacks against Iran and Venezuela would rank exactly in your list of grievances against the current US administration. It's true that you could be talking about something else, but I think that in itself is problematic, to ignore the worst atrocities and focus instead on other things.
Inside the US, we have roving gangs of Trump-controlled paramilitary thugs shooting and beating people in the streets, and who may threaten polling places next month. Our economy has been sabotaged, our government sold to the highest bidders. The news media is consolidating under control of Trump allies. We're experiencing outbreaks of diseases that had been eradicated. Our scientific research has been defunded, our universities cowering in fear, and our environment has been opened to unmigigated pollution. To be frank, the reputation of the US in the rest of the world is among the least of our problems under Trump. Thus, when I'm talking about the Reichstag fire—i.e., the end of democracy in Germany and on analogy a similar event in the US (already foreshadowed by January 6, 2021)—and you respond talking about a "positive relationship with the US", as if that were the most important problem in the world, I felt that this actually trivialized the conversation.
Sorry, my statement was not meant to be a personal attack, I did not mean to imply that you are not human. When I said "algorithms", I was referring to the strategy by which I perceived your reply to be constructed (and still do, tbh). But I can see that my previous choice of words was unfortunate - sorry that it came off as a personal attack.
But I do still take some issue with your own approach. I would have preferred to criticize your arguments, had you brought any up! Of course it's impossible to always respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of anyone's words, but at least you should have settled on any plausible interpretation. Your reply clearly showed that you chose an implausible interpretation, and I stand by my view that it is a bigger violation of the guidelines than you seem to think.
It's funny watching these older movies and tv shows where the presidency was portrayed as being dignified and statesmanlike which now seems so laughably unrealistic.
The sanctions announcement coincided with a former ICC judge, Navanethem “Navi” Pillay, being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her contributions to enlarging the scope and impact of international law. -- https://thehill.com/policy/international/6138693-rubio-impos...
That's neat but it's clearly not why the US imposed sanctions against the ICC, why would the US care? It's because they put out an arrest warrant for Netanyahu and some other high-ranking government officials. Neither the US or Israel is part of the ICC and yet they're attempting to threaten them with arrest/capture
Why stop there? Let's do all other collaborative groups that doesn't put the US and their corrupted agenda first. You wanna be left alone and we don't want to have you so just make the calls.
Some context per the below articles, and as a general IR nerd.
The proximal cause of the sanctions appears to be that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a former ICC judge, and Trump covets it.
The distal cause is that the US never joined the ICC, arguing that US political & military leaders should not be subject to a binding foreign jurisdiction. This is a longstanding disagreement, with bipartisan consensus in DC.
Putting pressure on this disagreement, the ICC has a warrants out for Netanyahu and others that the current administration views as a political & military ally.
My interpretation is basically: this is a petty move about the Nobel, which builds on a long-simmering disagreement about the role of international law.
Isn't the concept of "bipartisan" anything suspicious today? Republicans turned away from most of the "movement conservative" principles in 2017. Rule of law personal responsibility, small local government, free markets, all either ignored or only paid lip service.
Previous bipartisan consensus thus means nothing. Bipartisan consensus now means everyone capitulated to Trump's whim of the day.
I'd say that the longstanding disagreement is used as a pretext today. Hence the need to stress twice the "bipartisan" nature of it, implying, the article suggests, the bipartisan support to this new move.
Scope of the sanctions is unclear, but it seems unlikely to me. This appears more like "US companies can't do direct business with the ICC organization."
E.g., the ICC ditched Microsoft last year, likely foreseeing this type of action.
Yes a judge a Canadian woman was not able to book a hotel since her credit card was cancelled. And other services as well anything needed a credit card to work.
"You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be," she told Morning Edition. "Completely randomly, though, you don't know when something's going to happen."
One of those moments came during an ordinary moment at home.
"I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
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.
These reactions are reasonable and are largely due to the US sanctions imposed on European judges at the ICC.
Nicolas Guillou, the French judge, has had all his bank assets in the US frozen; he has been banned from all US digital services (Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard), as have many of his familly just in case.
There are literally proven war criminals who are not treated in the same way.
Repeating a comment I belatedly made in another thread about sanctioned people:
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?
I was getting rather tired of SV opinions shaping all of our daily lives far outside the SV, but I did not expect that this would be how that would slowly end.
Not a week passes without the US giving other nations very good reasons to cut out any dependencies on anything under their jurisdiction.
Is California now panicking and exiting the United states? That would be really funny.
Does this mean that Microsoft or Google can no longer offer services (like mail/office/search etc..) to the ICC? Similar to what happened with the ICC prosecutor last year?
The American Service-Members' Protection Act has been US law since 2002, and was nicknamed "the Hague Invasion Act, since the act would allow the president to order military action in The Hague, the seat of the ICC, to prevent U.S. or allied officials and military personnel from being prosecuted or detained by the ICC." The sanctions are new, but the posture is old and bipartisan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
I know there's a lot of (deserved) hate for the current administration, but the ICC situation is somewhat nuanced. You can argue that international law doesn't / shouldn't exist because each country has the right to self-determination, and any disputes on that line are always decided by who has more economic sway or military strength. There's no world police that a smaller and less powerful country can send to arrest the leaders of a more powerful neighbor, unless they find enough friends with fighter jets.
Now, as it happens, the US is one of the most economically and militarily powerful states out there, so they're the closest we have to an actual world police - but again, that police doesn't follow "international law", they act in what they think is the best interest of the West (or the US specifically). That's how all regional powers roll, albeit on a smaller scale. Russia and China make claims to neighboring states, Germany unceremoniously protects its economic interests in the EU, Iran bankrolls terrorists in neighboring states who in turn bomb Iran, and so on.
The ICC is a bit unusual in that it's an initiative of some Western states trying to get the most powerful state to play by their rules. It's a nice try, but also... obviously doomed?
And it's not something the US can ignore, because the court does assert the authority to arrest and try US servicemen and politicians. So this was kinda inevitable, and if you think the sanctions are bad, consider the bipartisan Hague Invasion Act of 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
One can also argue that, exactly because there is the right to self-determination, there is a huge need for a inter-national and super-national organism to ensure that a right of some country doesn't jeopardise the rights of others.
Is the ICC the right organism? Maybe, maybe not; we can argue about that.
I thought the ultimate root of this situation is still 3rd Reich and the realization that, for the most part, the Nazis didn’t break any laws. They passed laws, legally, making all their horrid designs legal, then carried them out.
Which is a long way of saying, there’s a consensus that there are standards higher than national law we may want to uphold.
I know ICC is later, and also US never joined, in a somewhat hypocritical compromise. But at least the purpose and motivation, IMO, are clean and noble.
Thank you for actually addressing the philosophical elephant in the room. There's way too much vitriol substituting rational thought when it comes to courts in general, doubly so for international courts. They are compacts and agreements, no matter what scale you're looking at, and there's a reason depictions of "Justice" as a lady hold scales and a sword. Neither one works without the other. The term "outlaw" used to mean outside the protection of the law, in both directions. What do these courts protect America from?
That being said, sanctioning them feels a bit odd. Might be some latent jingoism but I don't see a threat from the ICC being substantial to US citizens.
No, since we're adults, aware of these nuances, it's not the elephant in the room.
The Elephant in The Room is that this is announced at the Nobel Peace Prize Winner with a relationship with the ICC studied the horrific conditions in Gaza.
That is what is happening here.
This is not a subtle ideological argument about 'international law'.
And since we're adults, two things can be true at the same time. I'm not a fan of the way sanctions are being used, and I'm similarly not a fan of the premise of the ICC.
USA does not seem to comply with its own treaties and agreements and now you are saying that since it is the most powerful country then it is entitled to it. Human rights won't matter only if USA says so but otherwise Americans can yell on top of their lungs that it is being violated elsewhere. That behavior simply means that USA has double standards and seeks to be above the laws and refuses to be accountable. But which laws and which accountability would that be if it can deny that there are laws that would incriminate them in wrong doing! That is by definition a Rouge state.
It's not entitled to anything, it just acts in its own interests like every single country (yes every single one that's the definition of a country). IIC sanctioned Israel, a key American vassel. America dismantles the ICC. Same story that has been happening for millenia. This form of geopolitics is what we humans have built.
Complain about the geopolitics, call out humans for where we have gotten, maybe even take some responsibility for it. But calling out one player for the sake of self gratification will either replace that player with a different one, not change the way we have decided to govern.
What you are saying that if it wasn't USA that would violate human rights and occupy other territories without contest as an empire ruling over other nations then some other country would then do it instead? I say that doesn't logically compute.
The world as we know it, chose them because they were a model for democracy and freedom from religion; Obviously not model without massive flaws though. The world had accepted that as long as their model would improve over time but not when they decide to become more corrupt, run religious wars and try to overtly use and abuse other nations for their own gain. Abusive models are not one that should attract alliances.
As for Arab / Israeli conflict, it has many causes and one is a proxy war between two major religions using a third one as their proxy goat in our timeline but it has been ongoing for centuries now. A second cause is a proxy war between socialists and non-socialists that is ongoing and guess which side religiosity takes; both side of conflict religions are involved. So you have a world court that is product of that.
The solution may not be simple but it is obvious, accepting socialism as a valid form of governance and stop running conflicts against it and condemning religious dogma and improving the models for democracy that work on reduction of corruption and conflict and working for interest of all the population.
If you ask me , what would take to stop Arab/ Israeli conflict forever, I would say that the solution would be for Egypt to accept Gaza a province and allow for human movements within it but they wont because this is a religious conflict and both major religions have pawns. The world court can not rule on solutions.
Not sure it's logical but I would say there are millenia of history to show the trend, and more so there is no logic or evidence to show American freedom has been in good faith (many were slaughtered satisfying manifest destiny).
FWIW I'm not anti-America. But I am anti-idealist (and as above, I see no reason to believe America idealist) since there is nothing to show ideals actually hold up. For humans to live together, it's better to acknowledge this and create "logical" frameworks rather than rely on idealism.
To me whatever solution is fine as long as it is not conflict prone in our timeline. They want conflict because the wars are about supremacy of ideals. Logic has to prevail but it won't in our timeline because there is no cohesion around it. Future is not for us to see.
America has been the most powerful state, like Britain was before, like China, Persia, etc before. This is reality, not a view. In history, there are few periods without a concept of "most powerful state" since humans built geopolitics into the most efficient way to advance the species (most animals are cooperative instead).
It's normal for times to change and finally cracks are showing in American hegemony (AI dominance will either make or break it). But ignoring that is just ignoring reality.
I’m not arguing with “the most powerful”, that’s correct at the moment; the ICC and similar international law enforcement were not established specifically to target USA hegemony.
Right I didn't read too much into the word "initiative", the ICC would obviously not exist if the US didn't want it to (the UN wouldn't exist if they didn't want it to, let alone want a tool for leverage) so of course it wasn't established specifically to target the US. So the poster was mostly talking about using it as a tool against the US now, not from founding, was my reading. Basically I can only see my own comment acknowledging American hegemony as "americacentric" (the current world was created by america), not the original one. Was there something else you meant?
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 57.0 ms ] threadWow, so tough, much decision
But now it just happens to be that their president didn't get the Nobel peace price. The person who did was a judge on the ICC.
It could be a complete coincidence, of course. I mean, if it isn't, it would reinforce the notion of the USA being a clown of a country, which I'm sure Americans would prevent.
I suspect this one was actually meant as a joke, although it is not remotely funny in my opinion.
Someone in Trump's orbit who writes them gets an immature charge out of trolling people.
So far my prediction about Trump have sadly been correct: The US is getting weaker and poorer every day.
That describes MAGA perfectly.
I knew we were all doomed 10 years ago when Trump was promoting his wall and claiming Mexico was gonna pay for it. Mexican officials pushed back, saying "We're not paying". Trump responded by telling his supporters that every time Mexico refuses to pay, the wall is gonna get 10 feet taller. That doesn't even make any sense, but MAGA ate it up, simply because it agitated people. That's it.
Is this a legitimate policy decision? Maybe - but it sure reads like the ranting of a drunk.
"They're trolling" is simply a juvenile defense that provides the cult and its members with plausible deniability.
The world might be slightly better off if we'd all taken them seriously from the start, but taking clowns and the accompanying circus seriously is unintuitive to most.
Meanwhile the US now has a collapse of due process, concentration camps on domestic soil and abroad, many officials and family members who are suddenly billions of dollars richer, crony firms that are billions richer, and a docile and captive congress that seems unwilling to stop any of it.
Another match lighting US soft power on fire
The last round of ICC sanctions got everyone here talking about tech sovereignty, now France and Germany are rolling their own productivity suites, the Netherlands are rolling their own NixOS distro, etc etc.
This is just going to further hurt US interests. Biting the hand that feeds, burning down their own empire out of hubris. And Americans voted for this! Twice!
It's time the EU rolls out the Blocking Statute [0] to counteract this nonsense.
[0] https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...
For many Americans, three times!
And for many Americans, never.
Also, bear in mind that the first time he won he lost the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. We have a voting system that favors less populous states. In 2024 he won the popular vote by 1.5 percentage points. He has never been very popular in this country. But his party controls all branches of government and he controls his party.
It turns out electing a stupid, vengeful narcissist and liar who is at death's door is not the way to go.
Which is all the ICC can do to nations that aren't signatories to the Rome statute.
It's not crazy to think that I won't be served meat if I'm going to a house of a vegetarian. It is however crazy to think that I will be stoned in that house for having eaten meat in the past.
And you would have had to break this law in a territory that also was a signatory of the Rome statute. This isn't some out of jurisdiction or ex post facto form of law.
So for instance, US military personnel couldn't be arrested up for crimes that occured in Iraq, because Iraq is not a signatory of the Rome statute.
So your example doesn't make sense unless you ate meat somewhere else that it was also explicitly banned, and then went to another country that had the same cross agreement to arrest people in the combined territories.
The U.S., along with China, India, Russia, and many other nations, are not members and do not grant any weight to ICC rulings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...
The U.S. had peripheral involvement in these actions.
I am upvoting you, as I don't find your line of questioning abrasive enough to warrant down votes.
I am not talking about the current ethnic conflict between Israel and Palestinians because that century worth of conflict has gone far beyond what courts can rule on. I am talking about USA absolving itself from being accountable in presence of evidence.
(I am from the country that voted to leave the EU...)
Sometimes it can be learned with a simple first degree burn. Sometimes you get blisters. Sometimes the government in power is determined to hold their hand to it and get third degree burns.
Hopefully the pain from this round of burns can be remembered for a while longer before its repeated again.
Pretty sure even a lot of the current President's voters are slowly coming to this same realization. I predict soon in casual conversation almost no one will have voted for this man.
"Democrats eat babies, are Satanist, globalists, shadow-government elite that trump is saving us from!"
I wish I was doing hyperbole... I really wish that I was...
You cannot identify idiocy if you are an idiot.
Pretty much everything that is worse because of decisions that Trump made.
Democrats seem to mostly run on literal socialism right now. And not how the US has traditionally exaggerated everything like regulated health insurance as socialism -- but actual and literal socialism... And identify politics, gender politics etc.
So if you're a working age normal person, you're kinda left with voting for the person that literally goes on air, blaming you for everything bad in the world... Or the person that's gonna fuck you over but at least tell you that you're not the issue.
The Camela Harris campaign was seriously... Insane for a lack of a better term.
I literally said Trump's was always gonna fuck every working adult over, and you think that's the opinion of someone listening to right wing media?
Straight up, are you retarded?
Or just so politically captured you either entirely forgot her speeches? Or just never listened to them?
Camela Harris did not run on literal socialism, nor did I ever claim she did.
Whats the timeline on that promised $1.99 gas, again? Or was that going to be $1.99/litre?
He says we’re winning and I’m tired of it. So i guess that’s another win for Trump!
The rest of folks, he could br singing kumbaja and nothing more and they would still follow
Also, where did you get the impression that trolling required the underlying opinion to be falsely held? Whoever taught you that was doing you a disservice.
I voted for Dean Phillips in the primary. He was blackballed. Local party officials even tried to keep him of ballots.
It even got to the point where Ezra Klein was loudly complaining about what was happening, and even he was criticized.
If you want to understand why the Dems keep losing, you have to understand the party machine. Looking at how the Phillips campaign was treated, and the Sanders campaign before that, show exactly how someone can run on exactly the issues people care about but be shut down before it ever comes to a vote, because it harms the political interests of the higher ups in the party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Phillips#2024_presidentia...
The Democratic Party's electorate aren't really paying attention.
The ones that remained till now are happy cheering for a constantly lying pedophile who has behavior of a spoiled child and mental capacity of even less. I am not holding my breath anything can move them. Other folks who voted for him and now understand, well drown in shame for all I care, it doesnt change anything since this was obvious years ago and you still voted a childish pedophile in.
The amount of people who are still in that immovable category is what I find most horrifying. I'm not sure what the fix for that is. Less lead in the water? Better education?
Can you imagine?
Bridges are burned that will never be rebuilt.
The bigger loss is in soft power, the power that comes from economics, having the worlds reserve currency, and even the trust and respect of our allies.
Neither does the US anymore.
US influence has gone up in the smoke of broken economic agreements, psychotic bloviation, and tariff wars.
If all you can do is threaten other people/countries to stand beside you, you have no friends.
What makes you think of this? Also, why wouldn't China pick up this role, when they heavily rely on this, or why wouldn't bilateral agreements be enough?
The Strait of Hormuz has entered the chat.
So much of American "power" in the past few decades has been based on perception, not reality. And other major powers, including China, have largely played along because it has suited their interests too.
But it's a mistake to assume that just because other major powers haven't sought conflict with the US, it means they're not capable of challenging America's power credibly in certain regions and domains.
Of note: the US doesn't even have an aircraft carrier in the Pacific right now. The only thing keeping China from, say, moving on Taiwan, is Pete Hegseth's testosterone.
There's an US law that says the US will invade Belgium if the court wanted to investigate an American (???)
I remember Hillary Clinton, in the Obama administration, saying the US is an exceptional country that deserves exceptional conditions regarding this issue
It's frankly ridiculous
Pretty wild that the US has a law that literally says it must invade another country if they judge Americans for war crimes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
It's not a corrupt court. It has judged crimes against humanity cases before, and a lot of countries give credence to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the... the people in this list all deserve to be there, I can't see a single exception
My own country (Brazil) supported South Africa charges of genocide against Israel because we believe in this court and the role it fulfills.
For me, the sole problem with this court is that it's reluctant to judge American war crimes and crimes against humanity. But as Europe leaves the US sphere of influence, maybe they will grow a spine. It would be unfortunate if people like George W Bush, Dick Cheney, John Choon Yoo and Jay Scott Bybee died before they were indicted by this court.
If your justice system, as a matter of policy, refused to ever arrest any while brazilians would you say it was corrupt even if every black/brown brazilian they convicted was truly guilty and fairly sentenced? It's corrupt. If their hands truly are completely tied because of credible threats against them by the US then the US is the source of their corruption, but it's still corrupt.
"We will respond against the ICC and its personnel to the extent permitted by U.S. law. We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45474864
As for the ICC turning a blind eye to the crimes of the US, its track record speaks for itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_committed_by_the_Un...
The root of the problem is in the collective mind of Americans. We are the problem - we've been hacked to be both stupid and proud of that stupidity, to cease recognizing "character" or "virtue" as a signal, to cease caring about reality that doesn't support opinions that were installed on us, like malware, or anything really except entertainment. Because that's the ONE thing we do get out of all this - we get to be entertained. How funny when he says outlandish things like immigrants are eating the cats, eating the dogs! How hilarious (and macho!) when he brags about grabbing women. How wonderful it is to see the discomfiture of the libs when he parrots Nazi propaganda or when he encouraged the Proud Boys to storm the capital to overturn his loss, and then his lackeys claimed it either didn't happen or was a false flag. "Hang Mike Pence!" is what an obese, fentanyl- and TikTok-addicted mind thinks is doing something! And hey, you can say "retard" again without getting canceled.
I've got kids and I'm terrified for them.
Arguably the richest in terms of the GDP per capita, but I don't think Americans have ever been the most educated or healthiest in the world.
Democracy is fine and well, it's an indictment of americans. Considering the 2 times this century the popular vote winner didn't get into power. And that the current president was given power twice.
> It is difficult to imagine a people - on paper the richest, most educated and healthiest in the history of the world -
The fact that you think these are true is part of the problem.
The US founders—wealthy white male land and slave owners—were explicitly skeptical of democracy and enshrined many anti-democratic measures into the US Constitution, with the purpose of thwarting the will of the majority, which they accomplished successfully. The US has always been a plutocracy, not a democracy.
Only a minority of Americans consider themselves "MAGA". In contrast, the majority of Americans dislike both of the two major political parties. However, those two parties have a monopoly on fundraising, which is how they maintain their political monopoly in a system where election campaigns are privately financed. The news media is also increasingly monopolistic.
This seems like an overstatement. After all, Germany came back from Nazism.
I also think this is not a uniquely American problem. If anything, the US is a political bellwether. And I would note that Australian Rupert Murdoch for example has been funding right-wing propaganda in the US, as well as some other countries, for decades. In addition to donating massive amounts of money to US Republicans, South African Elon Musk has also taken an interest in other countries such as the UK. The Israel lobby is of course very powerful in the US. This is an international problem. As arguably the most powerful nation in the world, the US is a natural target for those who would abuse that power.
So all we have to do to come back from it is have Nuremberg style trials for GOP leadership and to ban their ideology and symbology from being displayed in the country?
This is not a thing that exists in the world. ;-)
Please read and respect the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
It is very frustrating that, as long as there's even a tiny bit of ambiguity, dismissive quips (like your response to my initial comment) are very likely to happen. They derail the discussion by deliberately choosing a weak interpretation that has obvious inconsistencies.
With regard to "flawless behavior", I think the issue is not just ambiguity but overlooking the long history of abhorrent behavior by the US, which has constantly bombed and invaded other countries and interfered in other inhumane ways such as supplying weapons. Given that, I have to wonder where in history you would find decades of flawless behavior. I would ask seriously where the military attacks against Iran and Venezuela would rank exactly in your list of grievances against the current US administration. It's true that you could be talking about something else, but I think that in itself is problematic, to ignore the worst atrocities and focus instead on other things.
Inside the US, we have roving gangs of Trump-controlled paramilitary thugs shooting and beating people in the streets, and who may threaten polling places next month. Our economy has been sabotaged, our government sold to the highest bidders. The news media is consolidating under control of Trump allies. We're experiencing outbreaks of diseases that had been eradicated. Our scientific research has been defunded, our universities cowering in fear, and our environment has been opened to unmigigated pollution. To be frank, the reputation of the US in the rest of the world is among the least of our problems under Trump. Thus, when I'm talking about the Reichstag fire—i.e., the end of democracy in Germany and on analogy a similar event in the US (already foreshadowed by January 6, 2021)—and you respond talking about a "positive relationship with the US", as if that were the most important problem in the world, I felt that this actually trivialized the conversation.
But I do still take some issue with your own approach. I would have preferred to criticize your arguments, had you brought any up! Of course it's impossible to always respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of anyone's words, but at least you should have settled on any plausible interpretation. Your reply clearly showed that you chose an implausible interpretation, and I stand by my view that it is a bigger violation of the guidelines than you seem to think.
I don't understand what this means.
> Your reply clearly showed that you chose an implausible interpretation
How should I interpret your reply? Wouldn't it be better for you to explain rather than to complain and make me guess, perhaps wrongly?
As for the future who knows.
The proximal cause of the sanctions appears to be that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a former ICC judge, and Trump covets it.
The distal cause is that the US never joined the ICC, arguing that US political & military leaders should not be subject to a binding foreign jurisdiction. This is a longstanding disagreement, with bipartisan consensus in DC.
Putting pressure on this disagreement, the ICC has a warrants out for Netanyahu and others that the current administration views as a political & military ally.
My interpretation is basically: this is a petty move about the Nobel, which builds on a long-simmering disagreement about the role of international law.
https://apnews.com/article/us-icc-trump-rubio-4ea3555403e3c6... https://www.reuters.com/world/us-imposes-sanctions-internati...
Previous bipartisan consensus thus means nothing. Bipartisan consensus now means everyone capitulated to Trump's whim of the day.
Do these sanctions also affect anyone working at the ICC?
E.g., the ICC ditched Microsoft last year, likely foreseeing this type of action.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ommt2f/the_int...
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/01/nx-s1-5977815/trump-icc-sanct...
"You start to lose services from American companies, Amazon, Google, potentially Apple, whatever it may be," she told Morning Edition. "Completely randomly, though, you don't know when something's going to happen."
One of those moments came during an ordinary moment at home.
"I went home and Alexa wouldn't talk to me," she told NPR's Steve Inskeep.
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.
Crypto exchanges are not immune to sanctions. https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0598
Nicolas Guillou, the French judge, has had all his bank assets in the US frozen; he has been banned from all US digital services (Google, Apple, Visa, Mastercard), as have many of his familly just in case.
There are literally proven war criminals who are not treated in the same way.
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?
Not a week passes without the US giving other nations very good reasons to cut out any dependencies on anything under their jurisdiction.
Is California now panicking and exiting the United states? That would be really funny.
- from California with love.
See the similarity here...?
Now, as it happens, the US is one of the most economically and militarily powerful states out there, so they're the closest we have to an actual world police - but again, that police doesn't follow "international law", they act in what they think is the best interest of the West (or the US specifically). That's how all regional powers roll, albeit on a smaller scale. Russia and China make claims to neighboring states, Germany unceremoniously protects its economic interests in the EU, Iran bankrolls terrorists in neighboring states who in turn bomb Iran, and so on.
The ICC is a bit unusual in that it's an initiative of some Western states trying to get the most powerful state to play by their rules. It's a nice try, but also... obviously doomed? And it's not something the US can ignore, because the court does assert the authority to arrest and try US servicemen and politicians. So this was kinda inevitable, and if you think the sanctions are bad, consider the bipartisan Hague Invasion Act of 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
One can also argue that, exactly because there is the right to self-determination, there is a huge need for a inter-national and super-national organism to ensure that a right of some country doesn't jeopardise the rights of others.
Is the ICC the right organism? Maybe, maybe not; we can argue about that.
Which is a long way of saying, there’s a consensus that there are standards higher than national law we may want to uphold.
I know ICC is later, and also US never joined, in a somewhat hypocritical compromise. But at least the purpose and motivation, IMO, are clean and noble.
That being said, sanctioning them feels a bit odd. Might be some latent jingoism but I don't see a threat from the ICC being substantial to US citizens.
The Elephant in The Room is that this is announced at the Nobel Peace Prize Winner with a relationship with the ICC studied the horrific conditions in Gaza.
That is what is happening here.
This is not a subtle ideological argument about 'international law'.
You'd be surprised. People aware of such nuances are usually a very small minority in any room.
That is not the Elephant, it's a 'helpful reminder'.
The Elephant is the UN / Peace Prize / Gaza / Vengeance Politics / AIPAC directed foreign policy.
Complain about the geopolitics, call out humans for where we have gotten, maybe even take some responsibility for it. But calling out one player for the sake of self gratification will either replace that player with a different one, not change the way we have decided to govern.
The world as we know it, chose them because they were a model for democracy and freedom from religion; Obviously not model without massive flaws though. The world had accepted that as long as their model would improve over time but not when they decide to become more corrupt, run religious wars and try to overtly use and abuse other nations for their own gain. Abusive models are not one that should attract alliances.
As for Arab / Israeli conflict, it has many causes and one is a proxy war between two major religions using a third one as their proxy goat in our timeline but it has been ongoing for centuries now. A second cause is a proxy war between socialists and non-socialists that is ongoing and guess which side religiosity takes; both side of conflict religions are involved. So you have a world court that is product of that.
The solution may not be simple but it is obvious, accepting socialism as a valid form of governance and stop running conflicts against it and condemning religious dogma and improving the models for democracy that work on reduction of corruption and conflict and working for interest of all the population.
If you ask me , what would take to stop Arab/ Israeli conflict forever, I would say that the solution would be for Egypt to accept Gaza a province and allow for human movements within it but they wont because this is a religious conflict and both major religions have pawns. The world court can not rule on solutions.
Not sure it's logical but I would say there are millenia of history to show the trend, and more so there is no logic or evidence to show American freedom has been in good faith (many were slaughtered satisfying manifest destiny).
FWIW I'm not anti-America. But I am anti-idealist (and as above, I see no reason to believe America idealist) since there is nothing to show ideals actually hold up. For humans to live together, it's better to acknowledge this and create "logical" frameworks rather than rely on idealism.
That’s a bit of a americacentric view
It's normal for times to change and finally cracks are showing in American hegemony (AI dominance will either make or break it). But ignoring that is just ignoring reality.