Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
That's the kind of situation that gives CEOs lifelong reputations (that they think it's in a good way).
See the secret industry meeting from 1933 as the prime example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_...
And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery_of_senior_Wehrmacht_of...
” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”
With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?
And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.
---
[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.
Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.
He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.
I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.
As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.
I'm not concerned about the fact that the election was close.
I'm concerned that, post election, the country is so deeply polarized. For the first time in my life, I fear there's a small but real chance that we're headed for civil war.
For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...
Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.
They did appeal a few times, but this time it seems like they're no longer interested. To be fair, Trump could probably illegally deport half the Microsoft employees to a foreign prison camp if he'd feel like it and the courts seem powerless to stop him, so I don't blame Microsoft for falling in line.
I do blame the Dutch government for being blasé about the American threat and their refusal to move away from American technology for critical infrastructure.
So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.
I understand where you are coming from, but this also sounds like a way to remove individual responsibility from the people that make up a corporation.
Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power.
I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don't recall reading once, i.e. at the time of the sweeping China or GPU sanctions, a peep of protest along the lines of, "This should *not* be something a President should be able to do unilaterally! That's far too much discretionary power in the hands of one person! Congress should have to debate it". We didn't invent an imperial presidency in 2025; it's the agglomeration of decades of civic apathy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom... ("International Emergency Economic Powers Act"; C-f "14203" for the current topic)
Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.
Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-cut-china-off-more-...
Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.
Unfortunately for the US, we’re stuck with what Israel decides to do. A lot of Americans are in favor of supporting Israel for one reason or another. If Irsael is somehow controlling the United States via lobbying or whatever, that kind of invalidates the whole client state idea.
US is the most powerful country in the world but that doesn’t mean we directly control our allies as client states.
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
Our goal is to offer a privacy-focused, vendor-neutral alternative to platforms like Microsoft Exchange.
The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.
Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.
Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.
Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).
So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!
This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?
And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.
And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.
They aren't.
This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.
The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.
China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.
Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.
There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
And both are centre-right governments to boot! If the White House is the clownshow in the circus, the EU is the acrobatics act.
EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year
???
The relevant number is probably the EU only fraction, and maybe just the EU governments' part. Which I'd guess is at least like 1/10 or smaller? Idk
And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena.
The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
They would not have to. It will be up to your military to come to allied country and shoot their way through. This might be physically possible but I would imagine that the consequences of it to the standing of the US would be cataclysmic. So unless it is a former president I suspect the US will rather use some severe sanctions and still risk a payback.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
The US has several ways to acquire jurisdiction over foreign defendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_over_int...
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
You can't have it both ways, we're intrinsically tied together. I think its important part of friendship to call one another to account.
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it.
The ICC is a cool idea in theory. The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
How is that?
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_City_Hall_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Morocco [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Turkey#...
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
If this is the case can you explain ICC action against US and Israel, neither of which are parties to the Rome statute? This is one aspect of their selective justice. And some of the crimes they accuse Russia of (e.g. the ones relating to treatment of POWs) happened in Russia too, you could even say the same of their "great success" in Yugoslavia. The ICC respects boundaries selectively.
Also from the other side: the ICC most certainly COULD sue South Africa for working with Putin and Bashar Al-Assad to help them escape justice. They chose not to. Frankly, MANY signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to ever hold up their end.
Also, of course, this rule is also selective justice if it is applied.
In a lot of state vs "resistance movement" the ICC has systematically failed to do anything about sometimes truly abhorrent crimes by movements. No shortage of examples there.
And your claim "they follow their own rules" ... you also neglected to discuss why the ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE to sue Israel ... once during the trial I might add. Same with US. Not that "we couldn't convict the Jew, obviously the law is wrong, let's change the law" isn't a longstanding legal tradition. Not very just though ...
As I said, the ICC is a beautiful theoretical idea. Unfortunately the ICC is not even remotely close to that idea and will never be. Their rules form selective justice even if they were applied and what they practically do is much worse than that.
Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?
The MAGA anti-war vs. Trump pro-war split with Iran has got me thinking they got some pull on him.
Every American President will defend Israel at any cost. The American military industrial complex depends upon the existence of an aggressive, Zionist Israeli government constantly starting shit and creating the pretext for American imperialist doctrine. Conservative and evangelical Christians believe it is their literal sacred duty to defend Israel (see recent comments by Ted Cruz citing the Bible to that effect) It doesn't matter who is in the White House, or what party, and no coercion or blackmail is required.
> White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade"[0][1]
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epsteins-sick-story-pl...
[1] https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-intelligenc...
Besides this, Trump's muscular rhetoric probably just assumed that Israel was a piece of the US, more or less. I'm sure he also got very solid support at the elections from all the usual lobbies.
This is a self-defeating and untrue meme.
Most Americans don’t say Israel is very important to them, favourably or not [1]. Historically, Israel was popular in both parties; that has now changed. As a result, being anti-Israel was dumb not because of some APAC [EDIT: AIPAC] conspiracy but because voters generally don’t respond to foreign policy issues (versus kitchen-sink ones) and the voters who would tended to were predominantly pro-Israel. So the safe electoral strategy has been, until maybe the last year, to say something nice about Israel and then move on.
So no, there isn’t some undefeatable (and frankly, steeped in historically-racist characterisations of Jews) shadow government. This is basic electoral incentives. Incentives which are shifting. Because if there is an undefeatable shadow government, there are better things to talk about and focus on.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...
This is not a binary of either NWO conspiracy or paranoid antisemitism . AIPAC is a lobby, just like many other lobbies. They boast on their website[1] that they've paid $53M to politicians. Just like any other lobby, the electorate has a right and responsibility to judge whether the influence it has bought is in their best interests.
Sure. One among many. They’re influential, but not deterministic.
> that they've paid $53M to politicians
No, they don’t. They’re reporting campaign donations.
There is a tendency, when we disagree with an election, to tally up the donations made to the other side while ignoring all the times the best-funded candidate got trounced. (Jeb!) The influence of money in politics is one of sharply-diminishing returns. It is invaluable for name recognition. It doesn’t swing people on fundamental issues.
Israel has had unique sway in America because for most of its history it has been uniquely popular. Partly because of our Jewish diaspora. Partly because they were a reliable ally. And partly because they give us a lot of money. But two out of three of those factors also apply to the Gulf states, and we tend to be a bit less deferential to them because they’re just not as popular.
I don't think the US ever had a president who cared less about Israel than Trump. The few times Trump has been on the Israel side seem to be only because Israel was "winning" some conflict, and Trump just prefers being on the winning side. He doesn't seem to care (or understand) the slightest whether Jews have a state, whether they can defend themselves, etc.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dum...
It is possible using IPv6 to make end to end connections without having to do weird hole punching through NAT, etc.
[1] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/m...
His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
Look at this article discussing the allegations, by AP, from last year: https://apnews.com/article/war-crimes-international-criminal...
Sounds like Trump’s EO had nothing to do with with suspending the account?
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
That sounds exactly like it was because of Trump‘s EO but MS doesn’t want to do it anymore
And he also lost his bank account, that’s hardly because of the allegations
At my organization, if an employee is suspended, I don't expect Microsoft to manage it. We have to do it ourselves. It is different elsewhere?
I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).
They might start spending the time and money to move away from Microsoft's control, but there's few solutions that reliably work at that scale and for their needs, and I honestly wouldn't fault them for assuming that the arrangement that worked for decades wouldn't suddenly fall apart.
Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.
Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.
Not great news for the US tech industry...
US tech dominance has long been seen as a benefit and this administration is ruining that position.
this administration is ruining many things. China doesnt even have to fight to win new soft power - the US is doing it to themselves.
DOGE? Absolutely performative. Even things like USAID are a trival amount of money and miss the point that it's a very cheap way of getting influence. Plus I'm sure there's some CIA money buried in there too.
Abusing the power in such a trivial manner like suspending this account does nothing but hasten this downfall.
It's always worth adding that 20+ years ago the US passed a law colloquially known as the "Hage Invasion Act" [1], which not only authorized but requires the US to invade the Hage if ever any US servicemember are brought up on charges to the ICC. And this extends to servicemembers and leaders of allies.
Empires don't die quietly or quickly. This is going to be long, drawn out and chaotic.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
Europeans live in a fairy land dream and need to wake up.
That's an issue with America. For all American businesses.
The dumb actions by the current US Administrations give the EU a big incentive now to buy their services elsewhere in the future, so Trumps fever dream about the disbalance might come true thanks to his own actions
"Who allowed you to live like that"...
Some previous discussions:
Microsoft blocked the email account of Chief Prosecutor of the ICC
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44039719
Microsoft's ICC blockade: digital dependence comes at a cost
So I won’t say it’s all just the US coming in and buying everything up. It was partly European investors wanting to make a profit.
But the point remains that the EU also innovates. So to suggest that it doesn't and its reliance on US tech is somehow its own fault for not trying, is missing the detail.
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, visited the Netherlands and announced new “sovereign solutions” for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for “a time of geopolitical volatility.” Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers.
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