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How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA

486 points by i-con 11mo ago

breppp 11mo ago
[flagged]
- netsharc 11mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXExGWGEyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXExGWGEyw "War crimes are defined by the winners. I'm a winner, so I can make my own definition.". The whole documentary is worth a watch, IMO. It's an incredible look about how people commit heinous acts and build an imaginary world for 40 years to say what they did was "right and justified". Including a scene where the killers imagine they're being thanked by their victims for taking them from godless communism and bringing them to Heaven. Maybe in 2065 there'll be a version where we'll need subtitles for the Yiddish dialog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q
  - breppp 11mo ago
    I think the more interesting thing here is the ability to fantasize categories such as genocide where war can be maximalized into genocide when you don't like the winner, and the genocidal act that has started said war (classic genocide mass killings of civilians by death squads) is appropriated by the perpetrators turned victims
    - netsharc 11mo ago
      I guess "genocide" is also defined by the winners, or their defenders. And if it's not a genocide, then it's just mass killing of innocents, and that's... fine! Wonko the Sane is right.
      - breppp 11mo ago
        do you define the dresden firebombings or the hiroshima nuclear attack as genocide?
        forgetfulness 11mo ago
        Israel hasn’t gotten fire bombed or nuked. What’s the parallel with the WW2 Axis Powers here?
        breppp 11mo ago
        Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is thought by some to be "genocide", though it was far less destructive, more precise and not aimed at a civilian population as compared to the above
        netsharc 11mo ago
        Is this how you win the arguments in your head? Your opponent uses the word "genocide", you concluded turning Gaza into rubble with kids and many more innocents underneath them doesn't fit the term "genocide", and you further conclude whatever claim your opponent is trying to make is wrong, and therefore there aren't a few hundred thousand dead civilians, ah the whole accusation is just fictional, they all actually lived happily ever after in peace and harmony (in your head). Yeah yeah, people are still dying, and we're arguing about the definitions of words. How convenient. Whatever distraction helps you sleep at night, I suppose.
        breppp 11mo ago
        no, I am saying war is not genocide. And protecting your own civilians from very real death squads going on executing rampage is not "genocide" it's called war, which might be terrible but sometimes you can't evade
        immibis 11mo ago
        You're talking about Hamas, right? hamas are the ones who tried to fight back against death squads and are now suffering the consequences of that?
    - 7952 11mo ago
      Its all abstractions that help justify ethno-nationalism at the expense of concern about individual tragedy.
      - breppp 11mo ago
        most of the wars in history were fought by empires that were the exact opposite of ethnic-nationalism, and also most genocides. it is completely unrelated
        7952 11mo ago
        Ethno-nationalism seems to be a strong factor in both Israeli and Palestinian politics. I can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state. Also, my point was more about how conflict is perceived and litigated in politics and threads like this. Factoids about history are completely irrelevant to that. Its just another abstraction.
        breppp 11mo ago
        > can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state. It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA. Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, and the ethnic part is debatable if you ever seen Israelis, unlike the Palestinian national movement which is ethnic-nationalist
        dragonwriter 11mo ago
        > It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? Most nationalism either is based around an established ancestry-derived ethnic identity (which is what “ethno-nationalism” usually refers to), or seeks to construct a new identity (which itself can be viewed as ethnic) transcending existing ethnic lines within the population of a state (the PRM regime in Mexico is an example of this); you might call this cosmopolitan nationalism. > I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA. States often contain multiple different kinds of nationalism in their population, and may even contain different kinds in their governments. The USA definitely has nationalist factions of both the ethnonationalist (specifically White nationalist) and cosmopolitan nationalist kind. > Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, The Israeli state is possibly the only strongly ethnoreligious state. Ethnoreligious nationalism is a large subset of ethno-nationalism, but states in places with strong ethnoreligious nationalism don’t always build both ethnic and religious character into their state structure.
    - kombine 11mo ago
      This is demagoguery. There is ample evidencence that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Historians who study genocide all their careers, including Israeli Jewish ones, concluded it a long time ago. There is 100 pages with references in the application by South Africa to the ICJ. If you intend to take the same route as the Holocaust denialists, the burden is on you to disprove all the evidence.
      - ta20240528 11mo ago
        To be clear, South Africa didn't present any of their OWN evidence to the ICJ of Israeli genocide. Rather, they carefully and methodically presented hundreds of reports made by OTHER UN agencies which reported on the genocidal behaviour. This left the ICJ in a pickle: as a UN body itself, it had to either find for 'probably genocide' or publicly state that every other UN body was either in a grand conspiracy or was incompetent. A very smart legal strategy.
      - breppp 11mo ago
        last time I checked a basic part of a trial is the mere existence of it is not a proof of guilt.. While most of your argument is the fact that because South Africa has sued Israel in international court then it is somehow proof of genocide. Regarding scholars, again not enough I am sorry. In reality after more than two years the Gazan population hasn't even declined in size, which makes the entire case for genocide mostly a political joke on people who were mostly systematically exterminated like the Jews, Armenians and Tutsi. Generally this is so far from a real genocide killing rates, reasons and methods that the only explanation is that some regimes have an interest at removing the substance out of the definition of genocide
        kombine 10mo ago
        I repeat, the evidence that South Africa submitted in this application spans 100 pages with reference. You are not disproving that but instead throwing ridiculous claims that Gazan population hasn't declined in size.
- immibis 11mo ago
  If by "arbitrary law" you mean "don't snipe babies, journalists and the Red Cross" and by "political influence" you mean "actual psychopaths who want the headshot high score"
  - breppp 11mo ago
    if by reality i mean "invented stories in scare quotes"
enlguy 11mo ago
Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
  I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing (not that it always succeeded, but it did its best). Looks like that time has passed.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - usrnm 11mo ago
    Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
      I don't disagree, but I think there was a genuine perception by many people that the US were the good guys. The change is that its not even trying to pretend to be this anymore.
  - skrebbel 11mo ago
    > It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of behaviors by the US government. Trump has changed the scale and intensity of it all but the basic direction has always been the same.
nmridul 11mo ago
> ..... he calls on the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) for the International Criminal Court, which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. EU companies would then no longer be allowed to comply with US sanctions if they violate EU interests. Companies that violate this would then be liable for damages. That is from that article..
- petcat 11mo ago
  EU is in a very tough spot right now. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while simultaneously facing a Russian invasion on their eastern borders. The relationship with the American administration has deteriorated badly and any action seen as "retaliation", such as this policy blockade, would almost definitely result in USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war. I think, unfortunately, that will lead to a quick victory for Russia unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground. It's a bad situation.
  - jdibs 11mo ago
    A referendum about whether the EU should "put boots on the ground" seems like a good idea to me as long as only those who vote yes get deployed.
    - eru 11mo ago
      > A referendum about whether the EU should "put boots on the ground" seems like a good idea to me as long as only those who vote yes get deployed. Politics (almost) never works like this. In a secret vote, you don't even know who voted yes or no or at all.
      - jdibs 11mo ago
        Given the demographics of Europe, what this means is that old people will vote for young people to be fed into a meat mincer just so they can keep collecting their pensions for a couple decades more. Let's call a spade a spade then. This guy is doing just that: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-after-french-army-chief-s-prepared-to-lose-children-warning_6747661_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-a...
stefantalpalaru 11mo ago
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aqme28 11mo ago
This is a weapon that the US has been honing for a long time. Pretty much every modern company has some footprint in the US (for example, maybe trades on a US stock market) and is liable for even mild sanctions violations to the tune of millions at least.
- 317070 11mo ago
  And the EU apparently has the counter ready, which would make such companies liable for millions when they enact US sanctions in the EU. I'm very curious what would happen then? Nothing presumable, as nothing ever happens, or it might be another step to separate the EU market from the US.
  - pixl97 11mo ago
    Good. We've been in the age of super national global corporations living playing fast and loose. Maybe this will keep them from gobbling up even more power.
    - mindslight 11mo ago
      No, it won't. And lashing out with random shots in the dark tends to advance corporate control, as we've seen with the results from the trumpist tantrum. As long as ownership (/controlling interest) of companies continues to be basically unregulated cross-border (because the class of people having it also have the ears (if not the necks) of politicians), then things like sanctions are merely speed bumps on commerce that increase large-scale market friction and thereby increase the domestic power of corpos.
- pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
  Ah, now I understand why Cloudflare was down.
prasadjoglekar 11mo ago
TLDR: he's a member of the ICC. Issues warrants against Israeli political leaders. Neither Israel nor the USA (nor China, Russia, India) are parties to the international conventions that formed the ICC. He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA, which flowed down to US companies who must follow US law.
- 317070 11mo ago
  The article continues that he asks for the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96), which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. Activating it would make American companies following US sanction in Europe liable for damages. I think that is the most important point in the article.
- 7952 11mo ago
  The ICC could be considered to have jurisdiction over Gaza though. Although obviously that is debatable.
  - zidad 11mo ago
    It is not debatable. Palestine is a recognized member so according to the law they have jurisdiction. If these laws have any usefulness if no one will follow it is debatable though.
    - dragonwriter 11mo ago
      Since the territorial boundaries of the State of Palestine are, too say the least, disputed, the territorial boundaries of ICC jurisdiction derived from its jurisdiction over acts on the territory of a state party where the state party in question is the State of Palestine is actually a tricky question.
    - thenaturalist 11mo ago
      Being confident doesn't equal being right. I'm aghast as to what people seem to think they have authority on simply because they're using the internet. There is a real world out there and it is quite different from online echo chambers, to say the least.
pfdietz 11mo ago
Ultimately this sources back to Europe being dependent on the US for defense.
- aDyslecticCrow 11mo ago
  How is is defence relevant in this article? This is abusing of the private sector monopoly of alot of internet infrastructure. Nothing of this is military in nature.
  - pfdietz 11mo ago
    If Europe weren't militarily dependent they'd be less subservient on this and other positions. As the US becomes less ideologically predisposed to defend Europe, expect the US to take more advantage of the dependency, as the threat to walk away will become more real.
    - ninetyninenine 11mo ago
      Why does the EU need the US military? China and Ukraine mostly?
      - pfdietz 11mo ago
        The EU's nuclear deterrent is weak. Is France committed to defend the rest of Europe with its nukes? And the UK (while a NATO member) is not a member of the EU anymore.
        aDyslecticCrow 11mo ago
        Don't confuse the "EU" with "Europe". One is a trade and law union, the other is a continent of countries. Europe isn't a unanimous entity either, its a big pile of countries with independent politics. The nuclear deterrent is just as strong as it needs to be. If nuke strikes come, we're all dead regardless if we have 5 or 500 bombs to drop on Moscow. And again, this is irrelevant to abusive authority on technology. If "Europe" wasn't "dependent on US defence" would they send a destroyer fleet to the US cost as a retaliation? The US is using its tech companies to pressure foreign democratic allied countries over political issues. This is undermining the free trade that allowed these companies to exist in the fireplace. Continued moves in this direction will just push nationalistic ideas in European nations to cut out US influence entirely.
linehedonist 11mo ago
The underlying article in Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-juge-francais-de-la-cpi-sanctionne-par-les-etats-unis-face-aux-attaques-les-magistrats-de-la-cour-tiendront_6654016_3210.html https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nico... Archive link: https://archive.is/TleMk https://archive.is/TleMk
- estsauver 11mo ago
  https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-french-icc-judge-sanctioned-by-the-us-you-are-effectively-blacklisted-by-much-of-the-world-s-banking-system_6747628_4.html?search-type=classic&ise_click_rank=1 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n... There is an English version of Le Monde as well.
dominicq 11mo ago
This is infuriating. The EU should block US sanctions violating EU interests. I'm also definitely moving my personal stuff out of US and into EU, starting with Gmail.
- mothballed 11mo ago
  Almost every bank in FATF white and gray list countries use the dollar in some way, so although your actions will help, in the end if you're sanctioned and you depend on traditional finance systems you are fucked. There is a guy on here, weev (username rabite) who was soft sanctioned by the US and can't use banks that transact in the dollar. Last I read of his comments, he was in Ukraine or Transnistria, surviving off of crypto and direct rents from crypto purchased real estate.
  - bjord 11mo ago
    all of the above is true, but just to be clear about who we're discussing, weev is a genuine neo-nazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Alt-right_affiliations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Alt-right_affiliations
    - zidad 11mo ago
      Sure, but clearly that is not a requirement to be sanctioned nowadays, it just shows how f*d you are when you DO get sanctioned, and the bar for that is lowering by the day it seems.
      - bjord 11mo ago
        not arguing with the primary issue at hand, I just don't think we should be using a neo-nazi as the example
        mothballed 11mo ago
        The defense of the rights of alleged neo-nazis are a big reason why we have free-er speech in America. The ACLU defended them (see skokie nazis) and helped ensure more free speech in public forums. Dismissing the rights of alleged nazis is how rights get destroyed for everyone, although now in USA we use it for say allegedly "illegal" aliens or people that look foreign. I assert, they are a perfect example.
mothballed 11mo ago
This reminds me of the old gangster trick of having their "ho hold the strap" because they're a prohibited person who can't have guns. It doesn't stop him, merely means anything requiring an actual identity is likely done by proxy of his wife/mistress/cousin.
- cl3misch 11mo ago
  It doesn't stop him from what? Living his private life? As the article explains, being digitally cut off from the US is pretty inconvenient in daily life.
  - mothballed 11mo ago
    I'm going to take the kindest interpretation and deduce you've read basically nothing of what I've said beyond those four words.
ur-whale 11mo ago
Chalk up one more to the very long list of why centralizing institutions is a horrible idea because it creates freedom-killing choke points that the flavor-of-the-day hegemon can use as it damn pleases. In a decentralized world, the US could huff and puff as much as they please, no one would give two fucks. But when the US have an actual say in every cent that moves from account A to account B in every country that still harbors the illusion of sovereignty ... well your sovereignty does not actually exist.
1234letshaveatw 11mo ago
[flagged]
- dang 11mo ago
  Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This topic is divisive and the thread has quite a few comments on the wrong side of the line, but yours stands out as particularly bad, and you've been doing it in other threads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684198 If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - HappyPanacea 11mo ago
    Everything related to I/P conflict tends to draw lowly informed and heated discussion.
    - dang 11mo ago
      Yes indeed.
    - 1234letshaveatw 11mo ago
      It also appears to draw poor phrasing. Which aspect of my comment was "lowly informed"?
  - thenaturalist 11mo ago
    It would be really, really great when the open Israel hate and borderline Antisemitism displayed in many threads related to these topics could be moderated to the same tune. It's the same hate that has killed Jewish Americans in the past year. Many of these replies are very low on facts, very high on emotionally loaded subjective opinions. It's a challenging task as BBC and so many more Western media outlets had to retract and amend their own faulty reporting over the last few months, but if we're talking about the spirit of the site, everyone should be held accountable equally. Example at the top of this thread: > Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46006941&goto=item%3Fid%3D46003778%2346006941 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46006941&goto=item%3Fi...
dariosalvi78 11mo ago
Same is happening to Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur on Palestinian Territories, Italian citizen. The US is pure mafia.
- ktallett 11mo ago
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- thenaturalist 11mo ago
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H1BCurryChef 11mo ago
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deleted 11mo ago
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Stranger43 11mo ago
The reluctance of the EU leadership to so anything materially significant about anything they claim to care about is kind of telling. It's either that the leadership is so caught up in their own ivory tower bubble of pure rhetoric to realize they havent really put in the logistics to actually affect reality or that they somehow don't really want the consequences of actually changing things. For this is pretty clear what they need to do to create any real digital sovereignty and yet the seem to not really be willing to take the obvious step of just banning the use of any technology that have any dependency of foreign owned/managed cloud services or closed source products, and ordering their technical staff to start making changes even if it makes stakeholders annoyed, and yet the keep letting companies like IBM/RedHat and Microsoft pretend they can and should be a part of the digital sovereignty transformation project. We saw the same when safe harbour collapsed and with the cookie directive where rather then doing something effective they found some way to fix it by changing a few words in an mostly unenforced set of click wrap contracts/licenses. .
- vfclists 11mo ago
  The EU leadership are a very corrupt group who set themselves up to be open to the highest bidders from day one, and those are mostly US corporations and those of other countries when the US hasn't place sanctions on them. The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business. When it comes to being indifferent to the welfare of the general populace, they are just as bad as anything else.
  - nalekberov 11mo ago
    > The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business. You nailed it right on the head. Those fines are peanuts for big corporations.
    - general1465 11mo ago
      But even then they are big enough for these corporations to run and complain to Trump that that big bad EU is punishing them.
SNAZZYSILVEr 11mo ago
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poplarsol 11mo ago
Must suck to be subjected to extraterritorial jurisdiction from a body you have never acknowledged the authority of.
- anonymousiam 11mo ago
  Your comment can be interpreted in two ways: 1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge. 2) It must suck for the judge to face consequences from the US.
  - 10000truths 11mo ago
    I think the ambiguity was deliberate.
    - pxmpxm 10mo ago
      And very, very clever.
  - shkkmo 11mo ago
    > 1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge. How is the french judge "rogue"? How is a ICC warrant "extra territorial"? It only calls for the arrest of the individual inside ICC member countries.
    - arlort 11mo ago
      Yes, but have you considered US politicians don't like the ICC? What's a bit of truth in the face of that
- arlort 11mo ago
  The ICC in this case is investigating crimes committed in a party to the Rome treaty, that's not extraterritorial jurisdiction Even ignoring that one of these cases involves death and destruction and the other doesn't
kineticdaffodil 11mo ago
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general1465 11mo ago
The more USA is going to use this leaver, the likely they will make this leaver useless in the future. Like with China, when they overused chips leaver which stunted China for a while, but eventually gave them a way to establish their own chip industry. Now that leaver is becoming effectively useless. It will ends up same with EU.
- KK7NIL 11mo ago
  The best China has is an internationally uncompetitive "7nm" fab and that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV machines domestically. So the EUV blockade has absolutely been effective and the fact that the PRC is paying so many shills to convince westerners otherwise just shows how behind they are.
  - TrainedMonkey 11mo ago
    I noticed that people love pointing how far AI field has advanced in a few years and extrapolate next few years. While at the same time being dismissive of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing process. In similar vein I also remember claims that TSMC Fab in Arizona can never work, and yet it does. So I don't know man, I wouldn't underestimate what a billion of enterprising people can do. Especially when paired with the system that has a pipeline of funneling smart people into elite schools.
    - op00to 11mo ago
      Underestimating China seems like a really, really, really stupid thing to do.
      - 11101010001100 11mo ago
        Yes, we are doing a bad job of updating our priors.
      - illiac786 11mo ago
        Is that sarcastic? Isn’t underestimating by definition a bad thing?
vincvinc 11mo ago
"All his accounts with US companies such as Amazon, Airbnb, or PayPal were immediately closed by the providers. Online bookings, such as through Expedia, are immediately canceled, even if they concern hotels in France." How is this legal / OK?
- vkou 11mo ago
  A US company is free to cut off service to whatever foreigner it wants, just like a foreign country is free to ban whatever US firm it wants from operating in it.
  - hn_acker 11mo ago
    The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
    - pessimizer 11mo ago
      It definitely is.
    - gusfoo 11mo ago
      > The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner. You may regard them as such, but they are not in any sense frivolous. It is the law that if-x-then-y, it's not a discretionary item that one interprets. And to be clear, these are not "indirectly" making payment processors stop serving the person, it is very clearly direct and you do not, as a company, have a choice in the matter.
      - vkou 11mo ago
        1. The law in question does not compel the US Government to bend over backwards to protect foreign nationals from prosecution for war crimes. 2. The US Government plays incredibly fast and loose with laws that compel foreign policy from it. If its adherence to them is discretionary, you can absolutely piss on it for being discretionary in this case.
arresin 11mo ago
Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? It’s weird. I mean what even does he get in return for this extraordinary service for someone so undeserving? I can’t even see how it’s valuable for him. Can someone explain it?
- forty 11mo ago
  My understanding is that Christian extremists, who are voting for Trump, have some belief that some territories needs to be occupied by Jews so that something happens (I don't remember what, but I guess something good to them), so they are happy with the genocide and Trump is happy to collaborate with Israeli government to make his electors happy.
  - op00to 11mo ago
    They think that Jews must be in Israel to enable the return of Jesus and eventually the rapture. I'd love a rapture. Think of the improvement to traffic!
  - ceejayoz 11mo ago
    Yeah, some Christian evangelicals want Jewish people to go to Israel, build the new temple, and then get wiped out in the apocalypse. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical... > One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return. > Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.
- octopoc 11mo ago
  Zionist Jews wield a lot of political power in the US. It’s difficult/impossible to get elected at the federal level if you don’t support Israel. Supporting Israel is valuable to Trump because many of his donors are these Zionist Jews.
einpoklum 11mo ago
Let us remember what this is about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUkfmnCR7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUkfmnCR7U the scale of destruction in Gaza is horrendous: Its dense cities reduced to rubble, as though after a nuclear strike. The death toll is not yet known. the lower bound - the number of bodies counted by the ministry of health - is at around 69,000, while the Lancet estimated over 186,000 (and that was over a year ago), or nearly 7.9% of the entire population of the Gaza strip. Around 90% of the deaths are civilians (though estimates vary on that point as well). The US has been participating in this operation, with funding, provisions of services, equipment and most of the weapons platforms, armament and ordnance, diplomatic backing, and even military presence of aircraft carriers and other forces. US tech companies have sold Israel cloud services and various computing solutions; US military, auto and other industries are in on the action as well. Now we see the US and some of its corporations flexing the imperial muscle to try and deter international institutions for holding Israel accountable. The ICC has tried several political leaders before, and even convicted and jailed some, but - they were not important enough to US' strategic interests (or if you like, the interests of the donors and backers of the political elite), so the US did not have any such qualms. Having said all this - it is interesting to note the article does not mention the judge's accounts with Google or Microsoft, e.g. for email or office app services. I wonder if he has any, and whether those have been excepted or whether it's a different story.
- dpedu 11mo ago
  It's worth noting that the Gaza Health Ministry is a government agency and the de-facto government of Gaza is Hamas, and therefore the health ministry _is_ Hamas. Casualty numbers released by the ministry have already been statistically dubious, and seeing that Hamas would only benefit from inflating these numbers, it is likely they are not accurate numbers. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-he...
  - SadTrombone 11mo ago
    It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true. If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02713-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21... https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-ministry-death-toll/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...
gusfoo 11mo ago
> For example, accounts with non-US banks have also been partially closed. Transactions in US dollars or via dollar conversions are forbidden to him. So people don't think this is a new thing; when I worked in retail banking in the (very) early '90s it was made clear to us that any transaction in US dollars is subject to US regulation. The hypothetical scenario was that an Ethiopian arms dealer buys Russian product from a German dealer in Switzerland if they do it in USD it is the purview of the US to prosecute that crime. My memory is hazy, but I don't think that when I was being taught it that it was a new thing.
- xmcqdpt2 10mo ago
  I worked on anti money laundering for a Canadian bank in Canada. Our scenarios in 2020 were much stricter than stopping illegal arms trading. We were on the lookout for Iranian-Canadian dual citizens sending Canadian dollar remittances to their Iranian families, which would have invalidated the bank’s status as a money service business in the US (which all Canadian banks require due to our integrated economy!) That is, any transaction in any financial institution in any currency (including eg life insurance, mortgages, paypal, etc) is covered by American sanctions regulations if that financial institution does any business in US dollars.
joe463369 11mo ago
A markedly different tone in this thread to the ones discussing Ofcom's attempt to fine 4chan.
dmitrygr 11mo ago
> he calls on the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) for the International Criminal Court, which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. EU companies would then no longer be allowed to comply with US sanctions if they violate EU interests. A cosmic game of uno? i reversed your reverse!
samdoesnothing 11mo ago
I don't really have an opinion here, I just find it funny that depending on who is being sanctioned and why, these threads can have very different opinions on the morality and legitimacy of government intervention. For example when the EU imposes on American companies, it's often cheered on. But when the tables turn it's criticized. Regardless of the legitimacy of the complaints, perhaps people can recognize that when you give governments power, they won't always use it in a way that you agree with, and perhaps it's better that they don't have that power to begin with. Just a thought :)
mlindner 11mo ago
> Judge: EU should block sanctions If you do that then the US would respond by doing things like attempting to block EU laws that affect US companies. They're American companies. You can't just block them. American companies won't refuse to follow American law. If you put them in a position where they are forced to either follow American law and European law that are in conflict then they'll be forced to withdraw from the European market.
_ache_ 11mo ago
I'm just wondering. It's only reported the experience of Nicolas Guillou. But they are 6 and most (+3 prosecutors) of them aren't French. In France, there is the CB system, that can be used in France to pay by card. Outside of France, it's VISA/Mastercard only. So the others judges can't even pay anything by card, even in they own country. I'm not sure they can even get money from an ATM.
CrzyLngPwd 11mo ago
The death spasms of a dying empire.
gold72 11mo ago
What a terrible site. Had to go into settings, manually reject each kind of cookie, and then there's no way to confirm, just a way to go back to the first page, and nothing to click but "accept", which seems to imply that you'll end up taking all the cookies anyway. In the end I just closed the tab without reading.
- lucb1e 10mo ago
  Might be interesting to know that this is one of the biggest news sites in germany and it's also illegal per https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pay-models-should-offer-real-choice_en https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pa... Basically any time you search for information in german, you get this "start an indefinite subscription to open this page" or "confirm that your consent to tracking is freely given" model, which I find highly ironic given that germany is one of the main forces in european lawmaking but then doesn't actually want to comply
nullbyte808 11mo ago
Insane. Luckily he can use a family member to regain some use of these services or by using a trust company, but still.
- xmcqdpt2 10mo ago
  That’s sanctions evasion and those companies will be very wary in providing services to any close family of a sanctioned person. My guess is that these people’s SOs, children and their SOs are similarly banned, and that siblings, parents and “close associates” have to provide way more documentation when opening bank accounts than you and I.
  - pretext-1 10mo ago
    Pretty sure the news coverage would have mentioned that if that was the case.
    - xmcqdpt2 10mo ago
      I found the original source (the letter written by the judge) here https://www.union-syndicale-magistrats.org/sanctions-americaines-contre-le-juge-francais-de-la-cpi/ https://www.union-syndicale-magistrats.org/sanctions-america... In it he specifically mentions that family cannot buy stuff for you because that is a crime if they are in the US or are US nationals, and that your direct family is banned from entering the US (p 4). He does not specifically state whether his family are sanctioned or not but he says that is a risk when he talks in general terms on page 7 about the impacts of the sanctions regime for other judges. Perhaps he is simply not married himself. Either way, for some reason the news coverage didn’t include these parts of the letter, maybe they didn’t read the whole thing.
TitaRusell 10mo ago
The US is becoming an oligarchy run by people who style themselves a modern day Caligula. Which is all fine and dandy- not my country. But there is a golden rule that had been established between Europe and America. Do not interfere with internal affairs. The US is now openly engaged in destroying liberal democracy.
yapyap 10mo ago
yucky yuck yuck
rldjbpin 10mo ago
> Online bookings, such as through Expedia, are immediately canceled, even if they concern hotels in France. as bizarre as it this situation is, similar power was leveraged to deny american it services to a non-european company outside of the eu [1]. of course not involving the exact judge, but this just highlights the geographical concentration of major web services. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721174

486 points by i-con 11mo ago

breppp 11mo ago

[flagged]

netsharc 11mo ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXExGWGEyw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXExGWGEyw "War crimes are defined by the winners. I'm a winner, so I can make my own definition.". The whole documentary is worth a watch, IMO. It's an incredible look about how people commit heinous acts and build an imaginary world for 40 years to say what they did was "right and justified". Including a scene where the killers imagine they're being thanked by their victims for taking them from godless communism and bringing them to Heaven. Maybe in 2065 there'll be a version where we'll need subtitles for the Yiddish dialog. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q
- breppp 11mo ago
  I think the more interesting thing here is the ability to fantasize categories such as genocide where war can be maximalized into genocide when you don't like the winner, and the genocidal act that has started said war (classic genocide mass killings of civilians by death squads) is appropriated by the perpetrators turned victims
  - netsharc 11mo ago
    I guess "genocide" is also defined by the winners, or their defenders. And if it's not a genocide, then it's just mass killing of innocents, and that's... fine! Wonko the Sane is right.
    - breppp 11mo ago
      do you define the dresden firebombings or the hiroshima nuclear attack as genocide?
      - forgetfulness 11mo ago
        Israel hasn’t gotten fire bombed or nuked. What’s the parallel with the WW2 Axis Powers here?
        breppp 11mo ago
        Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza is thought by some to be "genocide", though it was far less destructive, more precise and not aimed at a civilian population as compared to the above
      - netsharc 11mo ago
        Is this how you win the arguments in your head? Your opponent uses the word "genocide", you concluded turning Gaza into rubble with kids and many more innocents underneath them doesn't fit the term "genocide", and you further conclude whatever claim your opponent is trying to make is wrong, and therefore there aren't a few hundred thousand dead civilians, ah the whole accusation is just fictional, they all actually lived happily ever after in peace and harmony (in your head). Yeah yeah, people are still dying, and we're arguing about the definitions of words. How convenient. Whatever distraction helps you sleep at night, I suppose.
        breppp 11mo ago
        no, I am saying war is not genocide. And protecting your own civilians from very real death squads going on executing rampage is not "genocide" it's called war, which might be terrible but sometimes you can't evade
        immibis 11mo ago
        You're talking about Hamas, right? hamas are the ones who tried to fight back against death squads and are now suffering the consequences of that?
  - 7952 11mo ago
    Its all abstractions that help justify ethno-nationalism at the expense of concern about individual tragedy.
    - breppp 11mo ago
      most of the wars in history were fought by empires that were the exact opposite of ethnic-nationalism, and also most genocides. it is completely unrelated
      - 7952 11mo ago
        Ethno-nationalism seems to be a strong factor in both Israeli and Palestinian politics. I can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state. Also, my point was more about how conflict is perceived and litigated in politics and threads like this. Factoids about history are completely irrelevant to that. Its just another abstraction.
        breppp 11mo ago
        > can't think of a more direct example of ethno-nationalism than the Jewish state. It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA. Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, and the ethnic part is debatable if you ever seen Israelis, unlike the Palestinian national movement which is ethnic-nationalist
        dragonwriter 11mo ago
        > It's a weird concept, which kind of nationalism isn't ethno-nationalist? Most nationalism either is based around an established ancestry-derived ethnic identity (which is what “ethno-nationalism” usually refers to), or seeks to construct a new identity (which itself can be viewed as ethnic) transcending existing ethnic lines within the population of a state (the PRM regime in Mexico is an example of this); you might call this cosmopolitan nationalism. > I can think of maybe two nations whose brand of nationalism does not relate to an ethnic group and I will probably push it for the USA. States often contain multiple different kinds of nationalism in their population, and may even contain different kinds in their governments. The USA definitely has nationalist factions of both the ethnonationalist (specifically White nationalist) and cosmopolitan nationalist kind. > Israel is probably the only ethnoreligious nation, The Israeli state is possibly the only strongly ethnoreligious state. Ethnoreligious nationalism is a large subset of ethno-nationalism, but states in places with strong ethnoreligious nationalism don’t always build both ethnic and religious character into their state structure.
  - kombine 11mo ago
    This is demagoguery. There is ample evidencence that Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Historians who study genocide all their careers, including Israeli Jewish ones, concluded it a long time ago. There is 100 pages with references in the application by South Africa to the ICJ. If you intend to take the same route as the Holocaust denialists, the burden is on you to disprove all the evidence.
    - ta20240528 11mo ago
      To be clear, South Africa didn't present any of their OWN evidence to the ICJ of Israeli genocide. Rather, they carefully and methodically presented hundreds of reports made by OTHER UN agencies which reported on the genocidal behaviour. This left the ICJ in a pickle: as a UN body itself, it had to either find for 'probably genocide' or publicly state that every other UN body was either in a grand conspiracy or was incompetent. A very smart legal strategy.
    - breppp 11mo ago
      last time I checked a basic part of a trial is the mere existence of it is not a proof of guilt.. While most of your argument is the fact that because South Africa has sued Israel in international court then it is somehow proof of genocide. Regarding scholars, again not enough I am sorry. In reality after more than two years the Gazan population hasn't even declined in size, which makes the entire case for genocide mostly a political joke on people who were mostly systematically exterminated like the Jews, Armenians and Tutsi. Generally this is so far from a real genocide killing rates, reasons and methods that the only explanation is that some regimes have an interest at removing the substance out of the definition of genocide
      - kombine 10mo ago
        I repeat, the evidence that South Africa submitted in this application spans 100 pages with reference. You are not disproving that but instead throwing ridiculous claims that Gazan population hasn't declined in size.
immibis 11mo ago
If by "arbitrary law" you mean "don't snipe babies, journalists and the Red Cross" and by "political influence" you mean "actual psychopaths who want the headshot high score"
- breppp 11mo ago
  if by reality i mean "invented stories in scare quotes"

enlguy 11mo ago

Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to indict a war criminal.

Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
I don't think that's true. Lots of countries out there led by thugs. It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing (not that it always succeeded, but it did its best). Looks like that time has passed.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- usrnm 11mo ago
  Not sure about that. Internally, maybe it was true at some point, cannot say, but if we look at the US as an international player, when exactly was it ready to sacrifice its own interests for any kind of justice or greater good? And if you are not ready to pay the price, then all this talk of a higher moral ground is just that, an empty talk.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 11mo ago
    I don't disagree, but I think there was a genuine perception by many people that the US were the good guys. The change is that its not even trying to pretend to be this anymore.
- skrebbel 11mo ago
  > It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law seriously and believed in its ideals to do the right thing The "The Hague Invasion Act", where the US authorizes itself to invade an ally (the Netherlands) to break war criminal suspects out of prison, was signed in 2002. The US has always been a "rules for thee but not for me" type of place and the digital sanction discussed here fits in a long line of behaviors by the US government. Trump has changed the scale and intensity of it all but the basic direction has always been the same.

nmridul 11mo ago

> ..... he calls on the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) for the International Criminal Court, which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. EU companies would then no longer be allowed to comply with US sanctions if they violate EU interests. Companies that violate this would then be liable for damages. That is from that article..

petcat 11mo ago
EU is in a very tough spot right now. They're getting squeezed on all sides economically by USA and China while simultaneously facing a Russian invasion on their eastern borders. The relationship with the American administration has deteriorated badly and any action seen as "retaliation", such as this policy blockade, would almost definitely result in USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war. I think, unfortunately, that will lead to a quick victory for Russia unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground. It's a bad situation.
- jdibs 11mo ago
  A referendum about whether the EU should "put boots on the ground" seems like a good idea to me as long as only those who vote yes get deployed.
  - eru 11mo ago
    > A referendum about whether the EU should "put boots on the ground" seems like a good idea to me as long as only those who vote yes get deployed. Politics (almost) never works like this. In a secret vote, you don't even know who voted yes or no or at all.
    - jdibs 11mo ago
      Given the demographics of Europe, what this means is that old people will vote for young people to be fed into a meat mincer just so they can keep collecting their pensions for a couple decades more. Let's call a spade a spade then. This guy is doing just that: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-after-french-army-chief-s-prepared-to-lose-children-warning_6747661_7.html https://www.lemonde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-a...

stefantalpalaru 11mo ago

[dead]

aqme28 11mo ago

This is a weapon that the US has been honing for a long time. Pretty much every modern company has some footprint in the US (for example, maybe trades on a US stock market) and is liable for even mild sanctions violations to the tune of millions at least.

317070 11mo ago
And the EU apparently has the counter ready, which would make such companies liable for millions when they enact US sanctions in the EU. I'm very curious what would happen then? Nothing presumable, as nothing ever happens, or it might be another step to separate the EU market from the US.
- pixl97 11mo ago
  Good. We've been in the age of super national global corporations living playing fast and loose. Maybe this will keep them from gobbling up even more power.
  - mindslight 11mo ago
    No, it won't. And lashing out with random shots in the dark tends to advance corporate control, as we've seen with the results from the trumpist tantrum. As long as ownership (/controlling interest) of companies continues to be basically unregulated cross-border (because the class of people having it also have the ears (if not the necks) of politicians), then things like sanctions are merely speed bumps on commerce that increase large-scale market friction and thereby increase the domestic power of corpos.
pbhjpbhj 11mo ago
Ah, now I understand why Cloudflare was down.

prasadjoglekar 11mo ago

TLDR: he's a member of the ICC. Issues warrants against Israeli political leaders. Neither Israel nor the USA (nor China, Russia, India) are parties to the international conventions that formed the ICC. He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA, which flowed down to US companies who must follow US law.

317070 11mo ago
The article continues that he asks for the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96), which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. Activating it would make American companies following US sanction in Europe liable for damages. I think that is the most important point in the article.
7952 11mo ago
The ICC could be considered to have jurisdiction over Gaza though. Although obviously that is debatable.
- zidad 11mo ago
  It is not debatable. Palestine is a recognized member so according to the law they have jurisdiction. If these laws have any usefulness if no one will follow it is debatable though.
  - dragonwriter 11mo ago
    Since the territorial boundaries of the State of Palestine are, too say the least, disputed, the territorial boundaries of ICC jurisdiction derived from its jurisdiction over acts on the territory of a state party where the state party in question is the State of Palestine is actually a tricky question.
  - thenaturalist 11mo ago
    Being confident doesn't equal being right. I'm aghast as to what people seem to think they have authority on simply because they're using the internet. There is a real world out there and it is quite different from online echo chambers, to say the least.

pfdietz 11mo ago

Ultimately this sources back to Europe being dependent on the US for defense.

aDyslecticCrow 11mo ago
How is is defence relevant in this article? This is abusing of the private sector monopoly of alot of internet infrastructure. Nothing of this is military in nature.
- pfdietz 11mo ago
  If Europe weren't militarily dependent they'd be less subservient on this and other positions. As the US becomes less ideologically predisposed to defend Europe, expect the US to take more advantage of the dependency, as the threat to walk away will become more real.
  - ninetyninenine 11mo ago
    Why does the EU need the US military? China and Ukraine mostly?
    - pfdietz 11mo ago
      The EU's nuclear deterrent is weak. Is France committed to defend the rest of Europe with its nukes? And the UK (while a NATO member) is not a member of the EU anymore.
      - aDyslecticCrow 11mo ago
        Don't confuse the "EU" with "Europe". One is a trade and law union, the other is a continent of countries. Europe isn't a unanimous entity either, its a big pile of countries with independent politics. The nuclear deterrent is just as strong as it needs to be. If nuke strikes come, we're all dead regardless if we have 5 or 500 bombs to drop on Moscow. And again, this is irrelevant to abusive authority on technology. If "Europe" wasn't "dependent on US defence" would they send a destroyer fleet to the US cost as a retaliation? The US is using its tech companies to pressure foreign democratic allied countries over political issues. This is undermining the free trade that allowed these companies to exist in the fireplace. Continued moves in this direction will just push nationalistic ideas in European nations to cut out US influence entirely.

linehedonist 11mo ago

The underlying article in Le Monde: https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-juge-francais-de-la-cpi-sanctionne-par-les-etats-unis-face-aux-attaques-les-magistrats-de-la-cour-tiendront_6654016_3210.html https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nico... Archive link: https://archive.is/TleMk https://archive.is/TleMk

estsauver 11mo ago
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/nicolas-guillou-french-icc-judge-sanctioned-by-the-us-you-are-effectively-blacklisted-by-much-of-the-world-s-banking-system_6747628_4.html?search-type=classic&ise_click_rank=1 https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n... There is an English version of Le Monde as well.

dominicq 11mo ago

This is infuriating. The EU should block US sanctions violating EU interests. I'm also definitely moving my personal stuff out of US and into EU, starting with Gmail.

mothballed 11mo ago
Almost every bank in FATF white and gray list countries use the dollar in some way, so although your actions will help, in the end if you're sanctioned and you depend on traditional finance systems you are fucked. There is a guy on here, weev (username rabite) who was soft sanctioned by the US and can't use banks that transact in the dollar. Last I read of his comments, he was in Ukraine or Transnistria, surviving off of crypto and direct rents from crypto purchased real estate.
- bjord 11mo ago
  all of the above is true, but just to be clear about who we're discussing, weev is a genuine neo-nazi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Alt-right_affiliations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev#Alt-right_affiliations
  - zidad 11mo ago
    Sure, but clearly that is not a requirement to be sanctioned nowadays, it just shows how f*d you are when you DO get sanctioned, and the bar for that is lowering by the day it seems.
    - bjord 11mo ago
      not arguing with the primary issue at hand, I just don't think we should be using a neo-nazi as the example
      - mothballed 11mo ago
        The defense of the rights of alleged neo-nazis are a big reason why we have free-er speech in America. The ACLU defended them (see skokie nazis) and helped ensure more free speech in public forums. Dismissing the rights of alleged nazis is how rights get destroyed for everyone, although now in USA we use it for say allegedly "illegal" aliens or people that look foreign. I assert, they are a perfect example.

mothballed 11mo ago

This reminds me of the old gangster trick of having their "ho hold the strap" because they're a prohibited person who can't have guns. It doesn't stop him, merely means anything requiring an actual identity is likely done by proxy of his wife/mistress/cousin.

cl3misch 11mo ago
It doesn't stop him from what? Living his private life? As the article explains, being digitally cut off from the US is pretty inconvenient in daily life.
- mothballed 11mo ago
  I'm going to take the kindest interpretation and deduce you've read basically nothing of what I've said beyond those four words.

ur-whale 11mo ago

Chalk up one more to the very long list of why centralizing institutions is a horrible idea because it creates freedom-killing choke points that the flavor-of-the-day hegemon can use as it damn pleases. In a decentralized world, the US could huff and puff as much as they please, no one would give two fucks. But when the US have an actual say in every cent that moves from account A to account B in every country that still harbors the illusion of sovereignty ... well your sovereignty does not actually exist.

1234letshaveatw 11mo ago

[flagged]

dang 11mo ago
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. This topic is divisive and the thread has quite a few comments on the wrong side of the line, but yours stands out as particularly bad, and you've been doing it in other threads as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45813701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684284 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45684198 If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- HappyPanacea 11mo ago
  Everything related to I/P conflict tends to draw lowly informed and heated discussion.
  - dang 11mo ago
    Yes indeed.
  - 1234letshaveatw 11mo ago
    It also appears to draw poor phrasing. Which aspect of my comment was "lowly informed"?
- thenaturalist 11mo ago
  It would be really, really great when the open Israel hate and borderline Antisemitism displayed in many threads related to these topics could be moderated to the same tune. It's the same hate that has killed Jewish Americans in the past year. Many of these replies are very low on facts, very high on emotionally loaded subjective opinions. It's a challenging task as BBC and so many more Western media outlets had to retract and amend their own faulty reporting over the last few months, but if we're talking about the spirit of the site, everyone should be held accountable equally. Example at the top of this thread: > Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46006941&goto=item%3Fid%3D46003778%2346006941 https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=46006941&goto=item%3Fi...

dariosalvi78 11mo ago

Same is happening to Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur on Palestinian Territories, Italian citizen. The US is pure mafia.

ktallett 11mo ago
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thenaturalist 11mo ago
[flagged]

H1BCurryChef 11mo ago

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deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

Stranger43 11mo ago

The reluctance of the EU leadership to so anything materially significant about anything they claim to care about is kind of telling. It's either that the leadership is so caught up in their own ivory tower bubble of pure rhetoric to realize they havent really put in the logistics to actually affect reality or that they somehow don't really want the consequences of actually changing things. For this is pretty clear what they need to do to create any real digital sovereignty and yet the seem to not really be willing to take the obvious step of just banning the use of any technology that have any dependency of foreign owned/managed cloud services or closed source products, and ordering their technical staff to start making changes even if it makes stakeholders annoyed, and yet the keep letting companies like IBM/RedHat and Microsoft pretend they can and should be a part of the digital sovereignty transformation project. We saw the same when safe harbour collapsed and with the cookie directive where rather then doing something effective they found some way to fix it by changing a few words in an mostly unenforced set of click wrap contracts/licenses. .

vfclists 11mo ago
The EU leadership are a very corrupt group who set themselves up to be open to the highest bidders from day one, and those are mostly US corporations and those of other countries when the US hasn't place sanctions on them. The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business. When it comes to being indifferent to the welfare of the general populace, they are just as bad as anything else.
- nalekberov 11mo ago
  > The antitrust fines they impose on those American companies may simply be regarded as a cost of doing business. You nailed it right on the head. Those fines are peanuts for big corporations.
  - general1465 11mo ago
    But even then they are big enough for these corporations to run and complain to Trump that that big bad EU is punishing them.

SNAZZYSILVEr 11mo ago

[dead]

poplarsol 11mo ago

Must suck to be subjected to extraterritorial jurisdiction from a body you have never acknowledged the authority of.

anonymousiam 11mo ago
Your comment can be interpreted in two ways: 1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge. 2) It must suck for the judge to face consequences from the US.
- 10000truths 11mo ago
  I think the ambiguity was deliberate.
  - pxmpxm 10mo ago
    And very, very clever.
- shkkmo 11mo ago
  > 1) It must suck for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to be subject to a rogue French judge. How is the french judge "rogue"? How is a ICC warrant "extra territorial"? It only calls for the arrest of the individual inside ICC member countries.
  - arlort 11mo ago
    Yes, but have you considered US politicians don't like the ICC? What's a bit of truth in the face of that
arlort 11mo ago
The ICC in this case is investigating crimes committed in a party to the Rome treaty, that's not extraterritorial jurisdiction Even ignoring that one of these cases involves death and destruction and the other doesn't

kineticdaffodil 11mo ago

[dead]

general1465 11mo ago

The more USA is going to use this leaver, the likely they will make this leaver useless in the future. Like with China, when they overused chips leaver which stunted China for a while, but eventually gave them a way to establish their own chip industry. Now that leaver is becoming effectively useless. It will ends up same with EU.

KK7NIL 11mo ago
The best China has is an internationally uncompetitive "7nm" fab and that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV machines domestically. So the EUV blockade has absolutely been effective and the fact that the PRC is paying so many shills to convince westerners otherwise just shows how behind they are.
- TrainedMonkey 11mo ago
  I noticed that people love pointing how far AI field has advanced in a few years and extrapolate next few years. While at the same time being dismissive of Chinese semiconductor manufacturing process. In similar vein I also remember claims that TSMC Fab in Arizona can never work, and yet it does. So I don't know man, I wouldn't underestimate what a billion of enterprising people can do. Especially when paired with the system that has a pipeline of funneling smart people into elite schools.
  - op00to 11mo ago
    Underestimating China seems like a really, really, really stupid thing to do.
    - 11101010001100 11mo ago
      Yes, we are doing a bad job of updating our priors.
    - illiac786 11mo ago
      Is that sarcastic? Isn’t underestimating by definition a bad thing?

vincvinc 11mo ago

"All his accounts with US companies such as Amazon, Airbnb, or PayPal were immediately closed by the providers. Online bookings, such as through Expedia, are immediately canceled, even if they concern hotels in France." How is this legal / OK?

vkou 11mo ago
A US company is free to cut off service to whatever foreigner it wants, just like a foreign country is free to ban whatever US firm it wants from operating in it.
- hn_acker 11mo ago
  The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
  - pessimizer 11mo ago
    It definitely is.
  - gusfoo 11mo ago
    > The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner. You may regard them as such, but they are not in any sense frivolous. It is the law that if-x-then-y, it's not a discretionary item that one interprets. And to be clear, these are not "indirectly" making payment processors stop serving the person, it is very clearly direct and you do not, as a company, have a choice in the matter.
    - vkou 11mo ago
      1. The law in question does not compel the US Government to bend over backwards to protect foreign nationals from prosecution for war crimes. 2. The US Government plays incredibly fast and loose with laws that compel foreign policy from it. If its adherence to them is discretionary, you can absolutely piss on it for being discretionary in this case.

arresin 11mo ago

Why is the president of the United States protecting a blood soaked war criminal? It’s weird. I mean what even does he get in return for this extraordinary service for someone so undeserving? I can’t even see how it’s valuable for him. Can someone explain it?

forty 11mo ago
My understanding is that Christian extremists, who are voting for Trump, have some belief that some territories needs to be occupied by Jews so that something happens (I don't remember what, but I guess something good to them), so they are happy with the genocide and Trump is happy to collaborate with Israeli government to make his electors happy.
- op00to 11mo ago
  They think that Jews must be in Israel to enable the return of Jesus and eventually the rapture. I'd love a rapture. Think of the improvement to traffic!
- ceejayoz 11mo ago
  Yeah, some Christian evangelicals want Jewish people to go to Israel, build the new temple, and then get wiped out in the apocalypse. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical-christians-israel-hamas-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/30/us-evangelical... > One main strand of evangelical theology holds that the return of Jews to the region starts the clock ticking on a seven-year armageddon, after which Jesus Christ will return. > Hagee, despite having a long history of antisemitism – he has suggested Jews brought persecution upon themselves by upsetting God and called Hitler a “half-breed Jew” – founded Christians United for Israel in 2006.
octopoc 11mo ago
Zionist Jews wield a lot of political power in the US. It’s difficult/impossible to get elected at the federal level if you don’t support Israel. Supporting Israel is valuable to Trump because many of his donors are these Zionist Jews.

einpoklum 11mo ago

Let us remember what this is about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUkfmnCR7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFUkfmnCR7U the scale of destruction in Gaza is horrendous: Its dense cities reduced to rubble, as though after a nuclear strike. The death toll is not yet known. the lower bound - the number of bodies counted by the ministry of health - is at around 69,000, while the Lancet estimated over 186,000 (and that was over a year ago), or nearly 7.9% of the entire population of the Gaza strip. Around 90% of the deaths are civilians (though estimates vary on that point as well). The US has been participating in this operation, with funding, provisions of services, equipment and most of the weapons platforms, armament and ordnance, diplomatic backing, and even military presence of aircraft carriers and other forces. US tech companies have sold Israel cloud services and various computing solutions; US military, auto and other industries are in on the action as well. Now we see the US and some of its corporations flexing the imperial muscle to try and deter international institutions for holding Israel accountable. The ICC has tried several political leaders before, and even convicted and jailed some, but - they were not important enough to US' strategic interests (or if you like, the interests of the donors and backers of the political elite), so the US did not have any such qualms. Having said all this - it is interesting to note the article does not mention the judge's accounts with Google or Microsoft, e.g. for email or office app services. I wonder if he has any, and whether those have been excepted or whether it's a different story.

dpedu 11mo ago
It's worth noting that the Gaza Health Ministry is a government agency and the de-facto government of Gaza is Hamas, and therefore the health ministry _is_ Hamas. Casualty numbers released by the ministry have already been statistically dubious, and seeing that Hamas would only benefit from inflating these numbers, it is likely they are not accurate numbers. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-health-ministry-fakes-casualty-numbers https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-gaza-he...
- SadTrombone 11mo ago
  It's absolutely not worth noting that because it simply isn't true. If anything, the MoH numbers are lower than the actual death toll. Even the IDF said internally the numbers were right and their own statistics state that 83% of casualties in Gaza have been civilians. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)02713-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21/revealed-israeli-militarys-own-data-indicates-civilian-death-rate-of-83-in-gaza-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2025/aug/21... https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-ministry-death-toll/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-health-...

gusfoo 11mo ago

> For example, accounts with non-US banks have also been partially closed. Transactions in US dollars or via dollar conversions are forbidden to him. So people don't think this is a new thing; when I worked in retail banking in the (very) early '90s it was made clear to us that any transaction in US dollars is subject to US regulation. The hypothetical scenario was that an Ethiopian arms dealer buys Russian product from a German dealer in Switzerland if they do it in USD it is the purview of the US to prosecute that crime. My memory is hazy, but I don't think that when I was being taught it that it was a new thing.

xmcqdpt2 10mo ago
I worked on anti money laundering for a Canadian bank in Canada. Our scenarios in 2020 were much stricter than stopping illegal arms trading. We were on the lookout for Iranian-Canadian dual citizens sending Canadian dollar remittances to their Iranian families, which would have invalidated the bank’s status as a money service business in the US (which all Canadian banks require due to our integrated economy!) That is, any transaction in any financial institution in any currency (including eg life insurance, mortgages, paypal, etc) is covered by American sanctions regulations if that financial institution does any business in US dollars.

joe463369 11mo ago

A markedly different tone in this thread to the ones discussing Ofcom's attempt to fine 4chan.

dmitrygr 11mo ago

> he calls on the EU to activate an existing blocking regulation (Regulation (EC) No 2271/96) for the International Criminal Court, which prevents third countries like the USA from enforcing sanctions in the EU. EU companies would then no longer be allowed to comply with US sanctions if they violate EU interests. A cosmic game of uno? i reversed your reverse!

samdoesnothing 11mo ago

I don't really have an opinion here, I just find it funny that depending on who is being sanctioned and why, these threads can have very different opinions on the morality and legitimacy of government intervention. For example when the EU imposes on American companies, it's often cheered on. But when the tables turn it's criticized. Regardless of the legitimacy of the complaints, perhaps people can recognize that when you give governments power, they won't always use it in a way that you agree with, and perhaps it's better that they don't have that power to begin with. Just a thought :)

mlindner 11mo ago

> Judge: EU should block sanctions If you do that then the US would respond by doing things like attempting to block EU laws that affect US companies. They're American companies. You can't just block them. American companies won't refuse to follow American law. If you put them in a position where they are forced to either follow American law and European law that are in conflict then they'll be forced to withdraw from the European market.

_ache_ 11mo ago

I'm just wondering. It's only reported the experience of Nicolas Guillou. But they are 6 and most (+3 prosecutors) of them aren't French. In France, there is the CB system, that can be used in France to pay by card. Outside of France, it's VISA/Mastercard only. So the others judges can't even pay anything by card, even in they own country. I'm not sure they can even get money from an ATM.

CrzyLngPwd 11mo ago

The death spasms of a dying empire.

gold72 11mo ago

What a terrible site. Had to go into settings, manually reject each kind of cookie, and then there's no way to confirm, just a way to go back to the first page, and nothing to click but "accept", which seems to imply that you'll end up taking all the cookies anyway. In the end I just closed the tab without reading.

lucb1e 10mo ago
Might be interesting to know that this is one of the biggest news sites in germany and it's also illegal per https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pay-models-should-offer-real-choice_en https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-consent-or-pa... Basically any time you search for information in german, you get this "start an indefinite subscription to open this page" or "confirm that your consent to tracking is freely given" model, which I find highly ironic given that germany is one of the main forces in european lawmaking but then doesn't actually want to comply

nullbyte808 11mo ago

Insane. Luckily he can use a family member to regain some use of these services or by using a trust company, but still.

xmcqdpt2 10mo ago
That’s sanctions evasion and those companies will be very wary in providing services to any close family of a sanctioned person. My guess is that these people’s SOs, children and their SOs are similarly banned, and that siblings, parents and “close associates” have to provide way more documentation when opening bank accounts than you and I.
- pretext-1 10mo ago
  Pretty sure the news coverage would have mentioned that if that was the case.
  - xmcqdpt2 10mo ago
    I found the original source (the letter written by the judge) here https://www.union-syndicale-magistrats.org/sanctions-americaines-contre-le-juge-francais-de-la-cpi/ https://www.union-syndicale-magistrats.org/sanctions-america... In it he specifically mentions that family cannot buy stuff for you because that is a crime if they are in the US or are US nationals, and that your direct family is banned from entering the US (p 4). He does not specifically state whether his family are sanctioned or not but he says that is a risk when he talks in general terms on page 7 about the impacts of the sanctions regime for other judges. Perhaps he is simply not married himself. Either way, for some reason the news coverage didn’t include these parts of the letter, maybe they didn’t read the whole thing.

TitaRusell 10mo ago

The US is becoming an oligarchy run by people who style themselves a modern day Caligula. Which is all fine and dandy- not my country. But there is a golden rule that had been established between Europe and America. Do not interfere with internal affairs. The US is now openly engaged in destroying liberal democracy.

yapyap 10mo ago

yucky yuck yuck

rldjbpin 10mo ago

> Online bookings, such as through Expedia, are immediately canceled, even if they concern hotels in France. as bizarre as it this situation is, similar power was leveraged to deny american it services to a non-european company outside of the eu [1]. of course not involving the exact judge, but this just highlights the geographical concentration of major web services. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721174 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44721174