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.
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.
I can't say I'm happy about that, but it's a fact now. We cannot put that genie back in the bottle. Even a change of leadership soon will not alter the realization that it can change back on a moment's notice.
So... we will find out.
Utterly ridiculous. Hamas had it coming after Oct 7th. What else did they expect other than swift and brutal retaliation after doing to Israel what 9/11 was for the US?
Do you know what Israel did and still is doing in Gaza (and the West Bank)? It goes way beyond “retaliation”. A genocidal, algorithmic rampage that spared no one. “Collateral damage” taken to its extreme. It is a testbed for techniques to crush armed liberation movements. For the US in particular, this is how the 2nd amendment can be rendered obsolete.
I am curious. Would you empathize more if Gaza was a Ukrainian enclave in Russia that tried to break free from its status as a blockaded strip of land? Is the involvement of non-white victims the problem? Perhaps it’s because there are Palestinians involved? Maybe if this were a fictional struggle set in some fictional universe involving some kind of “rebel” group; is that what it takes to spare an ounce of empathy?
They applied the same concept in Iran during the 12 Day War, where they performed “targeted strikes” on apartment buildings housing nuclear scientists and other top officials, while killing 10s of civilians in the process. And then they (unironically) believed that Iranians would rise up against their government instead of rallying around the flag, at least temporarily.
Hamas had the option to attack military targets. Instead they targeted a music festival full of civilians, murdering almost everyone, and raping most of the women there. (For those who doubt, there are a lot of sources. CNN, BBC, Al Jezeera, and even the UN's own fact-finding mission all confirm the rapes and murders.)
In my opinion, the sanctioning of these judges simply comes across as a petty tantrum of a nation in decline, using the remaining tools it has at it's disposal to try to get its way.
edit: typo
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.
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. It's pretty nakedly a vehicle for the interests of various international political players.
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.
These principles are not objective moral axioms that we can all reason from.
We decide, as sovereign countries, what they mean to us, how they should be implemented, or even if we (as a country) don't value this or that. There is no magical tablet of Rights that we can spiritually commune with to determine "X is a right but Y is not." These are all politically and culturally determined.
So it absolutely matters, very, very much who decides, and millions have died as a consequence of those decisions. It does not make much sense for anyone to hand those decisions over to the ICC. Unless and until we have a single global culture and moral framework the whole idea is absurd...except as a vehicle for the power plays of different factions at the international politics level.
Because they are politically and culturally determined, because they are not something that people are just born with the innate ability to find, is exactly why handing decisions over to people belonging to different cultures/societies/institutions is highly dangerous. The only way to actually protect our rights is to not accede to institutions like the ICC. It's absurd to say that because billions of people could be trained to believe in things they don't believe in we must act as though the things they don't believe in are universally true, or else we will lose our freedoms. We can simply live in sovereign countries that do hold these beliefs - and as for the countries that do things we find revolting, we can pressure them or ignore them or war with them as we see fit and as has been done since the dawn of time. But ultimately you have to accept that different cultures have different values, even if you're one of those that want to do something about it. You can't just stick your head in the sand and pretend the ICC actually adheres to these ideals.
The only solution would be similar to what China exercised. The EU passes an order telling all EU entities to not comply with US sanctions or face legal problems. Then it comes down to how the US responds and whether EU can take that hit.
[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/impo...
There are strong calls from the EP now for the EC to prepare the blocking statute:
https://www.politico.eu/article/block-us-sanctions-on-the-ic...
https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...
The effect of these transitive sanctions is to create trading blocks. If you want to do business with the U.S, you don't do business with sanctioned entities. If other world powers (like China or the EU) want to negate the power of U.S. sanctions, they pass laws that people in their countries must not comply with U.S. sanctions or risk being sanctioned themselves. Now firms are stuck: if they comply with one set of sanctions they are in violation of another, and vice versa, and so it becomes impossible to comply with all of them. Their two options are: 1) comply with their local, national trading bloc and forego the benefits of globalization and trade or 2) become an outlaw, get the benefits of trade, but risk the ire of national authorities.
#2 seems rather unthinkable right now, coming off the Pax Americana, but it was actually quite common during historical periods like the one we're headed into. That's the choice made by pirates during the 1600s; by American colonists in the 1770s; oftentimes by frontier settlers in ~1860s America; and by numerous non-state nations like Jews or Gypsies throughout history. Plus, the Internet and cryptocurrencies and VPNs and Tor and residential proxies all exist. The technology is there for a market state that crosses national boundaries, and the social conditions are building.
Notice I said "outcome" rather than "solution", as I think people can see many things wrong with this. You'll kinda get whatever emerges, which probably is not an improvement on what we had from 1990-2020.
Unfortunately, the fact that they haven't done this just makes the EU look like a paper tiger.
They could have immediately activated the trade bazooka when Trump was threatening Greenland, but the slower diplomatic approach also worked and led to far less damage on both sides.
If you don’t follow sanctions, other banks either with branches doing business in the U.S., or their partner banks, will refuse to continue banking with you out of fear for not following sanctions – which include banks enabling sanction-circumvention. Essentially, even if the bank doesn’t want to deal with USD (which most banks would still like to do!), you’re still bound by the sanctions. A bank won’t survive long or well if it’s cut off from a majority of other banks.
China does this via laws that say, if you do not provide services to Chinese citizens/entities citing foreign sanctions, they can send you to a gulag forever. Seems to be fairly effective, considering how heavily sanctioned Huawei is.
All these hard "immediate consequences" scenarios are pure fiction. Not because they can't become truth, they can. But there's a hundred other possibilities. Literally sticking to the "letter of the law" is just one of them, and not a particularly likely one.
> 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.
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.
How would you even know this? Was there a poll done across every Trump supporter where they admitted to committing financial fraud? Do you mean to say Trump's 'pundits' and not his 'supporters'?
Also, the majority of pushback to debanking that I've seen among MAGA types I know IRL is more centered around the 2022 trucker protests and the debatably unjust reaction from the Canadian government.
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?
I see how you're trying to twist this into an act of "sovereignty" but not signing up is usually a sign that the respective country is a common perpetrator of exactly the type of crime the ICC would convict (war crimes, genocide, that type of thing). And wouldn't you know it, just check out the list ;).
If you commit crimes in another state, expect to be judged according to their system of law (which in this case includes the ICC).
Also worth noting that the ICC issued arrest warrants for (now dead) Hamas leaders.
Just incredibly naked corruption.
ICC judge and she has a device like this in her house. I think that she did not read any Snowden related books.
Furthermore it's a bit of a missed opportunity for her to not move to Proton, NextCloud, GrapheneOS, and show how she can still live her life with many modern conveniences. She could find some non-over-complient companies and list them, I'd go for those from now on, great PR. But alas, she is not a Techy. Maybe Meredith Whittaker can pay her a visit and show her a thing or two. I'd like to see that happen. Whittaker will be in the Netherlands soon for an Honorary degree [0]
[0] https://vu.nl/nl/nieuws/2026/vu-eredoctoraat-voor-voorvechte...
Then it is high time to make the company legally required not to follow the U.S. sanctions.
What many people seem to forget is that the US is in the habit of issuing unilateral sanctions. They are not legitimate in the way UN sanctions are.
Preach, it's not like the US is gagging for it when it comes to following EU laws and sanctions either.
Historically, we went along following US sanctions despite not always agreeing with them, because the US was the one ensuring most of our defensive capabilities in Europe, but Trump set that contract on fire and told us to pay for our own defense, and we said fine, but now that we're remilitarizing on our own dime to defend ourselves without the US, why should we still follow the whims of US politics anymore? You can't have your cake and eat it too Orange Man.
To quote Theoden from LotR: "You Have No Power Here!"
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.
Which Americans? I think it just upset only the Zionists, Epstein class, members of congress bought and paid for by Israel(AIPAC) including the US presidential administration, plus the boomers who've been brainwashed by decades of Zionist propaganda on TV, but I imagine a large part of US voter base, especially under-35s, don't agree with this if polled.
At least every American I know in Europe(not a representative sample size, I know) is vehemently against supporting what Israel is doing.
In short, the opinion of Americans is just not relevant to America's foreign policy decisions. Even a 100% anti-Zionist Congress would be unable to stop supporting the genocide.
Yes, they would be able to if the majority party actually wanted to. Trump could be impeached for so many things I can't count. It's not happening because Republican members of the house and senate don't want to or are afraid to.
America is a democracy, right? Every American is 100% culpable for everything their government does.
I mean, the US is overwhelmingly the world's most dangerous rogue nation, committing terrorism, rampant piracy, making the world an infinitely more dangerous place (are HNers aware that the US has changed to a first strike nuclear policy, coupled with Trump now having tactical, low-yield nukes as an accepted policy? Do you know how unbelievably perilous both of these profoundly stupid things are?), attacking allies, undermining democracy all over the world, and just generally being a world shitheel. And look, the midterms might...maybe...slightly go against the Republicans.
GOP members should be all polling at 0%.
I disagree. I'm EU citizen and I am not culpable for everything my and the EU government does, because while being democracies on paper, I don't get to directly vote on the leadership of the EU(Ursula) nor the individual policies of my country and the EU decide to take, especially on external politics, which are often against my choices, but I have no say in it.
Sure, I can try to vote those people out, but that means a delay of at least another election cycle(provided the majority is on my side), in which time they can legally keep doing what I don't want them to do.
My point is, democracy isn't some magic wand that does the peoples' wishes at current time, but has plenty of flaws known and documented since the ancient greeks.
Source?
Edit: not to mention moving our allies toward not complying with US sanctions at all, reducing American soft power
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.
I would hope the French gov would step in and pay her claims directly.
> 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!).
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.
Do you even know what the ICC is based on?
> American law rests on a joint agreement among the governed.
No, it doesn't.
> The American people have never agreed to be governed by a foreign court.
That's the first true statement in your reply, and it means they can simply ignore the court. It doesn't mean targeting the employees of the court. That's just the US govt. being thugs.
> No, it doesn't.
why do you say that?
Generally it is mean exactly that.
The judicial system is a branch of governmental authority. Any government on the planet Earth sees the establishment of unauthorize parallel branches of authority as one of the most serious crimes, and people who belong to such bodies face extremely harsh penalties up to physical elimination by the military force.
In reality, it was established by treaty, and 125 countries have chosen to vest authority in it. Originally that list included Israel, the US, and Russia, who supported the establishment of the court but subsequently withdrew when they perceived that being member states would constrain their strategic ambitions.
Unfortunately we live under the rule of a Zionist Occupied Government so that ground was ceded long ago.
That being said, I think the vast majority of Americans are ok with the ICC holding people committing genocide accountable. Most Americans also do not like the influence Israel has on our country and these sanctions are just yet more proof that we are occupied and not even operating in our government's own interests.