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sdcfgy 2 hours ago [-]
As an outside observer, the US administration is an embarrassment to the country. You're never going to come back from this. Well done.
jimbokun 1 hours ago [-]
Oh, we are well aware.
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.
bhelkey 8 minutes ago [-]
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.
mattcaldwell 1 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure about that! Don't see any evidence of that from where I'm sitting.
jimbokun 1 hours ago [-]
They will agree Trump is an idiot but quickly change the conversation to how Democrats are Even Worse.
altruios 42 minutes ago [-]
Got into it at a coin show recently:
"Democrats eat babies, are Satanist, globalists, shadow-government elite that trump is saving us from!": said the Coin Dealer.
I wish I was doing hyperbole... I really wish that I was...
It boggles my mind that people honestly think things would be worse if Harris won.
Pretty much everything that is worse because of decisions that Trump made.
ogogmad 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jmcqk6 44 minutes ago [-]
> a break-up of the US is now imminent.
There is no way this is happening. The logistics alone will be killer and as bad as things are, there is nothing that would be gained by this that would be worth the pain it would cause.
To the extent that there are geographic differences, it is not between red states and blue states, but rural vs. urban. Even in texas the major cities almost all go blue.
BadBadJellyBean 38 minutes ago [-]
If by "UNDER HALF" you mean who voted for him then I don't know what you are talking about. Trump won the electoral AND the popular vote. And don't go counting non voters as against Trump.
By every metric the US wanted Trump and they got Trump.
vkou 1 hours ago [-]
Nah, they are all getting ready to vote for him a fourth time.
krembo 47 minutes ago [-]
Great vote, great administration, regardless of the hn echo chamber.
38 minutes ago [-]
jolux 1 hours ago [-]
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.
jmcqk6 40 minutes ago [-]
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.
silverFork 11 minutes ago [-]
Guarantor, you must be kidding. It is actually causing transit blockage to name one instance.
heresie-dabord 40 minutes ago [-]
> China has no interest in being the guarantor of freedom of transit in international waterways
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.
sdcfgy 50 minutes ago [-]
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.
Bridges are burned that will never be rebuilt.
ruszki 35 minutes ago [-]
> 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?
ElProlactin 31 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
actionfromafar 1 hours ago [-]
Just because someone cannot replace the US does not mean things go back to where they were. We get the "multipolar world" AKA chaos.
nextaccountic 1 hours ago [-]
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
It's frankly ridiculous
matheusmoreira 45 minutes ago [-]
I don't get it... Why would any other country handicap themselves by joining such an obviously corrupt court that judges them but not the US?
Pretty wild that the US has a law that literally says it must invade another country if they judge Americans for war crimes.
Netherlands, not Belgium. Though with the quality of US targeting, it's possible they might accidentally invade Belgium instead.
Betelbuddy 2 hours ago [-]
The US is an embarrassment to the Planet.
vrganj 1 hours ago [-]
I wish it was just that. Existential threat is the term I'd use at this point.
simpaticoder 1 hours ago [-]
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.
I've got kids and I'm terrified for them.
tcptomato 29 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
simpaticoder 25 minutes ago [-]
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.
silverFork 6 minutes ago [-]
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.
phainopepla2 31 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
pluc 57 minutes ago [-]
We'll see how the midterm civil war goes, but I'm guessing you should take your kids out of that place if only to offer them a future where this is no longer an option.
bijowo1676 1 hours ago [-]
its only this administration, its the whole Congress and Uniparty in DC
tiahura 1 hours ago [-]
Parents spend considerable time teaching children to not get caught up in other people's opinions.
DFHippie 1 hours ago [-]
Most Americans agree with you at this point.
sdcfgy 1 hours ago [-]
Just on the record I sympathise with you. Wish it could have been different for the sake of the good people over there.
(I am from the country that voted to leave the EU...)
shagie 1 hours ago [-]
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.
DFHippie 59 minutes ago [-]
Sometimes it's touching a hot stove. Sometimes it's putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger to see if it's loaded.
sparklysoup 52 minutes ago [-]
I would love to believe you, but it's going to take a handful of election cycles to be convinced.
rfgplk 2 hours ago [-]
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.
chmod775 1 hours ago [-]
You appear to be confused. Anyone can decide anything, the question is whether it is in their power to enforce their decisions.
Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!
sobellian 1 hours ago [-]
> Anyone can decide anything, the question is whether it is on their power to enforce their decisions.
You seem to have arrived at a suitable definition of "authority"
1 hours ago [-]
chmod775 1 hours ago [-]
"authority" is an overloaded term in English, but "having authority" isn't. The latter implies a set of rules.
sobellian 58 minutes ago [-]
Seems to be a rather silly, pedantic point if it even passes. GP was clearly talking about sovereignty etc. which is exactly the caveat that you granted - that ICC may have no enforcement power over non-treaty countries. For the record I have no axe to grind with the ICC, but you and GP literally agree on the main difficulty facing the institution.
chmod775 56 minutes ago [-]
This is exactly the kind of discussion where the difference is important. Your reading of the point they were trying to make is impressively charitable. I shall try to learn from it.
sobellian 52 minutes ago [-]
If the point is that anyone can tell anyone else anything, that's vacuously true but a court typically wields the power of a state and its code of laws. For treaty countries ICC is perfectly unproblematic but for nontreaty countries there's a strong difficulty in calling it a court as it bears no legal legitimacy.
chmod775 48 minutes ago [-]
National courts routinely issue arrest warrants and rulings for persons of other nationalities, who could currently be located anywhere in the world. The ICC is not special in that regard.
sobellian 32 minutes ago [-]
Right and you can imagine how much authority the average Russian lends to an American arrest warrant.
chmod775 1 minutes ago [-]
I have to applaud coming up with a sentence like that.
Let me address the point underlying that contortion though: In the alternate semantic universe we're constructing, if that Russian later passes through a US-friendly country and is arrested, did the court turn out to retroactively have the authority, and we pretend it always had it? Or is it supposed to work some other way?
1 hours ago [-]
onedognight 1 hours ago [-]
The International Criminal Court was created by a treaty between sovereign nations. These nations chose to for it to have authority over them.
dmitrygr 1 hours ago [-]
> These nations chose to for it to have authority over them.
Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?
alexgieg 60 minutes ago [-]
So far the last several Presidents of the USA have decided they don't want that.
If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.
If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.
Hikikomori 24 minutes ago [-]
They didn't. But they're big mad that ICC put out warrants for Netanyahu etc.
EDIT: forgot the peace prize, trump likely mad over that again.
vrganj 1 hours ago [-]
The US created its predecessor with the Nuremberg Trials. (Which I'm pretty sure Nazi Germany never signed up for, fwiw)
Rules for thee, not for me.
sdcfgy 2 hours ago [-]
Well a lot of international diplomacy depends on trade and associated meetings. If someone is sanctioned by the ICC then they can't move money or visit any member countries.
That is authority if you like it or not.
boothby 1 hours ago [-]
[dead]
jcranmer 2 hours ago [-]
The treaties a country signs up to is a good start on defining what constitutes crimes.
chasil 1 hours ago [-]
There is indeed a long list of criticisms of the ICC.
The U.S., along with China, India, Russia, and many other nations, are not members and do not grant any weight to ICC rulings.
It has as much if not more authority to judge crimes commited in the member countries that gave it that authority than Trump has to sanction them in the first place.
wilg 2 hours ago [-]
Quite simply because you are allowed to set up international organizations by treaty.
vrganj 2 hours ago [-]
How can a nation decide what is and isn't a crime? It's all made up, a "farce" to use your diction. We just choose to go along and build these institutions because living in lawlessness is worse.
Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.
medina 2 hours ago [-]
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...
clcaev 2 hours ago [-]
Dr. Pillay also chaired the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory from 2021 to 2025.
Cry cry, Netanyahu isn't a war criminal. Waa waa, this guy got the Nobel Prize and I didn't.
aatd86 1 hours ago [-]
oh that matches. Current admin must feel guilty/wary of something. "Best defense is attack" type of reasoning.
There is no reason otherwise.
hexis 1 hours ago [-]
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...
cromka 2 hours ago [-]
> America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it.
Wow, so tough, much decision
jimbokun 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
noitpmeder 2 hours ago [-]
The article is (probably purposefully) unclear of what actually is happening here... what sanctions are being applied, to whom, and to what effect?
socializer 1 hours ago [-]
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...
rich_sasha 43 minutes ago [-]
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.
fedeb95 56 minutes ago [-]
you can argue many things. This isn't arguing.
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.
pluc 2 hours ago [-]
Why stop there? Let's do all other collaborative groups that don'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.
1a527dd5 1 hours ago [-]
I believe the term is 'superpower suicide'. Amazing to see it in real-time.
qarl 1 hours ago [-]
Is that really a term?
Regardless - I think it's safe to assume this isn't happening in a vacuum - there are a number of world players who profit from the collapse of the U.S. And all this trouble started the moment they could use the internet to feed stupid Americans their stupid propaganda.
DFHippie 53 minutes ago [-]
Europe is getting the same firehose of stupid propaganda and is looking a little shaky. Education and history give Europe an advantage but not immunity. There are stupid people everywhere eager to get their hate on.
qarl 7 minutes ago [-]
Well... yeah... Brexit is exactly the same thing. But now it's moving to the continent....
People are really dumb. Who knew?
tiahura 1 hours ago [-]
Is that what happened to europe?
cromka 36 minutes ago [-]
Suicide implies something specific happening in a short time.
EU (which is what you presumably mean by "europe") has its own problems, but it do so much in such a short time. UK got close with Brexit, but that's like a single event compared to probably dozens by now by the US in last 2 years.
But you won't see any of that if best you could do was some weak whataboutism.
WhyNotHugo 2 hours ago [-]
Meanwhile, the EU is working on further entrenching payment and identity into American service providers (mainly: Apple and Google).
Do these sanctions also affect anyone working at the ICC?
dghughes 44 minutes ago [-]
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.
curiousllama 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
tanepiper 9 minutes ago [-]
"I'll take International Politics for $200 Alex"
"The answer is YES!"
Is it "Are we the baddies?"
ding ding ding ding
mendym 1 hours ago [-]
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?
_ache_ 1 hours ago [-]
Yes, the CPI did manage to move out Microsoft / Google. I bet Apple is harder to escape.
yzydserd 2 hours ago [-]
If you choose not to join a club, you don’t need to try to “cripple its ability to operate”.
maratc 2 hours ago [-]
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.
monocasa 1 hours ago [-]
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.
maratc 1 hours ago [-]
> 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.
zarzavat 1 hours ago [-]
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.
gunslinger_meta 2 hours ago [-]
You do if they're bullying you for not joining.
mfost 1 hours ago [-]
Just like the US is bullying them for let me check: dare to try perosnally having a bank account and do online payments.
guywithahat 2 minutes ago [-]
I think those are the sactions; the US is upset the ICC put out arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Regardless of what you think about Israel, it's easy to see how they might interpret the ICC's actions as a threat.
rbanffy 2 hours ago [-]
That's the kind of thing only a rogue state would do.
dogmayor 1 hours ago [-]
Did a child write this? So embarrassing to be an American.
beej71 50 minutes ago [-]
There's probably a reason they write these at the 3rd- to 4th-grade level. Trump doesn't really talk much above that. I'm honestly not sure why.
cromka 33 minutes ago [-]
The silver lining is this was clearly not AI-generated.
hypfer 1 hours ago [-]
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.
letsbehonest1 35 minutes ago [-]
No panic at all. The ICC is irrelevant to anyone here's day to day life.
- from California with love.
pu_pe 1 hours ago [-]
So just when the whole Greenland debacle seemed to be settled, it's time to create another rift with the EU.
notrealyme123 59 minutes ago [-]
> "Either the ICC will end its threats, or we will end the ICC."
Are the ICC already terrorists, or not yet? Asking for a friend who doesn't want to get bombed.
franczesko 1 hours ago [-]
All of this, because one war criminal can't come to Europe anymore
curiousllama 2 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
bediger4000 1 hours ago [-]
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.
curiousllama 1 hours ago [-]
Bipartisan consensus means "at this moment, neither party opposes this policy"
It is indeed fragile since, as you point out, it only takes one party (or in Rs case, one person) to eliminate the consensus. Consensus comes and goes.
And yet, it's notable when through the chaos, both parties have consistently maintained lockstep agreement for 30 years.
2 hours ago [-]
Beretta_Vexee 31 minutes ago [-]
"If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, brick by brick, until Americans are threatened no longer."
- Are We the Baddies?
26 minutes ago [-]
guywithahat 5 minutes ago [-]
> For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike rejected the idea that the International Criminal Court had the power to prosecute American citizens, military servicemembers, or political leaders. America never joined the court. We don’t need it. And we don’t want it.
I mean this is your answer. Regardless of what you think about Israel and their actions, the ICC has no real authority, and there is no government authority above the US that can criminally charge people. Creating fake arrest warrants for people who aren't in your organization is easily interpreted as a threat, and it would be silly to think the US and/or Israel would want to retaliate to the ICC's threats.
Really the moral thing to do would be for the ICC to not try and charge or convict people who aren't part of their organization, since they don't have fair trials, but I suppose that's never how these international organizations work.
resters 2 hours ago [-]
It's hard to tell which executive orders are meant as a joke and which are meant as sincere (but horrible) policy perspectives.
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.
jimbokun 1 hours ago [-]
A world in which official statements from the US State Department and a joke are indistinguishable.
curiousllama 1 hours ago [-]
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.
b5n 1 hours ago [-]
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.
jimt1234 2 hours ago [-]
> ...gets an immature charge out of trolling people.
That describes MAGA perfectly.
karmakurtisaani 47 minutes ago [-]
They'll eat a shit sandwich if it means others have to smell their breath.
bflesch 2 hours ago [-]
I don't understand why this is such an urgent topic. Is ICC currently prosecuting an US citizen?
medina 2 hours ago [-]
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...
jeroenhd 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
actionfromafar 2 hours ago [-]
I have read here on this here HN, that "soft power" does not in fact exist, and therefore cannot be lost!
So, good news I guess. Everything is fine. Trump is the best president ever in the history of the world.
conmod278 2 hours ago [-]
There is cantillon effect happening here with respect to trust in govts. media and institutions in general. People are becoming distrustful but slowly. Those who are on internet a lot know about these topics in depth but people farther away take time to adjust to New Reality.
BoggleOhYeah 1 hours ago [-]
This place is populated by people that have rotted out their intelligence and morals by obsessively reading and regurgitating “rationalist” blogspam.
boredpeter 24 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
HackerThemAll 2 hours ago [-]
Will Trump be able to change the law so that he becomes a lifetime dictator of USA?
jimbokun 1 hours ago [-]
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.
monocasa 1 hours ago [-]
I think that decision is still a bit in flux and won't truly be made until late 2027.
epgui 2 hours ago [-]
At the end of the day, the law is what people agree it is… And people don’t seem to be too interested in keeping the lunatic in check.
resters 2 hours ago [-]
It's truly bizarre. I think some of his supporters think that they are all in on the joke and that he doesn't mean half of it. But at this point there is zero evidence good faith, zero evidence of strategy. Just one odd PR stunt after another that someone can day trade on if they know about it a few hours in advance.
jimbokun 1 hours ago [-]
The Supreme Court doesn't seem too interested in letting the 22nd Amendment slide.
Even they have their limits.
wg0 2 hours ago [-]
Putin would hope so because there's no other way.
actionfromafar 2 hours ago [-]
He does not seem to care much for laws in general. Why change them when you can just ignore them? Much less work.
SillyUsername 1 hours ago [-]
I'm confused, if you're not a criminal, what have you got to hide?
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!": said the Coin Dealer.
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.
There is no way this is happening. The logistics alone will be killer and as bad as things are, there is nothing that would be gained by this that would be worth the pain it would cause.
To the extent that there are geographic differences, it is not between red states and blue states, but rural vs. urban. Even in texas the major cities almost all go blue.
By every metric the US wanted Trump and they got Trump.
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.
Bridges are burned that will never be rebuilt.
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...
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.
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.
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.
(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.
Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!
You seem to have arrived at a suitable definition of "authority"
Let me address the point underlying that contortion though: In the alternate semantic universe we're constructing, if that Russian later passes through a US-friendly country and is arrested, did the court turn out to retroactively have the authority, and we pretend it always had it? Or is it supposed to work some other way?
Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?
If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.
If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.
EDIT: forgot the peace prize, trump likely mad over that again.
Rules for thee, not for me.
That is authority if you like it or not.
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...
Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2026/pillay/facts/
Wow, so tough, much decision
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...
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.
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.
Regardless - I think it's safe to assume this isn't happening in a vacuum - there are a number of world players who profit from the collapse of the U.S. And all this trouble started the moment they could use the internet to feed stupid Americans their stupid propaganda.
People are really dumb. Who knew?
EU (which is what you presumably mean by "europe") has its own problems, but it do so much in such a short time. UK got close with Brexit, but that's like a single event compared to probably dozens by now by the US in last 2 years.
But you won't see any of that if best you could do was some weak whataboutism.
Do these sanctions also affect anyone working at the ICC?
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.
E.g., the ICC ditched Microsoft last year, likely foreseeing this type of action.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ommt2f/the_int...
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.
"The answer is YES!"
Is it "Are we the baddies?"
ding ding ding ding
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.
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.
Are the ICC already terrorists, or not yet? Asking for a friend who doesn't want to get bombed.
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.
It is indeed fragile since, as you point out, it only takes one party (or in Rs case, one person) to eliminate the consensus. Consensus comes and goes.
And yet, it's notable when through the chaos, both parties have consistently maintained lockstep agreement for 30 years.
- Are We the Baddies?
I mean this is your answer. Regardless of what you think about Israel and their actions, the ICC has no real authority, and there is no government authority above the US that can criminally charge people. Creating fake arrest warrants for people who aren't in your organization is easily interpreted as a threat, and it would be silly to think the US and/or Israel would want to retaliate to the ICC's threats.
Really the moral thing to do would be for the ICC to not try and charge or convict people who aren't part of their organization, since they don't have fair trials, but I suppose that's never how these international organizations work.
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.
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.
That describes MAGA perfectly.
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.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/defendant/netanyahu
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.
So, good news I guess. Everything is fine. Trump is the best president ever in the history of the world.
Even they have their limits.
See the similarity here...?