Even they have their limits.
Wow, so tough, much decision
But now it just happens to be that their president didn't get the Nobel peace price. The person who did was a judge on the ICC.
It could be a complete coincidence, of course. I mean, if it isn't, it would reinforce the notion of the USA being a clown of a country, which I'm sure Americans would prevent.
I suspect this one was actually meant as a joke, although it is not remotely funny in my opinion.
Someone in Trump's orbit who writes them gets an immature charge out of trolling people.
So far my prediction about Trump have sadly been correct: The US is getting weaker and poorer every day.
That describes MAGA perfectly.
Is this a legitimate policy decision? Maybe - but it sure reads like the ranting of a drunk.
"They're trolling" is simply a juvenile defense that provides the cult and its members with plausible deniability.
The world might be slightly better off if we'd all taken them seriously from the start, but taking clowns and the accompanying circus seriously is unintuitive to most.
Another match lighting US soft power on fire
The last round of ICC sanctions got everyone here talking about tech sovereignty, now France and Germany are rolling their own productivity suites, the Netherlands are rolling their own NixOS distro, etc etc.
This is just going to further hurt US interests. Biting the hand that feeds, burning down their own empire out of hubris. And Americans voted for this! Twice!
It's time the EU rolls out the Blocking Statute [0] to counteract this nonsense.
[0] https://finance.ec.europa.eu/eu-and-world/open-strategic-aut...
So, good news I guess. Everything is fine. Trump is the best president ever in the history of the world.
Which is all the ICC can do to nations that aren't signatories to the Rome statute.
It's not crazy to think that I won't be served meat if I'm going to a house of a vegetarian. It is however crazy to think that I will be stoned in that house for having eaten meat in the past.
Why should we believe in the fantasy of the nation state, but not in the fantasy of international law? It's all just social constructs to create an ordered society that stops the worst excesses.
That is authority if you like it or not.
The proximal cause of the sanctions appears to be that the Nobel Peace Prize was won by a former ICC judge, and Trump covets it.
The distal cause is that the US never joined the ICC, arguing that US political & military leaders should not be subject to a binding foreign jurisdiction. This is a longstanding disagreement, with bipartisan consensus in DC.
Putting pressure on this disagreement, the ICC has a warrants out for Netanyahu and others that the current administration views as a political & military ally.
My interpretation is basically: this is a petty move about the Nobel, which builds on a long-simmering disagreement about the role of international law.
https://apnews.com/article/us-icc-trump-rubio-4ea3555403e3c6... https://www.reuters.com/world/us-imposes-sanctions-internati...
Previous bipartisan consensus thus means nothing. Bipartisan consensus now means everyone capitulated to Trump's whim of the day.
It is indeed fragile since, as you point out, it only takes one party (or in Rs case, one person) to eliminate the consensus. Consensus comes and goes.
And yet, it's notable when through the chaos, both parties have consistently maintained lockstep agreement for 30 years.
Do these sanctions also affect anyone working at the ICC?
E.g., the ICC ditched Microsoft last year, likely foreseeing this type of action.
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ommt2f/the_int...
Regardless - I think it's safe to assume this isn't happening in a vacuum - there are a number of world players who profit from the collapse of the U.S. And all this trouble started the moment they could use the internet to feed stupid Americans their stupid propaganda.
Not a week passes without the US giving other nations very good reasons to cut out any dependencies on anything under their jurisdiction.
Is California now panicking and exiting the United states? That would be really funny.
See the similarity here...?
Now, as it happens, the US is one of the most economically and militarily powerful states out there, so they're the closest we have to an actual world police - but again, that police doesn't follow "international law", they act in what they think is the best interest of the West (or the US specifically). That's how all regional powers roll, albeit on a smaller scale. Russia and China make claims to neighboring states, Germany unceremoniously protects its economic interests in the EU, Iran bankrolls terrorists in neighboring states who in turn bomb Iran, and so on.
The ICC is a bit unusual in that it's an initiative of some Western states trying to get the most powerful state to play by their rules. It's a nice try, but also... obviously doomed? And it's not something the US can ignore, because the court does assert the authority to arrest and try US servicemen and politicians. So this was kinda inevitable, and if you think the sanctions are bad, consider the bipartisan Hague Invasion Act of 2002: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
One can also argue that, exactly because there is the right to self-determination, there is a huge need for a inter-national and super-national organism to ensure that a right of some country doesn't jeopardise the rights of others.
Is the ICC the right organism? Maybe, maybe not; we can argue about that.
Are the ICC already terrorists, or not yet? Asking for a friend who doesn't want to get bombed.
Saying that they don't have authority to make a decision implies that there's some universal set of rules that internationally lays down what anyone's authority is - precisely the kind of thing you appear to be opposed to, because such a set of rules would likely need a court!
You seem to have arrived at a suitable definition of "authority"
Refresh my memory, what did USA choose about that?
Rules for thee, not for me.
If you equate what the Presidents of the USA want to what the USA itself wants, then the USA have decided they don't want that.
If not, then you'd need to organize a referendum and let the population itself decide on a one person, one vote basis.
The U.S., along with China, India, Russia, and many other nations, are not members and do not grant any weight to ICC rulings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court#C...
(I am from the country that voted to leave the EU...)
Sometimes it can be learned with a simple first degree burn. Sometimes you get blisters. Sometimes the government in power is determined to hold their hand to it and get third degree burns.
Hopefully the pain from this round of burns can be remembered for a while longer before its repeated again.
Pretty sure even a lot of the current President's voters are slowly coming to this same realization. I predict soon in casual conversation almost no one will have voted for this man.
There's an US law that says the US will invade Belgium if the court wanted to investigate an American (???)
I remember Hillary Clinton, in the Obama administration, saying the US is an exceptional country that deserves exceptional conditions regarding this issue
It's frankly ridiculous
The root of the problem is in the collective mind of Americans. We are the problem - we've been hacked to be both stupid and proud of that stupidity, to cease recognizing "character" or "virtue" as a signal, to cease caring about reality that doesn't support opinions that were installed on us, like malware, or anything really except entertainment. Because that's the ONE thing we do get out of all this - we get to be entertained. How funny when he says outlandish things like immigrants are eating the cats, eating the dogs! How hilarious (and macho!) when he brags about grabbing women. How wonderful it is to see the discomfiture of the libs when he parrots Nazi propaganda or when he encouraged the Proud Boys to storm the capital to overturn his loss, and then his lackeys claimed it either didn't happen or was a false flag. "Hang Mike Pence!" is what an obese, fentanyl- and TikTok-addicted mind thinks is doing something! And hey, you can say "retard" again without getting canceled.
I've got kids and I'm terrified for them.
rbanffy•1h ago