[HN Gopher] How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA
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How a French judge was digitally cut off by the USA
Author : i-con
Score : 368 points
Date : 2025-11-21 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.heise.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.heise.de)
| enlguy wrote:
| Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to
| indict a war criminal.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| 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.
| usrnm wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| Well the fact that they made a law to enable this is a sign
| of at least some belief in the law. These days Trump would
| just do the invasion regardless of what the law says, and
| get away with it. Case example: ordering the navy to blow
| up Venezuela boats.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Good point! From that perspective the comment I replied
| to does indeed check out.
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| The US never ratified any law claiming the ICC has
| jurisdiction over Americans.
|
| And they basically put it into writing, they're not the
| only country that would do something if an active duty
| military officer was arrested.
|
| Here's a map. [1]
|
| [1]
| https://d3i6fh83elv35t.cloudfront.net/static/2024/05/ICC-
| Mem...
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > 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
|
| I think it looked like that, because the US always been very
| effective at propaganda, and until the internet and the web
| made it very easy for people to communicate directly with
| each other without the arms of media conglomerates. It's now
| clearer than ever that US never really believed in its own
| ideals or took their own laws seriously, there are too many
| situations pointing at the opposite being true.
| DangitBobby wrote:
| I'm skeptical things would have lasted this long if the "US
| never really believed in its own ideal or took their own
| laws seriously". I think you're letting your cynicism for
| this moment run away with you.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| American involvement in the Nuremberg trials set the
| stage for the modern era of international law. It began
| with the United States, along with the allied nations,
| constructing a post-facto legal definition of crime
| against humanity that somehow included the Holocaust but
| excluded both the American campaign in Japan and various
| Russian war crimes on the Western Front. It's not
| cynicism to point out the clear hypocrisy.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Not to mention Jim Crow was still in full effect in the
| US at the time, but somehow wasn't deemed "Crime against
| humanity". The winners truly do control the history.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Was Jim Crow a federally organized policy bent on
| extermination? It was state level discrimination that
| Nazi Germany copied in 1933-1938 to deal with their
| "Jewish problem". By 1939 you had formal government-
| enforced ghettos with forced labor (no equivalent in
| America at the time) and by 1941 you had mass extinction.
|
| Don't get me wrong - Jim Crow was horrific. But it was
| state level after effects of the civil war and failure to
| establish absolute dominance over the southern states in
| reconstruction. Cultural problems we fought a civil war
| over and we're still dealing with today. But one
| difference of the goal with slavery and Jim Crow is
| subjugation not extermination
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Subjugation or extermination, if it wasn't for the
| addition of "as part of a war of aggression" to the
| "Crimes against Humanity", the US would have been
| considered as participating in crimes against humanity at
| the same time they were partcipating in the Nuremberg
| trials.
|
| It's thanks to the US, that crimes against humanity is
| only considered when there is an active war of
| aggression, precisely because Jim Crow was a current
| thing at that time.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| I was unaware that the US did anything similar to the
| Holocaust in Japan.
|
| As are the Japanese.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I don't think there are many Japanese alive today not
| aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While it's true they
| didn't place Japanese in internment cam.. no wait, they
| did do that. While it's true they didn't straight up
| execute Japanese folks on the street, they did
| effectively erase two cities from the world map, how that
| isn't a "Crime against Humanity", I don't know why we
| even have the label.
|
| So yeah, the US didn't spend years doing horrible stuff
| to humans like the Nazis did, the US wasn't exactly an
| angel in that conflict, by a long shot. But neither was
| pretty much any nation, I guess it kind comes with the
| whole "world war" thing.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| The firebombing of Tokyo and civilian residential
| districts in many other cities was what I had in mind,
| actually.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo
|
| 100k dead, 1M homeless, mostly civilian.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a
| pass from the wave of destruction is naive.
|
| However, one main difference people in this thread seem
| to forget is that America's civilian kills were about
| dealing damage to an enemy country within enemy
| territory. It's horrific but the main difference was that
| Germany mass executed and actively tortured civilians
| within its own territory. America never did that and as
| horrific and regrettable Japanese internment camps were,
| and full of racism and prejudice, and failing to even
| uphold the Constitution and just being abject failures in
| treating people humanely, comparing them to Nazi
| concentration camps indicates a complete and utter
| failure in understanding how different the situation was;
| America was not trying to actively exterminate Japanese
| citizens within its borders as a matter of policy.
|
| The closest American came to Nazi Germany was the
| persecution of black people within its borders but even
| while Nazi germany was inspired by Jim Crow in terms of
| how to treat Jews, it's a failure to recognize that Nazi
| Germany ran off with the idea when they started setting
| up death camps. The closest American came to that was
| lynchings which never reached the scale or official
| government sanction that concentration camps did.
|
| The closest American could be said to have done that was
| the Trail of Tears and their treatment of Native
| Americans; American has always struggled to contain the
| racist instincts of a significant part of their
| population but it is not unique in this challenge.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > All out war is hell and pretending like civilians get a
| pass from the wave of destruction is naive.
|
| Collateral damage is one thing, the deliberate targeting
| civilians en masse is another. I understand the US Armed
| Forces and IDF currently justify their excesses by
| blurring the two concepts together, but they are legally
| distinct concepts.
| joe463369 wrote:
| "Fair enough, we've a long history of lynching black
| people and killing native americans, but we're not as bad
| as the Nazis"
|
| That's some position to take.
| triceratops wrote:
| > they did effectively erase two cities from the world
| map
|
| They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has a
| population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.
|
| > how that isn't a "Crime against Humanity"
|
| An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of
| magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely
| bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real
| good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely
| shit".
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > They're still there last time I checked. Hiroshima has
| a population of ~1m. Nagasaki closer to 300k.
|
| This is an argument by equivocation. There's still a
| "World Trade Center" in NYC but it's not the one that
| fell in 2001. Nor does saying it's so restore the dead to
| life.
|
| > An invasion of Japan would have cost an order of
| magnitude more lives. It was the 4th year of an extremely
| bitter conflict that Japan started. There were no real
| good options on the table. Only "shit" and "extremely
| shit".
|
| This is a legal defense strategy that was never heard
| before an international tribunal because, notably, one
| was never held.
|
| I don't have the energy to skim through the Nuremberg
| transcripts right now, but I also believe "it was the
| best of bad options" was a legal defense attempted there,
| with mixed results.
|
| EDIT: I'm being rate limited, so I can't answer any more
| questions today. But suffice it to say that in Truman's
| place I would have extended the relative protection that
| Kyoto received to every large Japanese city and contained
| the air force to bombing primarily military and
| industrial targets, with the understanding that precision
| bombing was not as advanced in 1940s as it is today.
|
| Here is a more in depth analysis of options other than
| nuclear bombardment (though it only discusses nukes,
| which is not the primary locus of my criticism).
| https://blog.nuclearsecrecy.com/2015/08/03/were-there-
| altern...
|
| Also I did not say they were "erased from the map," that
| was a different commenter.
| triceratops wrote:
| If you were Harry Truman in April 1945, what would you
| have done? Honest, direct answer, no hemming and hawing.
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| I mean, you are the one arguing that they were erased
| from the map when clearly they were not. And either way,
| to say that millions of Americans should have died to
| invade a country that sided with the Nazis and killed
| bajillions of Chinese and Koreans unjustly is simply
| incorrect.
| triceratops wrote:
| > in Truman's place I would have extended the relative
| protection that Kyoto received to every large Japanese
| city and contained the air force to bombing primarily
| military and industrial targets
|
| Japan had dispersed industrial production widely by that
| point, including into workshops in people's homes. The
| Allies were already doing regular bombing.
|
| Japan outright refused to surrender. They had a faction
| that tried a coup to prevent the surrender even _after_
| the nuclear bombings. Regular bombs would surely not have
| been enough. Strategic bombing doesn 't work.[1]
|
| What's your next idea?
|
| I read the article you posted with alternatives. Delaying
| the second bomb - good idea, but it still means one was
| dropped. Allowing the Soviets to invade - it's hard to
| say having Japan divided for 40-odd years like Germany
| ended up would've been a better outcome, but idk perhaps.
|
| 1. https://acoup.blog/2022/10/21/collections-strategic-
| airpower...
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > Regular bombs would surely not have been enough.
| Strategic bombing doesn't work.
|
| Your link rather convincingly argues that _the USAF
| shouldn't have been bombing cities in Japan at all_ , and
| that's just fine by me. According to this, my mistake was
| including industrial targets in my scope of work.
|
| Regarding Germany, they say,
|
| > Finally, in the aftermath of the war, efforts to survey
| the morale impact of the bombing largely concluded that -
| wait for it - being bombed hardened civilian will to
| resist. Together the allies had dropped some 2,500,000
| tons of bombs - eight thousand times the quantity Douhet
| predicted would induce surrender - and the net effect of
| this was to increase German resolve to resist.
|
| This agrees with my intuition.
|
| Regarding Japan,
|
| > Now I want to note again we're not going to dive down
| the nuclear rabbit-hole here, we've done that before. I
| do want to note that current scholarship on the factors
| that led to Japanese surrender is very complex; whatever
| simple summary of it you have heard - either that the
| atomic bombs definitely did or definitely did not lead
| directly to Japanese surrender - is almost certainly
| wrong given the complexity of the question.
|
| Also perfectly agreeable. I'll probably read their take
| on the surrender later.
|
| So where do you get, "regular bombing would surely not
| have been enough"? Your source seems to say that less
| bombing overall would have reduced civilian reaction
| formation, and I agree.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >aware of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
|
| Of course this argument never uses the much more
| horrifying and abysmal firebombing of Tokyo, because it
| doesn't come from a place of historical knowledge, but
| rather trite lies.
|
| Hell, the Allies told Japan (literally) "Surrender or
| face prompt and utter destruction", while Japan knew they
| were utterly cooked and already lost the war like a year
| ago, and they simply ignored it. Japan was not totally
| ignorant of the concept of a nuclear weapon either, as
| they had competent physicists and a low effort nuclear
| weapons program.
|
| If you do not want your city turned to ash, do not START
| a war of aggression on your neighbors and _the damn
| world_ because of imperial ambitions, and then do not
| continue such war long after it was clear you had already
| lost, including instructing and training your citizens to
| die en masse for the emperor.
|
| The Japanese were actively trying to erase a billion
| people. Actions have consequences.
|
| There was no end to Imperial Japan without just
| staggering death of japanese people. It doesn't matter
| whether that death came from Chinese soldiers or nuclear
| fire or Russian waves or American Marines.
|
| If you don't want people to kill you, start by not
| becoming an absurd cartoon villain.
|
| Imperial Japan was the exact horrific Fascism as the
| Nazis, and anything less than unconditional surrender was
| unacceptable.
|
| Internment was fucking awful, and I think it's very
| telling we never interned German Americans even though we
| knew Germans DID sabotage US industries during WW1 but I
| guess Germans are too white for the racist Americans who
| thought Hitler was a cool guy to get uppity about.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| > Of course this argument never uses the much more
| horrifying and abysmal firebombing of Tokyo,
|
| For what it's worth, I did try to limit my claims in this
| thread to the notion that maybe the firebombing of Tokyo
| was a crime against humanity, and avoid yet another
| pointless relitigation of the use nuclear weaponry.
|
| I don't know what to make of your whataboutism, however.
| Nobody here is arguing that the Tokyo tribunal should not
| have been held, as far as I can tell.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| At the same quantitative scale, no. But qualitatively,
| large-scale violence against civilian populations with
| the stated intent of extermination? Yes.
| a2tech wrote:
| I'm an American and I can safely vouch that myself and most
| of the people I know deeply believe in the American ideals
| that have been presented as gospel for decades--fair play,
| hard work, rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of
| legal status), and to a one, believe that as soon as you
| swear your oath at the immigration court, you're an
| American, regardless of the circumstances of your birth.
|
| The situation we find ourselves in is that the American of
| today does not represent us well. I have hopes for the
| future, but time will tell.
| dizzlewizzle wrote:
| >rule of law, loving our neighbors (regardless of legal
| status)
|
| >The situation we find ourselves in is that the American
| of today does not represent us well.
|
| The system can't represent a contradictory set of ideals.
| zidad wrote:
| If only the US would apply those values to their foreign
| policy, unfortunately the US voters don't care enough
| about that.
| NebulaStorm456 wrote:
| This is a great satire. I laughed out very strongly.
|
| https://youtube.com/shorts/I-2r-qJcxKc
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| This is exactly the kind of bright eyed idealism that
| American propaganda produces. I say that as an American
| who grew up inside the system. The schools shape you into
| a patriotic silhouette, convinced your country is the
| shining exception of human history.
|
| Then the internet arrived and cracked the smooth surface.
| Suddenly the world was not filtered through textbooks and
| morning announcements. You could see the contradictions,
| the omissions, the parts of the story no one wanted to
| say out loud. The myth began to thin out.
|
| And the blindness is intense. Just look at the parent
| poster. He lists all the noble ideals he and "most people
| he knows" supposedly embody, as if declaring them makes
| them true in practice. It becomes a kind of self portrait
| disguised as a national portrait. The assumption is
| always that the country has drifted away from the people,
| never that the people have drifted away from their own
| claimed principles.
|
| He says that the America of today does not represent him,
| but never considers that it might represent us all far
| more than the flattering story we prefer to tell
| ourselves. The gap is not between the country and its
| citizens. The gap is between reality and the myths
| individuals cling to in order to feel morally
| uncomplicated.
|
| Because once the slogans fall away, nations are not noble
| and people are not consistent. We are collections of
| private contradictions, unfinished thoughts, and hidden
| struggles. We carry more inside than we ever admit.
|
| And in the end, a human is just that. A quiet tangle of
| secrets pretending the world makes perfect sense.
| a2tech wrote:
| The fallacy is believing the country has ever perfectly
| embodied the principals of its people. Unlike your and
| others dismissive talk of my 'bright eyed idealism' I and
| the people that I interact with fully understand the
| missteps and failures of our country.
|
| That does not stop us from working towards making the
| nation a better place. I'm stubborn and loud and I talk
| to politicians and others when I see things that I don't
| think are right. Maybe (probably) I'm tilting at
| windmills. But I'm not giving up on what I think the
| United States should be.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > and I can safely vouch that myself and most of the
| people I know
|
| That's great, too bad none of those people sit in
| positions of power or anywhere near your government,
| because from the outside for the last two decades or
| more, those ideals are not visible to us at all, neither
| when we look at the foreign policy nor internal.
|
| I'm sure the tides will eventually turn, but we're
| talking decades more likely than years, since it's been
| turning this direction for decades already, and I don't
| see it tipping the balance in the other way even today or
| the near-future. GLHF at the very least, I do hope things
| get better for everyone.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Yeah, that is something I don't get. You can hear all
| around the Internet "we did not vote of this!" yet you
| don see any visible reaction to all these bad decisions
| lately - no protests in the streets, no real attempts to
| block these things, people resigning rather then
| implementing bad decisions.
|
| I just don't get it - unless all those ideals were just a
| show from the start.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| People in the US seems allergic to unions and any sort of
| solidarity movements, so now you have all these
| individuals believing them to be the strongest
| individual, not realizing you need friends and grass-root
| movements to actually have any sort of civil opposition.
|
| There does seem to be some slight improvements of this
| situation as of late, video game companies and other
| obvious sectors getting more unions. But still, even on
| HN you see lots of FUD about unions, I'm guessing because
| of the shitty state of police unions and generally the
| history of unions in the US, but there really isn't any
| way out of the current situation without solidarity
| across the entire working class and middle class in the
| US, even if they're right, left, center or purple.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > no protests in the streets
|
| The No Kings protest was estimated at 7 million people.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I'm not sure what the purpose is to go out on the streets
| for half a day, then everyone goes back inside and
| continue like nothing ever happen?
|
| Go out, stay out until change is enacted. It's called
| striking, and if you had any sort of good unions, they'd
| be planning a general strike for a long time, and it
| should go on until you get change.
|
| You know, like how other "modern" countries do it when
| the politicians forget who they actually work for.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| General strikes weren't particularly common in the 60's
| in the US and those protests were considered widespread
| and effective.
| kelipso wrote:
| The No Kings "general strikes" consist almost entirely of
| retired people. I'm sure I saw anyone under 60 in those
| protests.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're mixing things, or if I missed
| anything, but the "No Kings" things were protests, not a
| "strike" and very far from being a "general strike".
| Those practices are very different from just
| "protesting".
| cptroot wrote:
| This is strictly false. Plenty of working age people
| went, and many brought their children.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The "No Kings" protest had absolutely no subject or issue
| other than repeating Trump's name. What would it have
| meant for it to have been successful? What I mean by that
| is what could "X" be in the sentence: "If X policy had
| changed, the No Kings rallies would have accomplished one
| of their goals"?
|
| It was just an astroturfed Democratic party rally that
| drummed up participation by mass text spam from Indian
| call centers. The turnout was positively geriatric.
|
| Incidentally, the Democratic Party has started running
| into a severe issue with text spammers and fake orgs
| asking for donations and raking in millions, and the
| people doing it are people who are actually involved with
| the party.
|
| _Those Constant Texts Asking You to Donate to Democrats
| Are Scams_
|
| https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mothership-
| strate...
|
| _The Mothership Vortex: An Investigation Into the Firm
| at the Heart of the Democratic Spam Machine_
|
| https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-
| vortex-...
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| As a seventh generation American, war veteran who has
| been in public service for 22 of my 25 working years and
| mixed race person, America has literally never
| organizationally been any of the things you describe.
|
| We are a nation of selfish, narcissists that have no
| concept of consistent long lasting care based
| communities.
|
| What little care we give each other is mediated through
| transactions or cult based social alignment.
| a2tech wrote:
| Any nation made up of human beings is going to be flawed.
| The way forward is via incremental change and compromise.
| Forcing societal change does not, and never has, worked.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The only thing that consistently "works" is the
| collective scientific process of hypothesis testing
|
| Everything else is fantasy coping mechanisms to maintain
| in/out group distance so that people feel temporal
| "safety"
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >Forcing societal change does not, and never has
|
| It looks like Musk was able to buy Twitter and, together
| with the other media magnates, force a massive societal
| change in USA. At least from the outside looking in,
| before this year USA seemed to be a democracy (with some
| factions doing their best to subvert that) and the
| Constitution seemed to be a widely supported basis for
| that democracy. But now, the Constitution has been torn
| to shreds and seemingly with massive support from people
| who will call sand wet and water dry if Trump tells them
| communists don't agree with it and that his clever uncle
| told him so.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| All you're seeing now is what's been happening behind
| closed doors since the founding of this country.
| NebulaStorm456 wrote:
| US Plans for China Blockade Continue Taking Shape
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqi_cPYiT9c
| isr wrote:
| Look, we can all acknowledge that there were, and are,
| many Americans who wish for this to be true. But at no
| point in America's history did that "many" ever
| constitute a majority. Or even close to it.
|
| Which is why, from its very inception, the US has
| employed mass genocide at home, invasions & regime
| changes in the America's, then post-slavery apartheid at
| home, with invasions & regime changes in the rest of the
| world.
|
| That's not anti-American rhetoric. That's just historical
| fact.
|
| So, commingled with those facts, where does "law, love &
| fair play" come in. If you're honest, THAT was the
| propaganda. And the above realities, that was the truth.
|
| The America of today IS the America it has always been.
| Its just that the propaganda mask can't be reattached
| with more duct tape. America started by geniciding non-
| whites at home, and rounding up & dragging non-whites TO
| America, in chains.
|
| Now it's genociding non-whites abroad (primarily the
| Middle East), and rounding up & dragging non-whites FROM
| America, in chains.
|
| When you focus on the common threads throughout American
| history, and strip away the fluff, you realise ... that's
| the real America (which still has the largest slave
| labour force in the world, through indentured workforces
| via its prison system).
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I'm not even sure it was never a majority. I'm not even
| sure it's not a majority now. It's more that the system
| is not set up to be good, even if the majority wants it
| to be.
| pyrale wrote:
| > The situation we find ourselves in is that the American
| of today does not represent us well.
|
| The thing the person you're replying to points out is
| that, while you may be earnest in your comment and
| representative of a majority of US citizen, that is not
| how the US as a country has worked for a very long time,
| and it was possible because you and your fellow citizen
| were either too ignorant or not involved enough.
|
| I'll simply point to the history of Central and South
| America as evidence of my claim.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I think both can be true. The problem is that there are
| many people who believe as you do, but the system is set
| up in such way that those people are dissuaded from
| gaining power and influence, while the most machiavellian
| and amoral find an easy path.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| I don't think it took the web to understand that. Trump
| just made it more obvious.
| gessha wrote:
| > used to be that the US stood out because it took the law
| seriously
|
| The US _looked_ like it stood out but it has its own internal
| and external legal problems such as slavery, Native American
| repressions, the legacy of slavery, anti-Asian policies,
| coup-ing foreign countries, etc etc etc
| DangitBobby wrote:
| We are a country made up of apes, just like all the others.
| Nothing is perfect, and us constantly fucking it up doesn't
| mean we didn't care about it, as a nation.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| You are conflating morality with legal jurisprudence.
|
| The US obeyed its own (highly immoral) laws on slavery,
| genocide of Native Americans, etc.
|
| I'll give you the point about promoting coups in foreign
| countries (couping is actually the verb).
| gessha wrote:
| When I mentioned Native American repression, I had the
| federal government breaking treaties in mind which falls
| under legal category but you're right that the gov also
| did the genocide.
|
| More generally, as a foreigner who now lives in the US, I
| held Americans to a higher standard than, say my own
| government or major other governments. Not anymore, I
| feel like there's just different trade offs in living in
| different countries.
| demarq wrote:
| Remember all the thuggery and whatever we are seeing now was
| happening back then.
|
| What has changed is we know about it.
| zidad wrote:
| The US has always been led by Thugs. If you think they ever
| took international or humanitarian law seriously they would
| not be scared to join the ICC, and you've only been paying
| attention to propaganda, not what the US has actually been
| doing since the inception of those laws.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > It used to be that the US stood out because it took the law
| seriously
|
| The US took everyone's gold under the bretton woods system,
| and then Nixon "temporarily" ended dollar gold convertibility
| when France asked for it's gold back.
| naasking wrote:
| > 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
|
| You're in a bubble.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > believed in its ideals to do the right thing
|
| Do the right thing to serve their own interests.
| Phelinofist wrote:
| I'm pretty sure no one outside of the US thought of the USA
| in that way, ever.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I hate to break it to you, but _plenty_ of countries would do
| this.
|
| One country's war criminal is another country's military hero.
| Same as it ever was.
| chatmasta wrote:
| The ICC somehow managed to create an institution even more
| useless than the UN. The very concept of an International
| Criminal Court, operating in some idealistic moral space above
| war and diplomacy, is completely divorced from the reality of
| realpolitik and total war. If everyone agreed to arbitrate
| world matters in the ICC, why even have militaries?
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _If everyone agreed to arbitrate world matters in the ICC,
| why even have militaries?_
|
| That's... kind of the point? To not have to kill and destroy
| each other to settle disputes.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Yeah sounds great. But it's hopelessly naive. As soon as
| someone disagrees, if they have more real power than the
| ICC, then its enforcement becomes ineffective. You can't
| solve disagreements by agreeing to disagree.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| International law is inherently more of a social contract
| than an actual law. That doesn't make it useless because
| it does have a real effect on how countries behave, but
| it does mean that enforcement looks more like getting
| ostracized than it looks like law enforcement.
| pyrale wrote:
| > International law is inherently more of a social
| contract than an actual law.
|
| Isn't actual law a social contract aswell?
| contagiousflow wrote:
| Why have municipal laws? Everyone can just carry around
| an AK-47 and decide what's right and wrong for them
| wongarsu wrote:
| A leader is difficult to arrest and prosecute while they are
| in power. But it does have a political cost for them (both
| being branded as wanted by the ICC, and how complicated
| international travel becomes, including your host country
| burning political capital by not arresting you). But of
| course the real cost comes if you ever fall from power. The
| ICC means we don't have to invent laws on the spot like we
| did in the Nuremberg trials for the Nazis, we can use
| established laws, courts and processes
| RobotToaster wrote:
| If it's so useless, why bother to sanction it?
| ta20240528 wrote:
| "The ICC somehow managed to create an institution even more
| useless than the UN."
|
| Yet two of the most powerful thugs: Putin and Netanyahu won't
| go near an ICC signatory state.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Netanyahu frequently visits various European states. Putin
| went to Mongolia and back. All of these are signatories.
| clydethefrog wrote:
| Frequently is false. Netanyahu only visited one European
| country after the ICC arrest order - it was Hungary
| because Orban explicitly managed he wouldn't be arrested.
|
| Also, if look at the exact plane movements of his visits,
| they specifically avoid the air space of countries that
| do take the ICC seriously.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_international_p
| rime_mi...
|
| [1] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/netanyahus-jet-
| largely-avoid...
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Hmm, I remembered various countries declaring Netanyahu
| was still welcome, and assumed that he was going to
| visit. I stand corrected, thanks!
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The ICC somehow managed to create an institution even more
| useless than the UN.
|
| Its been very useful at doing the same thing the ad hoc
| international war crimes tribunals that preceded it did but
| with greater regularity and without as much spinup/winddown
| costs for each conflict they address.
|
| > The very concept of an International Criminal Court,
| operating in some idealistic moral space above war and
| diplomacy,
|
| That's not its concept or where it operates, though.
|
| > If everyone agreed to arbitrate world matters in the ICC,
| why even have militaries?
|
| I think you've confused the ICC with the ICJ or the UN
| itself. The ICC does not exist to arbitrate disputes between
| nations in place of settling them by war.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Of course that's not true. Any country is capable of it, and
| any country would do it if it were in their interests.
| Generalizations generally degrade the conversation.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > Only the U.S. would actually sanction someone for trying to
| indict a war criminal.
|
| The problem is that only the US has the power to material harm
| people to such a degree by doing so.
|
| The amount of control that Big Tech has consolidated into a
| handful of US megacorporations is a massive danger to the
| entire world. The US devolving into an overt kleptocracy is a
| huge threat to freedom everywhere. Who can push back? Obviously
| not China or Russia, where the problems are even worse.
|
| Of all the wealthy world, the EU basically stands alone as the
| only entity that has strong enough democratic institutions,
| capital, and expertise to plausibly develop some kind of
| alternative.
| devsda wrote:
| > Who can push back? Obviously not China or Russia, where the
| problems are even worse.
|
| Why not China or Russia or any other country with the
| capability? Competition is good even if some or all of the
| players are bad individually.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| China, Russia are not members of the ICC for the same
| reason the US is not. They do not want extra territorial
| entities applying laws to their citizens and soldiers.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Trumpian fascists being given power in USA demands that
| anyone who supports democracy ceases trade with USA. It is no
| safer than feeding the Russian machine.
| nmridul wrote:
| > ..... 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.lemo
| nde.fr/en/france/article/2025/11/20/outcry-a...
| ArnoVW wrote:
| I think you are misreading the article. The general is
| warning that if we do not show preparedness and
| willingness now, in the long run it will cost more.
|
| Si vis pacem para bellum
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| That sounds to me like a bunch of individual countries
| deciding to independently put boots on the ground. At that
| point what are they voting on as a group? (Though maybe
| that's just what you're suggesting should be done and I'm
| missing it)
|
| I also wonder what good any sort of military/defensive pact
| is if any country can unilaterally decide when or when not
| to participate. It means you can't depend on it and you may
| as well not have it then right? To be clear I am not saying
| military pacts are a good thing, but they do currently
| exist and participating counties can't (at least shouldn't)
| just pretend they aren't part of one when it's
| inconvenient.
| mothballed wrote:
| And the people who vote yes should have to actually go
| themselves and lead from the front, not pull a Putin and
| simply declare war (er, _special operation_ ) while hiding
| under a bunker.
| weregiraffe wrote:
| And all those who vote no get sold into slavery to Russia.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > unless EU nations want to put boots on the ground.
|
| Is such a thing even possible in the EU? I understand that
| it's an economic and policy bloc. Does Brussels have the
| authority to raise an army from EU members?
| Stranger43 wrote:
| No nor does it have logistical capability to deliver even
| half of the equipment currently being promised/discussed
| within a time-frame of less then 5-10year.
|
| It's all dependent on the national government voluntarily
| following the advice of Brussels, and in most cases they
| don't really have the resources the EU wants them to commit
| to "The Ukrainian nationalist Cause".
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Read again "EU nations" not the "EU", If some subset of the
| nations that are members of the EU decide to act
| cooperatively outside of economic policy that is with in
| their propagative, and wouldn't be too surprising outside
| of the sheer volume of politics involved.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| It's kind of hard to see how much more support the US could
| withdraw from Ukraine, judging by the last article I read
| that gave Ukraine until Thursday to accept the latest peace
| deal negotiated between USA and Russia.
|
| If we are in the world you describe, EU might as well do as
| it wants - its downside has been capped.
| delichon wrote:
| > It's kind of hard to see how much more support the US
| could withdraw from Ukraine
|
| It would be a major blow to Ukraine if the US stops selling
| weapons to them via European buyers. There is a real threat
| of this if Trump feels the need to coerce Ukraine into
| supporting his peace plan.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| I believe this is what is implied by the Thursday
| deadline. Article certainly implies this.
| sfifs wrote:
| I'm very surprised the US doesn't seem to be taking the
| risk of Ukraine becoming a Nuclear Weapons state seriously.
| By now, they surely would have had time to develop get to
| the brink of weaponization as a backup plan - they've after
| all always had a nuclear industry. If they do so and offer
| cover to their neighbors who realize NATO may not be
| sufficient, we are in for interesting times.
| immibis wrote:
| Ukraine WAS a nuclear weapons state, until the US agreed
| to protect them from Russia with the US's nuclear
| weapons, if they gave up their own.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| What actually happened to the nukes the Ukrainians had?
| Were they transferred to the US? Destroyed?
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine
| but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes
| stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
|
| The ones in Ukraine got moved into Russia, in exchange
| for Ukraine receiving money and security guarantees.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Thanks. Did that happen immediately after the USSR
| breakup, i.e., when Yeltsin was in charge, or more
| recently under Putin?
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| Still under Yeltsin, 1994 I think. If you've heard about
| the Budapest Memorandum, that's exactly what it was
| about.
| guerby wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
|
| Signed 5 December 1994
|
| 1. Respect the signatory's independence and sovereignty
| in the existing borders (in accordance with the
| principles of the CSCE Final Act).[10]
|
| 2. Refrain from the threat or use of force against the
| territorial integrity or political independence of the
| signatories to the memorandum, and undertake that none of
| their weapons will ever be used against these countries,
| except in cases of self-defense or otherwise in
| accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. (...)
| brabel wrote:
| The same article says the US itself claimed the
| Memorandum was not legally binding when it sanctioned
| Belarus. And the Analysis section starts with a clear:
|
| The Budapest Memorandum is not a treaty, and it does not
| confer any new legal obligations for signatory states.
|
| It also states that many Ukrainians at the time
| considered that keeping the nukes was an unrealistic
| option since all maintenance and equipment required to
| maintain them were located in Russia, Ukraine was under a
| financial crisis at the time and had no means to develop
| those things itself. I just can't understand people now
| claiming it was a mistake to give up the nukes. Russia
| might have reasonably invaded Ukraine as soon as it was
| clear they intended to keep them as they knew they didn't
| really have the ability to use them and no Western
| government would support them using them and starting a
| war that would likely contaminate half of Europe and
| cause terrible loss of life. It was absolutely the right
| thing to do for Ukraine. Even if that didn't save them
| from future aggression, which I think was mostly the
| fault of the West for not being prepared to really sign a
| binding document and put the lives of their own soldiers
| on the line.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine
| but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes
| stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state
|
| It's not quite the same, since Ukraine was part of the
| USSR, and Ukrainian scientists, engineers, and tradesmen
| contributed to the effort. Germany, on the other hand,
| was never part of the American federation, and didn't
| contribute to American weapons development...since
| Wernher von Braun/Operation Paperclip.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Indeed. There was even a question of whether they could
| legally be considered Ukrainian or Russian weapons,
| regardless of where the command centre was. To solve that
| while the talks were ongoing they set up a 'joint'
| command centre in Moscow with ex-SSR countries
| theoretically sharing joint control over the weapons with
| Moscow.
|
| Ukraine at one point wanted to formally claim ownership
| over the weapons, as after all breaking the permissive
| action locks wasn't that difficult. The US talked them
| out of it, as a lead up to the Budapest Memorandum.
|
| We all know how much the security guarantees of that
| agreement were worth.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| > We all know how much the security guarantees of that
| agreement were worth.
|
| They were worth 30 years of peace. It wasn't a treaty.
| Everyone knew it was a handshake agreement without
| consequences for breaking it. It prevented an immediate
| war in eastern Europe after the fall of the USSR. A war
| that could have been much worse involving nuclear
| weapons.
|
| Unfortunately the war came 30 years later.
| _djo_ wrote:
| 20 years, not 30, and not even that. There were other
| clashes plus massive Russian interference in Ukrainian
| affairs just a few years after Budapest.
|
| For something as serious as giving up a nuclear arsenal
| it's reasonable to expect to get more than 20 years of
| peace and for the co-signers to actual fulfil their parts
| of the agreement, whether legally binding or not.
|
| The end result is that no country will soon trust a
| Russian non-aggression promise and none will trust an
| American promise of support.
| VWWHFSfQ wrote:
| It was signed in 1994? That's 30 years. I guess you're
| counting Crimea? I was think just starting from the full
| Russian invasion.
| _djo_ wrote:
| Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and invaded eastern
| Ukraine in 2014. That's 20 years later.
|
| It is also widely believed to have had a hand in the
| poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko with dioxin in 2004, in
| order to give an edge to his pro-Russian opponent, Viktor
| Yanukovych.
|
| But even if that's not true there's ample evidence of
| overt Russian influence campaigns to support Yanukovych
| in that election, which was just 10 years after the
| Budapest Memorandum.
| quotz wrote:
| There was also a promise of non-expansion by NATO and
| non-agression by the US, and that was broken very soon
| after by absorbing the former warsaw pact countries, and
| trying to get ukraine and georgia to join as well. If
| they went all in on NATO aggression, they shouldnt have
| backed out with the tail between their legs concerning
| ukraine and georgia, they should've went all in. By
| backing out, they not only lost their influence there,
| but they also sacrificed all their pawns (politicians)
| and gained nothing. But of course its not easy to sell
| the idea to american citizens that starting a direct war
| is beneficial, especially since there is no reason to
| start it beside "fuck russia".
| _djo_ wrote:
| There was no such promise. Everyone who was actually in
| the room during those talks, including Premier Gorbachev,
| has denied it.
|
| Nor was Ukraine anywhere close to joining NATO. It's
| application had effectively been frozen in 2008, and it
| was not even being offered a MAP which is about step 1 on
| a 20 step ladder of actions to take before joining.
|
| It's a red herring being used to justify Russia's
| territorial and imperial ambitions.
|
| https://www.brookings.edu/articles/did-nato-promise-not-
| to-e...
|
| https://hls.harvard.edu/today/there-was-no-promise-not-
| to-en...
| saalweachter wrote:
| Even if Ukraine were about to join NATO, why would
| joining a mutual defense pact be threatening, unless, you
| know, you were planning to invade them?
| _djo_ wrote:
| Excellent point. Ukraine, like any sovereign country, can
| join whatever alliances it wants too.
|
| There is no right in international law that allows its
| neighbours to invade if it picks one they don't like.
|
| Add to that that it's a mutual _defence_ pact and the
| argument becomes more absurd.
| quotz wrote:
| What would happen if Canada joined a mutual defense pact
| with Russia? Or Mexico? Think about this scenario, would
| the US invade immediately?. Something similar actually
| happened with Cuba in the 60s, and the US invaded them,
| doing a total naval siege [1]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
| quotz wrote:
| I love that whenever I mention this exact argument, no
| one actually wants to refute it :D just downvoting
|
| Its a simple question, would the US tolerate Canada or
| Mexico being a military alliance with Russia or China? Or
| any other country really, say Nigeria :D
| _djo_ wrote:
| Nothing should or would happen.
|
| The issue with Cuba was the stationing of nuclear
| missiles in Cuba, not merely its membership of a pact
| with the USSR.
|
| The US didn't invade Cuba, it assisted Cuban exiles to do
| so in the embarrassing Bay of Pigs disaster which took
| place before the naval blockade as part of the Cuban
| Missile Crisis. Naturally, Bay of Pigs should never have
| happened, and it's one of the things that led to the
| CIA's powers and freedom from oversight being drastically
| curtailed the following decade.
|
| Furthermore, the world and international law has moved on
| since the 1960s. That sort of brinkmanship has been much
| reduced.
| quotz wrote:
| What would happen if Canada joined a mutual defense pact
| with Russia? Or Mexico? Think about this scenario, would
| the US invade immediately?. Something similar actually
| happened with Cuba in the 60s, and the US invaded them,
| doing a total naval siege [1]
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis
| quotz wrote:
| The assurances made by western leaders were made
| verbally, but not codified into treaties or agreements,
| as per the famous line "not one inch eastward". Does that
| make western leaders lying twofaces?
|
| At the 2008 NATO meeting in Bucharest, NATO gave open
| invitation to both Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO
| sometime in the future, without any MAPs. Not that MAPs
| are very important here on a timescale basis, since both
| Montenegro and Macedonia joined NATO in matter of months,
| without the consent of the population, but by corruption
| of the leadership. What is an open invitation stated
| publicly, also consists of thousands of conversations in
| private.
|
| Hence, Russia would not allow this to happen at any cost.
| Would the US tolerate Russia meeting up with Canada and
| Mexico behind closed doors and offering them nuclear
| protection, first covertly, then even publicly?
| _djo_ wrote:
| 'Not one inch eastward', as Gorbachev himself made clear,
| was only about stationing troops in East Germany during
| the immediate Soviet withdrawal. It did not constrain the
| future unified Germany or NATO.
|
| There was no such open invitation to Georgia and Ukraine,
| only vague promises. MAPs were still required.
|
| The US would have no right to invade either Canada or
| Mexico if they were discussing joining a mutual defence
| pact with Russia, yes.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > Those were Soviet nukes, physically located in Ukraine
| but not controlled by it, same as any French/US nukes
| stationed in Germany would not make it a nuclear state.
|
| This is not an accurate comparison.
|
| It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew
| them. Many of the Soviet soldiers manning them were
| Ukrainians and stayed behind. Much of the infrastructure
| for maintaining the Soviet arsenal was also in Ukraine
| and had to be rebuilt in Russia. The situation was more
| akin to if the US broke up and Louisiana (which has a lot
| of nuclear warheads stationed in it) is dealing with
| whether they are now a nuclear power, or if they need to
| hand them over to South Carolina or something.
| nwellnhof wrote:
| > It's not that Russia had nukes in Ukraine and withdrew
| them.
|
| Russia is the single legal successor of the USSR, so all
| Soviet nukes became Russian nukes, regardless where they
| were located. So after the USSR broke up, Russia _did_
| have nukes in Ukraine and withdrew them.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Legal succession is mostly irrelevant and more
| complicated than that. Russia had operational control
| because it had taken physical control of the ex-Soviet
| command and control systems which were in Russia, and
| hence had the launch codes, etc.
| throw-the-towel wrote:
| To be fair, Russia becoming the single successor of the
| USSR wasn't a foregone conclusion in the early 1990s.
| There wasn't relevant precedent of a country dissolving I
| think -- Yugoslavia was still battling it out, Austria-
| Hungary was too long ago.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Ukraine had multiple Long-Range Aviation bases in it,
| Louisiana only has one (Barksdale near Shreveport)
| hackandthink wrote:
| Mearsheimer was right in 1993 (nukes).
|
| https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/07/Mears...
|
| He was right in 2014:
|
| https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/06/Why-t...
|
| And he is still right:
|
| https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/who-caused-the-
| ukraine-wa...
| kakacik wrote:
| Not really, went through the last post and its an utter
| pile of shit to be very polite. Basically russian
| propaganda, seen 1000 times.
|
| It ignores that people should have their right to self-
| determination, don't want to live under russian
| oppression. As somebody whose family lives were ruined by
| exactly same oppression of exactly same russia (err
| soviet union but we all know who set the absolute tone of
| that 'union' and once possible everybody else run the
| fuck away as quickly as possible) I can fully understand
| anybody who wants to have basic freedom and some prospect
| of future for their children - russia takes that away,
| they subjugate, oppress, erase whole ethnicities, whoever
| sticks out and their close ones is dealt with brutally.
|
| Not worth the electrical energy used to display that
| text. Unless you enjoy russian propaganda, then all is
| good.
| lkramer wrote:
| I think this guy paints a difference in thought that is
| not really there. Putin sees Ukraine neutrality and
| impotence as vital to Russia's security. No, he probably
| does not want to actually annex Ukraine, that would be a
| ball ache he doesn't need, but he would like it to behave
| like Belarus.
|
| I think the real difference lies in whether one believes
| Ukraine deserves to decide its own path, or if it's
| forever doomed to be a chess piece on the board between
| spheres of influence, which seems to be the mindset both
| Putin and Trump are stuck in.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The US did not agree to protect them. The signatures to
| the Budapest Memorandum agreed to respect Ukraine's
| sovereignty. Of the signatories, Russia is the only one
| that has violated the agreement.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| Are you sure about that? Wikipedia says the following: "
|
| 3. Refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate
| to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine, the
| Republic of Belarus, and Kazakhstan of the rights
| inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages
| of any kind.
|
| 4. Seek immediate Security Council action to provide
| assistance to the signatory if they "should become a
| victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat
| of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
|
| Both seems to not happen as stipulated.
|
| Edit: I didn't read properly, 4 obviously didn't happen,
| my bad.
| floxy wrote:
| The actual memorandum is shorter than the Wikipedia
| article about it. The English-language portion is
| literally only three pages of double spaced text.
|
| https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/UNTS/Volume%20300
| 7/P...
| lukan wrote:
| But the quotes you seem to challenge are also part of the
| original document you just linked.
| floxy wrote:
| I didn't challenge anything. Just posting a link to the
| actual source documentation.
| Fraterkes wrote:
| I guess you could argue the US is kinda violating 3,
| since I think the Trump administration tried to ask for
| future financial reparations in exchange for support
| during the war. But 4? This isn't a nuclear conflict yet
| right?
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't think 3 has happened. 4 _definitely_ has not
| happened. Did you miss the last 4 words you quoted?
| adolph wrote:
| Gladly not this condition: "in which nuclear weapons are
| used"
| blibble wrote:
| the US trying to coerce Ukraine into surrendering
| territory, and then having to pay the US to do it is a
| violation of their sovereignty
| wat10000 wrote:
| What's the threat? "Do this or we'll stop helping you" is
| not a violation of sovereignty, distasteful though it may
| be in this case.
| blibble wrote:
| Article 3 of the Budapest memorandum[1]:
|
| > 3. The United States of America, the Russian
| Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
| Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine,
| in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act,
| to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate
| to their own interest the exercise by the Republic of
| Belarus of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and
| thus to secure advantages of any kind.
|
| the US regime is attempting to do this
|
| [1]: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Memorandum_on_Securit
| y_Assura...
| timeon wrote:
| Minerals deal that US pushed for was already against
| this.
| lostlogin wrote:
| That's a hell of reply, and shame on the US.
|
| I don't know this. Thank you.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't see how this qualifies. Being given weapons isn't
| part of sovereignty, and putting conditions on the
| continued flow of weapons isn't a violation of it.
|
| Economic coercion attempting to violate sovereignty would
| be something like the threatened (actual?) tariffs on
| Brazil for imprisoning Bolsonaro.
| selivanovp wrote:
| >Of the signatories, Russia is the only one that has
| violated the agreement.
|
| That's not true. USA organized two regime changes in
| Ukraine, first in 2004, second in 2014.
| Lapsa wrote:
| afaik Ukraine never got paid for nuclear disarmament as
| initially agreed - about $200 billions
| wat10000 wrote:
| I wonder where people get these ideas. The Budapest
| Memorandum is very short, it'll take five minutes to read
| if you want to know what was actually agreed. It seems
| like people just sort of imagine what they would have
| agreed to, and run with it.
| Lapsa wrote:
| thank you, will take a closer look. overheard it from
| whatever talk. ain't easy to fact check everything
| Mikhail_Edoshin wrote:
| It wasn't. It had some weapons on their territory but
| could not use them. The red button was always in Moscow.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _It had some weapons on their territory but could not
| use them. The red button was always in Moscow_
|
| In the 90s. Twenty years buys lots of time for code
| cracking, reverse engineering and--if that fails--
| bullshitting.
|
| With the benefit of hindsight, Ukraine should have kept
| its nukes. (Finland, the Baltics, Poland and Romania
| should probably develop them.)
| drysine wrote:
| >Ukraine should have kept its nukes
|
| They would've quickly sold them to Iran like they did
| with nuclear capable missiles. [0]
|
| https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2005-05/ukraine-admits-
| missi...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They would 've quickly sold them to Iran like they did
| with nuclear capable missiles_
|
| Unclear. A nuclear Kyiv would have different security
| incentives than a non-nuclear one.
| immibis wrote:
| Are the nuclear capable missiles worth anything if you
| don't have nuclear warheads for them to deliver?
| M95D wrote:
| Oh, please, please, exclude Romania. I live close to our
| nuclear power plant. I'm scared of our incompetence as it
| is, without trying to make any nukes.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Right _stealing nukes_ you cannot immediately operate as
| a 0-year old nation, to me it doesn 't seems like an
| incredibly bright idea in a world where the existing
| nuclear states doesn't want anyone else to get nukes too.
|
| And in any case it's was not simply removing the safety
| devices on the weapons, you need to be able to target the
| ICBMs at Russia, which Ukraine could not do:
|
| > In fact, the presence of strategic nuclear missiles on
| its territory posed several dilemmas to a Ukraine
| hypothetically bent on keeping them to deter Russia. The
| SS-24s do not have the ability to strike targets at
| relatively short distances (that is, below about 2000
| km); the variable-range SS- 19s are able, but Ukraine
| cannot properly maintain them. [...] the SS-19s were
| built in Russia and use a highly toxic and volatile
| liquid fuel. To complicate matters further, targeting
| programs and blocking devices for the SS-24 are Russian
| made. The retargeting of ICBM is probably impossible
| without geodetic data from satellites which are not
| available to Kiev.
|
| > Cruise missiles for strategic bombers stored in Ukraine
| have long been 'disabled in place'.[...] As with ICBMs,
| however, retargeting them would be impossible for
| Ukraine, which does not have access to data from geodetic
| satellites; the same goes for computer maintenance.
|
| From SIPRI research report 10; The Soviet Nuclear Weapon
| Legacy
|
| So Ukraine did not have usable weapons at hand. But it
| did, and does, certainly have the capacity to build
| _entirely new weapons_ , if given time.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _stealing nukes you cannot immediately operate as a
| 0-year old nation_
|
| Agreed. But nobody was invading Ukraine in 1994. The
| weapons were seen as a security liability. They were,
| instead, an asset to bargain for real concessions.
|
| > _to me it doesn 't seems like an incredibly bright idea
| in a world where the existing nuclear states doesn't want
| anyone else to get nukes too_
|
| To be clear, Kyiv made the right decision given what they
| knew in 1994. Non-proliferation was in vogue. America and
| British security guarantees meant something.
|
| I'm saying if Kyiv knew what we know today, that the
| Budapest security guarantees were worthless from each of
| Washington, London and Moscow; that wars of conquest were
| back; and that non-proliferation would be seen through
| the lens of regional security versus global power, it
| _would_ have been a bright idea to at least demand more
| before letting them go, or to drag out negotiations so
| they could study the weapons or maybe even extract some
| core samples.
|
| > _SS-24s do not have the ability to strike targets at
| relatively short distances (that is, below about 2000
| km)_
|
| Again, having the nukes would give Kyiv leverage. At a
| minimum they'd have HEU and a proven design to study. And
| again, don't undervalue bullshitting. If Kyiv said they
| have a short-range nuclear missile, it would not be
| credible. But would it be incredible enough to worth
| risking invading?
| Yoric wrote:
| I could be wrong, but I don't think that nuclear warheads
| have such a long shelf life.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| The ideal scenario would have been if Ukraine had
| secretly retained 30-100 warheads. Everyone likes to
| prattle on about how they couldn't even have used them:
| those people are mentally retarded. A sophisticated
| government with nuclear and aerospace scientists could
| have _easily_ dismantled interlocks and installed their
| own. Maybe not in a hurry, but they had 3 decades more or
| less. And if they didn 't have the expertise, they might
| have outsourced it to Taiwan for the fee of a few nukes
| to keep.
|
| Ukraine *desperately* needs to be a nuclear weapons
| state. Nothing else will suffice. They need more than one
| bomb, really more than three or four. Putin has to be
| terrified that no matter how many nuclear strikes he
| endures, another waits to follow. When he fears that, the
| war will end.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The war might end in Ukraine being flattened by Russian
| nuclear weapons if that happened. Putin would be backed
| into a corner. End the invasion after suffering a nuclear
| strike (or just the threat of one) and he'll risk being
| deposed and meet a gruesome end. Retaliate overwhelmingly
| and risk escalation from other nuclear powers. It's not
| clear to me that the second risk would be worse, and
| definitely not clear to me that Putin wouldn't see that
| as the better of two bad options.
|
| As has been illustrated so well over the past few years,
| the power of nuclear weapons is a paradox. It allows you
| to make the ultimate threat. But that threat isn't
| credible unless people believe you'll use them. Because
| the consequences of using them are so severe, they're
| only credible if used in response to a correspondingly
| severe threat. Russia's arsenal hasn't allowed it to stop
| a constant flow of weapons to its enemy, an enemy which
| has invaded and still controls a small bit of Russian
| territory, and which frequently carries out aerial
| attacks on Russian territory. Ukraine faces much more of
| an existential threat (Ukraine has no prospect of
| conquering Russia, but the reverse is a serious
| possibility) so a nuclear threat from Ukraine would be
| more credible, but it could easily still not be enough.
| Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone" card.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >Putin would be backed into a corner.
|
| He'd be backed into the door marked "exit". There is no
| corner to trap him here.
|
| >End the invasion after suffering a nuclear strike
|
| And why do you believe that Zelensky or whoever is in
| charge would nuke Moscow first? Do you think that, if
| they had say 30 nukes (plenty for a few relatively
| harmless demonstrations) that this would be the first
| target? Obviously they'd pick something that he could
| decide to de-escalate afterwards.
|
| >they're only credible if used in response to a
| correspondingly severe threat.
|
| You mean such as the severe threat that Ukraine has
| endured for a decade at this point? The war now threatens
| to make them functionally extinct. Many have fled and
| will never return, their population is reduced to
| something absurdly low, many of their children have been
| forcibly abducted to be indoctrinated or
| tormented/tortured.
|
| That condition you impose was pre-satisfied.
|
| >Certainly they're not an automatic "leave me alone"
| card.
|
| Of course not. They'd have to be used intelligently
| (readers: "used" does not imply detonated). It's not
| entirely clear to me that this would be the case with
| Ukraine/Zelensky. But nothing less at this point will
| suffice. Even if the US promised to put 150,000 troops on
| the ground, this wouldn't end. It would only escalate.
| Perhaps to that nuclear war you seem to fear.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't think Putin would have an exit. Losing the war
| would result in a major risk to his continued rule, and
| thus to his person, from a collapse of domestic support.
| A Ukrainian nuclear strike would present him with a
| choice: risk internal revolt, or risk the consequences of
| nuclear retaliation. I'm not remotely confident he'd
| choose the first. And, to be very clear, the second would
| make Ukraine (and likely the rest of the world) a lot
| worse off than they are today.
| brabel wrote:
| I agree with most of what you said but there's zero
| possibility Russia will take over all of Ukraine. Even
| Putin never claimed they would, this seems like a fantasy
| some people like to propagate to instigate fear in Europe
| or something. They spent three years on a gruesome fight
| to take less than a fifth of the territory and the rest
| is much harder as the further West you go, the more
| nationalist Ukrainians are. Check the maps of political
| opinion on Russia before the war started. Looks pretty
| close to the current frontline where the divide between
| pro and against Russia lies. Attacking a NATO country
| would mean the end for Russia and both sides know it
| perfectly well even if they may say otherwise publicly to
| either scare people into supporting their militarism or
| to gain political points.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't think it's likely, but I do think it's possible.
| If the US and EU get tired of helping Ukraine, they'll
| have a _much_ harder time resisting Russian attacks. Once
| they do, why would Russia stop? Maybe they would. Maybe
| they 'd pause, declare peace, and take the rest a year or
| three later. Maybe they'd just keep going. Putin saying
| he doesn't want it doesn't convince me in the slightest.
| He's a Soviet Union revanchist in terms of territory if
| not political system, and they owned the place before.
|
| Not sure what the consequences of attacking NATO has to
| do with this.
| mc32 wrote:
| I dunno if I agree with them being nuclear. It just ups
| the possibility of a thermonuclear war instead of a
| conventional war. Just as I'd prefer that IN or PK or
| both not having those weapons.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| The only historical examples we have of nuclear war
| occurred when the capability was unilateral. MAD actually
| works. The fear you have of a thermonuclear war is a good
| thing, and that fear can exist in Putin as well... but
| only if Ukraine has the weapons to instill such fear.
|
| > Just as I'd prefer that IN or PK or both not having
| those weapons.
|
| The only reason we haven't seen a Ukraine-like invasion
| in that region is that they both have nukes. MAD works.
| mc32 wrote:
| Mini nukes change the equation. If you get two crazy hot-
| heads making decisions where no-one can overrule their
| decisions; things could go in unexpected ways. MAD
| presumes rational actors. If Iraq and Iran would have had
| nukes in the mid 80s I'm not sure that they wouldn't have
| used them.
| fatbird wrote:
| While US weapons aid has basically been cut off, then
| somewhat restored through European purchases, US intel
| sharing has been relatively consistent and continuous
| throughout, and Ukraine is very dependent on it. When intel
| sharing was suspended for several weeks, Ukraine lost
| almost half the ground it had taken in Kursk. At a minimum,
| satellite intel is key to monitoring Russian dispositions,
| and Ukraine has no way to replace that.
| dmix wrote:
| US also authorized the use of their own ballistic
| missiles in Russia proper this past week which was a big
| deal.
|
| They also have another $1B budgeted in defense spending
| for Ukraine next year
| https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-senate-committee-
| backs-m...
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Intelligence, targeting info and selling (no longer giving)
| weapons are all important support but sanctions is the
| really big one. The most recent round in particular has
| really bit into Russia's oil revenue.
|
| Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US to
| drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations with it
| while it continued its invasion. But that's what the US
| voted for.
| pyrale wrote:
| > Of course it would be absolutely disgraceful for the US
| to drop sanctions on Russia and have normal relations
| with it while it continued its invasion. But that's what
| the US voted for.
|
| The reason US sanctions Russia is because the US has been
| pushing its oil insustry in Europe. For instance, EU
| tariff deals included buying a minimum amount of
| hydrocarbon products:
|
| > As part of this effort, the European Union intends to
| procure US liquified natural gas, oil, and nuclear energy
| products with an expected offtake valued at $750 billion
| through 2028.
|
| In that context, US sanctions on Russia serve a purpose
| which isn't solely helping Ukraine ; I don't see the US
| lifting these sanctions anytime soon.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| I personally think Trump loves Russia and Putin and
| generally wants to do business with them. He has wanted a
| Trump Tower in Moscow for decades and probably still
| wants that to happen.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Perhaps Ukraine could spare a few troops for a quick
| invasion of the West Bank?
| dybber wrote:
| Maybe the most impactful thing they could do would not be
| withdrawing support for Ukraine, but removing sanctions on
| Russia and thus boosting Russian economy.
| lukan wrote:
| Depends on the point of view.
|
| I see it as a great opportunity, that we in the EU get our
| shit together, to not be dependant on the US anymore. Nor
| russia. Nor china.
|
| So far we still can afford the luxory of moving the european
| parliament around once a month, because we cannot agree on
| one place. Lots of nationalistic idiotic things going on and
| yes, if those forces win, the EU will fall apart.
|
| If russia graps most of Ukraine, this would be really bad(see
| the annexion of chzech republic 1938, that gave Hitler lots
| of weapons he did not had), but it is totally preventable
| without boots on the ground (russia struggles hard as well).
| Just not if too many people fall for the russian fueled
| nationalistic propaganda.
| watwut wrote:
| > USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war
|
| USA all but openly support Russia by now.
| RyJones wrote:
| I've been to Kyiv five times to deliver aid via help99.co,
| and I've spent many, many hours with Europeans driving trucks
| from Tallinn to Kyiv.
|
| The people volunteering and driving know Europe is at war.
| They all say nobody else where they live realizes this.
|
| It's frustrating.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| EU got itself a Cuba
|
| too bad that Cuba is right on its own border :)
| embedding-shape wrote:
| So literally just like Cuba? The distance between US and
| Cuba is like 150km, if you're in Donetsk you can't even
| leave Donetsk Oblast if you travel 150km, and the
| shortest distance you can take from Ukraine<>Russia to
| closest EU/NATO member would be something like 600km if
| you don't take shortcuts via Belarus.
|
| For all intents and purposes, Ukraine's border with
| Russia is way further away (like magnitude) from EU/NATO
| than US<>Russia (who are neighbors) or US<>Cuba (who are
| also neighbors).
| wang_li wrote:
| Romania shares a border with Ukraine and is a member of
| both NATO and the EU.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Indeed, and how far would you wager it is between the
| border of Ukraine<>Romania and Ukraine<>Russia, at the
| shortest point? I'd wager around a lot longer than
| US<>Cuba.
| wang_li wrote:
| I imagine the shortest path Russia->Ukraine->EU Members
| Romania/Hungary/Slovakia/Poland is far shorter than the
| shortest path Russia->Cuba->Any US State or territory.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Both Cuba and Russia are literal neighbors to the US, it
| doesn't get closer than that. Cuba is like 150km from the
| coast of Florida, and Russia is even closer than that to
| the US!
| wang_li wrote:
| You're just randomly creating new positions to argue
| about because why? There is no factual way in which
| whatever point you are trying to make holds true re.
| Russia/Cuba to the US is less than Russia/Ukraine to the
| EU & NATO.
|
| Kaliningrad literally shares borders with Poland and
| Lithuania. 0 km is the smallest distance possible. Russia
| and Ukraine both border EU and NATO countries.
| jenadine wrote:
| Russia shares borders with Norway, Finland, Estonia,
| Lithuania, Latvia and Poland which are NATO.
| trzy wrote:
| What an absurd argument. If Ukraine falls, the Russians
| will marshal Ukrainian manpower and resources against the
| EU.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| > What an absurd argument
|
| What argument did I even make? Are you saying it's absurd
| that Russia's border to Ukraine is further away to the
| closest EU/NATO member than Cuba is to the US? Because if
| so, I think you need to open up a world map.
| lan321 wrote:
| In my eyes it's more so that we don't care in that sense.
| My friend group is mostly just keeping in mind that they
| might have to dip to another country/continent at some
| point, maybe, unlikely though.
|
| I'm pretty sure everyone I know would rather get imprisoned
| than go die in the mud to protect property they don't own,
| on the orders of a government that doesn't care about the
| same things they care about.
|
| When we talk about it, it always boils down to a discussion
| on how to best desert/escape at different stages.
| overfeed wrote:
| If the relationship with America deteriorates, which
| countries do you think will accept European refugees?
| Your friends may have to stay and fight not out of
| patriotism, but necessity. In a total-war scenario, even
| prisoners will find themselves contributing to thr war
| effort.
| lukan wrote:
| Since europeans are quite wealthy, many will be happy to
| accept them (as long as they still have money and
| qualifications).
|
| But leaving all moral questions aside, where to go?
|
| South america might turn into a war zone as well. Africa
| partly is already. Asia similar.
|
| New Zealand sounds good, but even Peter Thiel found out,
| that money will get you only so far in buying a safe
| haven.
|
| So personally I would opt for fixing the problems in
| europe. And am on it within my abilities. But .. with
| limits. I do not trust my politicians either and I am
| multilingual and traveled the world a lot. So in the end
| I would also rather take my family and leave, then being
| ordered to go fight in a war with half working equipment,
| because corruption and proud incompetence prevented
| preparation. (Many in the german military for instance
| hold the opinion, that they don't need to learn from the
| incompetent ukrainians, because they are all fighting
| wrong)
| kakacik wrote:
| Luckily for whole Europe russia is very incompetent at
| doing anything serious, and complex projects like war are
| as serious as it gets. They routinely fail at logistics
| even now, corruption and nepotism is how puttin' built
| his whole empire, you don't suddenly get competent people
| at key positions of power just because it would make
| sense.
|
| So whatever happens (apart from nuclear holocaust
| everywhere around the world) will be so slow we will have
| time to react. Already biggest arming of whole european
| continent since WWII is happening, and any bad news is
| pushing more money and focus into building more and more.
|
| I know it sounds gloomy, but only if you have your head
| too close to the screens daily. Worse had come and gone
| than incompetent russians.
| lukan wrote:
| "I know it sounds gloomy, but only if you have your head
| too close to the screens daily. Worse had come and gone
| than incompetent russians."
|
| Depends where you live I suppose. The baltic states are
| rightfully worried and take it a bit more serious.
|
| And yes, russia on its own is not that dangerous to whole
| Europe. But russia in combination with north korean
| soldiers and supported by china .. and some european
| states that switch sides (Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia, ..),
| that would be dangerous. Lot's of things can happen. Also
| the EU can transform into an evil empire if we don't
| watch out. So no, I am not too worried about immediate
| war, but the traction right now is bad.
| earthnail wrote:
| I don't fully understand that bit about the EU turning
| evil. Care to elaborate?
| lukan wrote:
| Italy has already a Mussolini (who invented fascism)
| admiring government. Biggest opposition in france is
| pretty right wing. The german right wing opposition is
| pretty strong, ... etc.
|
| Was your point that europe is immune to fascism and
| imperialism somehow?
| brabel wrote:
| We are not at war. No bombs are falling in our cities. Our
| children are not being drafted and coming back in coffins.
| No one is bombing our ships and railways, so we have plenty
| of food on the table. If you think we are at war you have
| no idea what you're talking about.
| immibis wrote:
| That is not the only kind of war. Russia has totally
| pwned the USA in the realm of information.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| >and China
|
| That's the biggest question of the century. Imagine that EU
| and China make a deal, and they backstab US and Russia
| respectively. EU and China are physically so far away from
| each other that there's no way they'd actually run into
| direct conflict, meanwhile by backstabbing, both of them
| could easily get what they want. What I'm trying to say is
| that if you flipped the alliances and aligned EU with China
| and US with Russia, Russia would collapse within one battle
| maximum while EU's support would be just enough to push the
| 50/50 chance of Taiwan invasion towards decisive Chinese
| victory. Everyone happy - China becomes the world's #1
| superpower, while EU remains undisputable #2 and US gets sent
| back to lick its wounds. Sure, EU might suffer from severing
| its ties with the US, but if the alternative scenario is US
| abandoning EU and the latter facing Russia alone, then this
| stops being such a crazy idea.
| petcat wrote:
| > China becomes the world's #1 superpower, while EU remains
| undisputable #2
|
| How does EU even remotely benefit from this bizarre fantasy
| scenario where it flips alliances toward China? The
| fundamentals don't change. EU has no tech and doesn't
| produce anything. China would only exploit the partnership
| even more than they already do.
| immibis wrote:
| Every nation "exploited" by China says their
| "exploitation" consists of building hospitals, schools
| and roads, while the "help" coming from the US is mostly
| lectures about fiscal responsibility. Which side would
| you rather be on?
| GJim wrote:
| > EU has no tech and doesn't produce anything.
|
| What a poor attempt at trolling!
| petcat wrote:
| Yes it was an exaggeration. Withdrawn.
|
| But the point is still that the economic fundamentals
| don't change by shifting alliances. EU would still be
| under the same pressure.
| mystraline wrote:
| I dont think its trolling.
|
| Ive heard the same sentiment locally and at some
| conventions with low/no European representation.
|
| Its also a corrolary to "china steals tech"... Except for
| all the tech they're innovating and creating.
| bootsmann wrote:
| Europe has higher industrial output than the US, its
| either trolling or misinformed beyond belief.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I would be curious if the volume of domestically produced
| goods exceeds the quantity of Chinese-produced goods in
| Europe. If one excludes food and automobiles, then I
| suspect very strongly that this is not the case at all,
| regardless of how you measure the quantity (euro value,
| volume, weight, etc).
| anal_reactor wrote:
| It benefits by not sending its people to war in case of
| conflict with Russia. China can pretty much disable
| Russian army by banning exports of military and dual-use
| goods. Meanwhile US security guarantees are becoming
| weaker by the day, especially in the context of potential
| war US vs China.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| As a European I can agree with the US and China stuff. But a
| Russian Invasion? Seriously?
| atoav wrote:
| As another European: Yes?
|
| Invasion doesn't have to mean they plan to roll tanks all
| the way to Paris.
|
| Have you realized Russian agents blew up a train in Poland
| this week, after some weeks prior flying planes and drones
| into NATO airspace and disrupting air travel in Denmark
| with drones started from shadow fleet tankers. The grounds
| for further action are being tested as we speak.
|
| Invasion just means Russian soldiers enter Poland, Latvia,
| Estonia, Finnland. Countries parts of which Putin painted
| rightfully Russian territories in his speeches. I wouldn't
| bet a lot on that not happening, especially if the
| geopolitical situation deteriorates in favor of Putin.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| What would Russia hope to gain? How does this compare to
| alternative naratives? Assuming we both lack real insider
| infirmatiin, whixh reasonably is more credible?
| mopsi wrote:
| > What would Russia hope to gain?
|
| Reversal of what Russia sees as a great injustice. The
| 2021 ultimatum[1] issued on the eve of the war can be
| summed up as a return to the Europe of 1989 with
| everything that it entails.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_ultimatum_to_NATO
| dmix wrote:
| > Invasion just means Russian soldiers enter Poland,
| Latvia, Estonia, Finnland.
|
| So invasion means a full war with NATO?
| trzy wrote:
| Given the pained debate here by Western Europeans over
| the semantics of "Europe" and Ukraine's relationship
| therewith, it's very unlikely NATO would act and that's
| precisely what the Russians would bet on.
| dmix wrote:
| Russia's best case scenario atm is they take more of
| eastern Ukraine and the west establishes a DMZ not far
| from the current frontlines. Pushing up anywhere close to
| Lviv/Polish border would be like winning the lottery
| given their current track record.
|
| These sorts of wars are very rare in the modern era. They
| gambled entirely because they faced an army they were 10x
| the size and they got embarrassed. There's near zero
| strategic logic in trying again vs NATO after they lost
| most of their fancy gear.
| dxdm wrote:
| GP is talking about the invasion of Ukraine, taking place
| just beyond the EU eastern border, and very much shaking up
| the European security situation, and the EU and its member
| states are visibly having to "deal with it",
| diplomatically, economically and in terms of their
| practical defense postures. That's what they meant with "at
| the border", and not a literal invasion of the EU.
|
| (Edited for a less confrontational beginning of the first
| sentence.)
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Problem is. As a European, who created this situation?
| Russia? Or the US?
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| Russia failed to create a convincing casus belli to the
| rest of the world and seen as the indisputable aggressor
| pretty much everywhere.
| usea wrote:
| Russia.
| dxdm wrote:
| > Problem is. As a European, who created this situation?
| Russia? Or the US?
|
| I'm not going to argue with you about how Russia was
| forced to invade Ukraine and commit atrocities there or
| whatever you're hinting at, my dear fellow European.
|
| Also, stop shifting the discussion and leave your
| apologetic narratives where they belong.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > As a European, who created this situation? Russia?
|
| Russia. After the US completely rolled over for their
| demands not to provide NATO membership action plans to
| Georgia and Ukraine in 2008, because, as Russia claimed,
| that would be destabilizing. Which Russia followed
| immediately with an invasion of Georgia in 2008. Then, as
| soon as Ukraine threw off the Russian-aligned government
| that had taken power while that was going on, Ukraine in
| 2014, taking Crimea and invading parts of Eastern Ukraine
| with both Russian reular forces and Russia-paid
| mercenaries, which is what turned Ukraine _back_ to
| seeking NATO membership.
| immibis wrote:
| Reversal: The US created it by not nuking Russia off the
| face of the planet decades ago.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Imagine if Europe hadn't compromised itself with energy
| dependency on a dictator and was able to stand up against
| the 2014 invasion. The situation was created at home.
| dmix wrote:
| As poor of a state that is Europe's various armies, I'd be
| very surprised if EU couldn't take on Russia even without
| the US (who FWIW recently reiterated their commitment to
| the defense of Europe). Russia's advanced SAMs, radars, and
| Navy have seriously deteriorated. Their main capability
| left is submarines and mass Shahed drones whose range can't
| reach much of Europe.
|
| If Russia's jets can't operate over Ukraine they won't do
| much in Europe except self-defense of their own homeland.
|
| China on the other hand is a very very serious opponent...
| tokai wrote:
| Russia's advanced SAMs and radars are getting clapped by
| one of the poorest nations in Europe. We're at almost
| four years of full scale war and the worlds no. 2
| military has not been able to get air superiority over a
| small airforce of cold war left overs. Just the airforces
| of the Nordic countries alone would run rings around the
| russian airforce and their air defence.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's fatally paranoid stupidity. Russia didn't even want to
| be in Ukraine at all; it could have accepted the breakaway
| regions that were Russian and wanted to be Russian, and
| didn't because it didn't want the responsibility. It was
| just the pressure of the Ukrainian supremacists threatening
| to kill the Russian-speaking population that forced
| Russia's hand. Russia _doesn 't even want Ukraine_, it
| certainly doesn't care about Europe.
|
| But now Russia is in a real bind. Not in the bind that the
| US expected, but one that is beneficial to the US anyway.
| They can't leave rump (i.e. historical) Ukraine alone,
| because EU elites and Ukrainian extremists are determined
| to continue to harass Russia from there, no matter what
| happens. Russia has to control _all_ of Ukraine, at least
| for a moment, in order to have any safety; even if it
| leaves the non-Russian part to be basically independent, it
| will have to be completely demilitarized. That will take a
| decade. Ukraine will look like the smoking hole that
| Afghanistan is, and the Russian economy will be on its
| knees.
|
| Even worse, Russian hardliners already see this coming and
| just want to escalate, instead of the slow, safe, low-
| casualty taking of territory that has been steadily
| grinding the Ukrainian forces into dust. The Ukrainians can
| always jut bail out of this fight, retreat, and do
| terrorism that wears down Russian will and Russian
| resources over the long term. If the hardliners win over
| Putin, the world is in danger _now._
|
| Ukrainians will not win, they will die. But the US may win;
| watching, and loaning the EU money that they can use to buy
| weapons from the US. You _could_ say that the real loser
| would be Ukraine (becoming a desolate graveyard instead of
| the relatively peaceful country it still would have been if
| it hadn 't been influenced to attempt to eliminate its
| Russian population), but the real target has become Europe,
| which the US will own after all this. And if Russia
| collapses, the US will own Russia, and Russian gas, too.
| Europe will simply be a vassal with no alternatives, a wall
| between it and China.
|
| The deep desire of Europe to invade Russia is bizarre. It's
| as deeply embedded into the culture as antisemitism, and
| the two are often mixed.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Russia didn't even want to be in Ukraine at all
|
| Then it should have chosen not to invade and occupy large
| parts of Ukraine in 2014. And then escalate with an even
| bigger invasion in 2022. _Not_ launching a war of
| aggression is, like, the easiest thing in the world to
| do.
| selivanovp wrote:
| Have it crossed your mind that USA and EU shouldn't have
| organized a coup in Ukraine in 2014?
|
| Have it crossed your mind, that Minsk agreements were on
| a table up until Feb 2022, and it was USA and EU that
| sabotaged its implementations and pumped Ukraine with
| weapons and training all those years? Just a reminder,
| that if Ukraine did what it signed in Minsk, Donetsk and
| Lughansk would've been returned under Kiev's control.
| immibis wrote:
| It crossed my mind that Morocco and Algeria shouldn't
| have organized a coup in New York City in 2025.
| Fortunately, none of these things happened.
| dxdm wrote:
| "I didn't want to hurt you, baby, but what can I do? You
| divorced me, you looked at other men. Your friends
| poisoned your mind against me. What can a man do in this
| situation? You see how my hands are tied, and now your
| hands are tied. Has it crossed your mind to not provoke
| me by trying to defend yourself?"
|
| Disgusting.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| > The Ukrainians can always jut bail out of this fight
|
| Putin can end the war immediately whenever he wants.
| petcat wrote:
| > instead of the slow, safe, low-casualty taking of
| territory
|
| I don't know what is considered "low-casualty" for
| Russia, but the last reports I saw they were approaching
| 250,000 dead soldiers in Ukraine since 2022. That is just
| an astronomical number.
|
| USA _only_ had 60,000 killed in Vietnam and that is
| considered a national catastrophe.
| aubanel wrote:
| Ukraine is not and was never part of EU, FWIW
| trzy wrote:
| Ukrainians voted to align themselves more closely with the
| EU and are now effectively a march. Ukraine is very much
| within the sphere of EU concern.
| isodev wrote:
| By the way, most material support by the US is actually
| purchased by other NATO members. The US recycles the facade
| of support, there is very little actionable support.
| tokai wrote:
| Both USA and China are having much worse systemic economical
| issues than EU.
| bambax wrote:
| It's a bad situation allright, but sucking up to Trump even
| more isn't going to make things better. Europe needs to grow
| a pair, help Ukraine way more, and be prepared to fight
| Russia sooner rather than later.
|
| In France recently the army chief-of-staff declared that we
| must be prepared to "lose its children" in a war, if it wants
| to avoid it. Of course we should. The resulting outcry may be
| a sign we've already lost.
| Exoristos wrote:
| This is quite a romantic way to describe EU shooting itself
| in the foot with corrupt politicians and myopic policies.
| mfuzzey wrote:
| It's more the US that has corrupt politicians and myopic
| policies. Trump changes his mind every few days He takes
| bribes from the Swiss.
|
| The sooner the EU rids itself of the US the better
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >USA withdrawing even more support for Ukraine in the war
|
| I thought the only way USA was supporting Ukraine was by no
| longer refusing to sell them extraordinarily expensive
| weapons. So, no longer [openly] hampering them.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The EU is not facing a Russian invasion on their Eastern
| border. It (or perhaps we should say NATO) is participating
| in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine.
| yohannparis wrote:
| I don't understand the point you are trying to make. Could you
| please explain it?
| rzerowan wrote:
| Im going to go ahead and predict that the EU will not risk
| it.If it were China ? maybe they would pull the lever to
| activate this counter.
|
| Previously when the US reneged on the JCPOA viz Iran , they had
| a similar law/faclity that theoreticall could have been used
| but never was.
|
| As an addition the EU Commission is currently imposing pretty
| similar sanction on a Journalist [1] so yeah i dont see much
| movement on that law being used.Most likely they will try to
| wait it out.
|
| [1] https://www.public.news/p/eu-travel-ban-on-three-
| journalists
| aqme28 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Ah, now I understand why Cloudflare was down.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The ICC could be considered to have jurisdiction over Gaza
| though. Although obviously that is debatable.
| zidad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mongol wrote:
| Palestine is party to it and Gaza is part of Palestine
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| And yet Palestine didn't arrest Yahya Sinwar with accordance
| to ICC arrest warrant for "extermination, murder, taking of
| hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention". De jure and
| De facto are very different things.
| vfclists wrote:
| If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military commanders
| think those warrants are baseless, why don't they appear before
| the courts to defend themselves?
|
| This isn't really about the ICC judges. It is about the failure
| of the major Western countries who are part of the ICC to come
| to the defence of the judges who they have appointed to make
| those decisions, and the control Israeli politicians exercise
| over the White House, ie the US President himself.
|
| Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character of
| their politicians and their political system is relentlessly
| degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they don't care, or
| have resigned themselves to it.
|
| Sanctions of those kind or usually applied to corporate
| entities, state entitities or militant political groups aka
| "proscribed terrorist organizations". They are not intended to
| applied to individuals carrying out their legitimate duties in
| organizations approved or even created by America's own allies
| under principles America subscribes to, even if they are
| reluctant to submit themselves to those organizations.
|
| And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these sanctions to
| judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and somehow they don't
| see how whimsical, capricious, petty and infantile such
| decisions are and the poor light they present the US in.
| flag_fagger wrote:
| > Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character
| of their politicians and their political system is
| relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they
| don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
|
| I mean, it's causing a small rift in the GOP. Time will tell
| if that escalates any though. I stand firm in my believe that
| nothing ever happens though.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| It is also causing a rift between "Leftists" who
| distinguish themselves from "Liberals" i.e. Democrats.
| Apparently there are many who didn't vote for Harris
| because she did not sufficiently distance from Israel and
| condemn the genocide.
| flag_fagger wrote:
| Interestingly in both cases, it seems to be an age divide
| at least somewhat.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| > If the sanctioned Israeli politicians and military
| commanders think those warrants are baseless, why don't they
| appear before the courts to defend themselves?
|
| Because they aren't under their jurisdiction? Because they
| might believe the court is biased against them?
|
| > Americans don't seem to understand how the moral character
| of their politicians and their political system is
| relentlessly degraded by the so called Israel lobby, or they
| don't care, or have resigned themselves to it.
|
| > And yet on account of Israel, the US applies these
| sanctions to judges carrying out the duties lawfully, and
| somehow they don't see how whimsical, capricious, petty and
| infantile such decisions are and the poor light they present
| the US in.
|
| You seems to be confused this is done not for Israel's sake
| but for USA - they don't want the precedent of non-ICC
| member's government being judged in ICC to protect
| themselves.
| foogazi wrote:
| > He's being sanctioned as a result by the USA
|
| As a result of what ? What's the trigger cause of the US
| sanctions ?
|
| ICC can't issue warrants against non ICC countries?
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Of course they can. Good luck trying to serve and execute
| that warrant though.
|
| And non ICC countries are squarely within their rights to
| retailiate. Most minor former colonies of the EU countries
| can't, but the US, China, Russia can.
| usea wrote:
| Retribution for acting out of line with those who have this
| sanction power.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Ultimately this sources back to Europe being dependent on the US
| for defense.
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Why does the EU need the US military? China and Ukraine
| mostly?
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The underlying article in Le Monde:
| https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2025/11/19/nico...
|
| Archive link: https://archive.is/TleMk
| estsauver wrote:
| https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/19/n...
|
| There is an English version of Le Monde as well.
| dominicq wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| zidad wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| not arguing with the primary issue at hand, I just don't
| think we should be using a neo-nazi as the example
| mothballed wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Weev might be a real neo-nazi, but to be clear, right now
| an entire country (Ukraine) has also been claimed of being
| neo-nazis and life-altering state action taken against them
| without some due process to determine they are. Weev hasn't
| been convicted of anything serious (nor I think anything at
| all) that has stuck.
| bjord wrote:
| I'm not editorializing here. here's one of many examples:
|
| "Please, Donald Trump, kill the Jews, down to the last
| woman and child. Leave nothing left of the Jewish
| menace..."
|
| re: ukraine, I'm not sure how that's remotely relevant
| here and frankly I think you're doing ukrainians a
| profound disservice by comparing the two
|
| if you look at my background, you'll see I understand
| this better than most
| mothballed wrote:
| Are you unaware that the exact same justification was
| used to attack the Ukrainian people? Your position here
| is weev is an actual neo-nazi while the Ukrainian people
| are not. I concede you are likely correct, and it is
| frankly obvious I'm not making the case they are compared
| as both being neo-nazis. It is still relevant because the
| failure mode is still paralleled, an accusation of neo-
| nazi and then serious state action taken without
| objective due process to ensure it is true.
|
| By dismissing and frankly belittling my statement, you
| are falling for the same trap that justified so many dead
| Ukrainians.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The difference is, when Russia and dumb US citizens say
| "Ukraine is a Nazis state" 1) they are outright lying and
| 2) Russians do not think of "Nazis" as meaning the same
| as what the rest of the world understands. Russians do
| not hate the Nazis for being genociding freaks, they hate
| them for being backstabbers.
|
| Weev meanwhile is just a fucking Nazi. This exact thread
| is about a person who is not a Nazi facing persecution,
| and yet you go out of your way to use a literal and
| explicit Nazi as your example.
|
| In fact, nearly every time I see people make this kind of
| "Oh it could happen to you, it happened to <X>" they seem
| to pick people who are damn Nazis.
|
| Gee, I wonder why those are the cases they know about?
| graemep wrote:
| He is nasty, but the problem is that the US can do it to
| anyone they please - as this case shows.
|
| They have previously sanctioned other people within the ICC
| - the prosecutor and deputy prosecutor.
| qingcharles wrote:
| "It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards
| of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies
| involving not-very nice people."
| habinero wrote:
| weev is not some dude with "not-nice" views. He's a
| sociopath who, among other things, threatened Kathy
| Sierra with rape and murder and published her address to
| his online fans to do the same. He would put her address
| on Craigslist and claim she was a sex worker.
|
| He definitely deserves what he got.
| habinero wrote:
| Weev absolutely deserved to be unbanked, and he put himself
| in that position. He's not some freedom fighter.
| zidad wrote:
| Exactly! Same here. But man it's going to be a painful move, so
| much is coupled to that. I already have a GrapheneOS phone,
| which ironically has to be a Pixel to run it.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Eh it's not like the EU is some moral paragon either. Trade one
| overlord for another. I'll stick with the overlord that's most
| convenient.
| graemep wrote:
| There are advantages to having your stuff within your own
| country's jurisdiction. Only one legal system, and one you
| already live with, controls this stuff. its easier to go to
| court. Citizens have more rights than non-citizens in most
| places.
| mothballed wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| Same is happening to Francesca Albanese, UN rapporteur on
| Palestinian Territories, Italian citizen.
|
| The US is pure mafia.
| thenaturalist wrote:
| > Same is happening to Francesca Albanese
|
| And nothing of value was lost.
| Stranger43 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| But even then they are big enough for these corporations to
| run and complain to Trump that that big bad EU is punishing
| them.
| heisenbit wrote:
| The discussions shifts across the board but it takes time to
| shift due to momentum. The EU has many nations and many more
| companies all making strategic purchasing decisions. US
| dependence skeptics belittled earlier have now concrete
| examples and more weight. The shift can already observed in
| weapons system purchasing but won't be limited to those. For
| better or worse the US has lost its position of trust and is
| sadly working on cementing distrust for the next decades.
| poplarsol wrote:
| Must suck to be subjected to extraterritorial jurisdiction from a
| body you have never acknowledged the authority of.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think the ambiguity was deliberate.
| shkkmo wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Yes, but have you considered US politicians don't like the
| ICC?
|
| What's a bit of truth in the face of that
| arlort wrote:
| 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
| wang_li wrote:
| Yeah. GDPR is annoying as fuck.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Actually, Israel _was_ a party to the Rome Statute, and thus
| the ICC. It withdrew its signature in 2002, during the post-
| Oslo-process intensification of military action against the
| Palestinians. So, your analogy is flawed.
| general1465 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Underestimating China seems like a really, really, really
| stupid thing to do.
| 11101010001100 wrote:
| Yes, we are doing a bad job of updating our priors.
| illiac786 wrote:
| Is that sarcastic? Isn't underestimating by definition a
| bad thing?
| alwa wrote:
| Taking this as an earnest question--no, I don't get that
| sense from that word. To me it describes the direction of
| an error, not the error itself.
|
| It's a thing you'd prefer to _avoid_ , sure; but some
| degree of prognostic uncertainty is totally routine (in
| fact I _would_ call _that_ definitional: no predictions
| are truly certain until they've come to pass, and by the
| time that happens it's usually too late to act). It's not
| "bad" any more than mortality is "bad"--it just _is_ ,
| whether or not we wish it were; wisdom lies in managing
| it as best you can.
|
| In the sense that the gp used the word, I think they
| allude to a tradeoff: you can reduce the probability of
| an underestimate by increasing the probability of an
| overestimate. I took their comment to imply that it would
| be wiser to risk an overestimate than to risk an
| underestimate on questions of "can Chinese society
| achieve a massive goal on a tight timeframe if their
| leadership decides it's important."
| bell-cot wrote:
| Perhaps the USA feels that it has a reputation to
| downhold?
| tracker1 wrote:
| I don't think the US is underestimating China... I do
| think that the US is preemptively shoring up a domestic
| posture against long term changes. It would be a pretty
| bad strategy to continue to outsource everything and
| continue to see a massive trade imbalance with the
| outside world for a prolonged period of time.
| gmerc wrote:
| They can just throw power at it, you're delusional if you
| think it's going to hamper them even mid term.
| beej71 wrote:
| > that's the best they'll have until they can manufacture EUV
| machines domestically.
|
| And how far out is that?
| stickfigure wrote:
| So far only one company in the world has successfully
| accomplished it, so the answer could be "a very very long
| time".
| KK7NIL wrote:
| If you ask PRC shills, it's just around the corner because
| this one Chinese lab demonstrated a very small part of the
| system. And a surprising number of westerners fall for that
| crap.
|
| My guess is that it's at least 10 years away, but that
| could obviously change depending on what resources they're
| willing to commit. But even at that point they'll be 2
| decades behind ASML's EUV tech so it probably won't be
| competitive.
| buran77 wrote:
| > If you ask PRC shills
|
| GP must have been asking for the non-PRC shill opinion.
|
| > My guess is that it's at least 10 years away,
|
| That doesn't sound at all like a lot. China has a
| uniquely effective industrial espionage... industry,
| combined with a very thick geopolitical skin and
| disregard for international demands. This helps
| accelerate any process that others have already
| perfected.
|
| We'll start to see the real deal if/when China eventually
| catches up to the leaders in every field and the only way
| to pull ahead is to be entirely self propelled (you can't
| take advantage of someone else's draft when you're in
| front of the pack).
| tracker1 wrote:
| I think you may underestimate the ability of China to
| abuse industrial espionage at scale.
| ruszki wrote:
| There are things which needs time, even with all or
| almost all the information at hand, just like with atomic
| bomb. I'm not sure whether this case similar to that, but
| that ASML in front for so much time indicates that their
| moot is probably not just information.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| See also: military jet engines. They can't replicate high
| end engines from Pratt & Whitney or GE even though I'm
| guessing Chinese intelligence services have a huge amount
| of relevant information. I don't know why that is.
| scheme271 wrote:
| It's probably hands on experience that's missing. Even
| with the all the technical details, often times there's
| practical details on using this machine or tiny tweaks
| that need to be made to get it working well.
| arw0n wrote:
| The US finished developing a nuclear bomb in 1945, by
| 1949 the Soviet Union had their own. I agree that it is
| probably not the same, there are a lot more moving parts
| in modern chip design. In fact, I have no idea how close
| Chinese companies are to developing SotA chips. But I do
| see China being consistently underestimated in western
| media and think tanks, so my intuitive reaction would be
| to cut that timeline in half if it is what western
| experts believe to be plausible.
| nomercy400 wrote:
| You cannot lead if you only copy.
| gusfoo wrote:
| > And how far out is that?
|
| These guys have a 100% market share
| https://www.asml.com/en/products/euv-lithography-systems at
| the 'extreme' end and, obviously, everyone else is trying
| but haven't really shown much promise.
|
| Here's a good background article on the topic:
| https://www.economist.com/science-and-
| technology/2025/03/12/...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > everyone else is trying but haven't really shown much
| promise
|
| What was the incentive/funding for their attempts? In a
| non-national-security scenario it makes sense not to try
| too hard because you can just buy ASML's solution.
|
| With China it's a bit different, if they decide it's a
| matter of national security and pour Manhattan-project-
| levels of money/resources into it, they could make faster
| progress.
| mtrovo wrote:
| Agree, especially given the track record of China
| outcompeting in other markets where they got blocked.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Well yeah. No one is saying that China cannot do that.
| Just that the political calculus is that it's better for
| China to spend their resources on that, rather than
| building up troops and warships.
|
| Force Chinas growth to be more expensive. It has nothing
| to do with not believing China can do it, it's about
| slowing them down in a task we believe that they can do.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > Just that the political calculus is that it's better
| for China to spend their resources on that, rather than
| building up troops and warships.
|
| Note that this calculus only makes sense if you _invade
| China_ while they are busy with the EUV machines,
| otherwise they catch up technologically and _then_ build
| all the scary military.
|
| Of course, the the calculus doesn't make sense at all,
| because the obvious order when you can't do both is you
| build enough military to feel safe _first_ , then you try
| for the tech race.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the obvious order when you can 't do both is you build
| enough military to feel safe first, then you try for the
| tech race_
|
| Literally zero actual wars with a technological component
| have progressed like this. (The first tradeoff to be made
| is the one Russia is making: sacrificing consumption for
| military production and research. Guns and butter.)
| dragontamer wrote:
| Their plan was to buy those chips and equipment and have
| the troops/ships/weapons sooner.
|
| Now China has to build EUV themselves, then mass produce
| chips. It slows them down regardless and costs them
| resources.
|
| Cut off the market before it becomes a problem.
|
| ---------
|
| Militarily, delaying China into 2040s after the USA has
| stealth destroyers of our own (beginning production in
| late 2020s, mass production in the 2030s) means China has
| to fight vs 2030s era tech instead of our 1980s era
| Arleigh Burke DDGs.
|
| What, do you want to have the fight in late 2020s or
| would you rather have the war in late 2030s? There is a
| huge difference and USAs production schedule cannot
| change. But we can change Chinas production schedule.
| general1465 wrote:
| According to this video (Asionometry - guy from Taiwan,
| hardly a PRC shill) Chinese EUV are now tested in Huawei
| factories and should come into production in 2026.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIR3wfZ-EV0
| igravious wrote:
| "Huawei has 208,000 employees and operates in over 170
| countries and regions, serving more than three billion
| people around the world."
|
| https://www.huawei.com/en/media-center/company-facts
|
| "The company's commitment to innovation is highlighted by
| its substantial investment of 179.7 billion yuan ($24.77
| billion) in research and development (R&D), accounting
| for 20.8 percent of its annual revenue. Its total R&D
| investment over the past decade has reached 1.249
| trillion yuan ($172.21 billion)."
|
| https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-03-31/Huawei-reports-
| solid-2...
|
| They have the incentive, the government backing, exist in
| a mature ecosystem of tech rivalled only by the US, ...
| If any corp can do it, Huawei can
| KK7NIL wrote:
| I rewatched the whole video and did not find where he
| said that. Quite the opposite, he says Chinese EUV
| academic research is at 2005 levels and is rather
| unimpressive.
| kakacik wrote:
| Apart from gaming and llms, most of the chip applications
| including _all_ of military and consumer electronics is more
| than happy with 7nm process, whatever that means (proper
| nanometers those ain 't).
|
| I know some people live in the IT bubble and measure whole
| reality by it, but that's not so much true for the world out
| there. They have ie roughly F-35 equivalent, minus some
| secret sauces (which may not be so secret at the end since it
| seems they stole all of it).
|
| You are making a mistake of thinking of them as yet another
| russia, utterly corrupt, dysfunctional at every level and
| living off some 'glorious past', when reality is exactly the
| opposite.
| immibis wrote:
| Okay? There's a lot of chips you can make that aren't the
| cutting edge. You don't need a 4090 to do AI, as evidenced by
| all the AI we did before the 4090. You definitely don't need
| a (random Intel chip) 14900HX to do general-purpose
| computing, as evidenced by all the general-purpose computing
| we did before the 14900HX.
| tracker1 wrote:
| For that matter, the 14900hx was already based on a refined
| 7nm production process, which China already has started
| using, though maybe not as effectively yet. As you mention,
| prior to the 4090's 3090 was on an 8nm node, already behind
| current China capabilities.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| If each node provides a 10-15% improvement in power,
| performance and area, how many of those need to compound
| until your already uncompetitive 7 nm is 10x less
| efficient, slower and more expensive?
| immibis wrote:
| Being behind doesn't mean they're permanently stuck where
| they are today - but aren't _our_ processes running into
| the wall of soon trying to make transistors smaller than
| an atom?
| KK7NIL wrote:
| > Being behind doesn't mean they're permanently stuck
| where they are today
|
| Without EUV, they very much are.
|
| > but aren't our processes running into the wall of soon
| trying to make transistors smaller than an atom?
|
| No, the finest pitches are still in the low double digit
| nanometers in 2 nm processes. The "2 nm" nomenclature
| hasn't denoted a physical dimension for decades.
| ayewo wrote:
| You are ignoring the possibility of technological disruption.
|
| Apple disrupted Nokia and Blackberry. ARM is currently
| disrupting Intel.
|
| What if someone lands on a break-through using a completely
| different tech: what if X-ray lithography [1] becomes viable
| enough that they don't have to acquire state-of-art EUV
| machines from ASML?
|
| [1] X-ray lithography was abandoned in the 80s but it is
| being revisited by Substrate https://substrate.com/our-
| purpose. They are an American company that hopes to make it
| commercially viable by being cheaper and far less complex
| than EUV.
| impossiblefork wrote:
| I think you're general point is completely true, but
| Substrate is a bad example, since the people running it
| don't appear to be semiconductor experts and it's probably
| a fraud.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| Substrate is a scam; their marketing is misleading and they
| have yet to answer to the fundamental reason why X-ray and
| e-beam failed over 40 years ago (despite it being generally
| agreed they were the future of litho and optical would soon
| be dead): writing one line at a time is extremely slow
| compared to optical which can scan a whole reticle in a
| fraction of a second.
|
| E-beam is still used for making DUV/EUV masks where the low
| write speed can be tolerated but no one in the industry
| thinks it will replace EUV in the silicon litho steps any
| time soon.
|
| But lay people eat this crap up and journalists turn a
| blind eye either because they're literally paid PRC shills
| or because clicks are everything now a days.
| einpoklum wrote:
| So, you're saying that China has chip fabrication
| capabilities which are on par with the world cutting edge as
| of 2018:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process
|
| not too shabby of a fall-back.
| KK7NIL wrote:
| No, they don't.
|
| Their "7 nm" relied on multi patterning DUV which leads to
| restrictive design rules, more steps and masks and lower
| yields, which is why I put it in quotes and said it's
| uncompetitive.
|
| The last DUV node was 10 nm, that's the best logic node
| they have which is comparable to TSMC/Samsung/Intel's 10
| nm.
| paulddraper wrote:
| s/leaver/lever/g
|
| (from context)
| general1465 wrote:
| I apologize, English is not my first language, so sometimes I
| am freestyling it.
| ben_w wrote:
| Don't worry too much, most native speakers make mistakes
| like this every day.
| paulddraper wrote:
| And perhaps you've learned British English.
|
| It is spelled "lever."
|
| But British English pronounces it like "beaver."
|
| And American English pronounces it like "never."
| beloch wrote:
| It's directly analogous to China issuing export bans. They
| tried this with critical minerals. Critical minerals aren't
| actually all that uncommon. They just weren't being actively
| extracted in most places. Now _many_ extraction projects are
| starting to roll around the globe because it has become clear
| China was willing to use access to them as leverage.
|
| My guess is that China will be highly reluctant to restrict
| exports of manufactured goods going forward. Doing so would
| directly threaten their own power base, just as the Trump
| administration's actions are currently taking a sledge hammer
| to the U.S.'s power base.
|
| Ultimately, this kind of power is illusory. If you _ever_ use
| it, you lose it.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Now many extraction projects are starting to roll around
| the globe because it has become clear China was willing to
| use access to them as leverage.
|
| That happened in 2018 too. All the projects at that time
| broke because China does it cheaper.
|
| The thing that isn't available in most countries isn't the
| minerals.
| arw0n wrote:
| It is not equivalent. Rare earths are, as you say, not
| actually that rare, but they are still a finite resource, and
| the CCP quite publicly discussed that it isn't a good idea to
| sell their domestic stockpile internationally while a
| significant amount of their economy runs on it. They raised
| prices to factor in that future availability might be more
| important than short-term profit.
|
| The chip ban on the other hand is about R&D and labor, both
| things that do not diminish over time. Instead, the ban seeks
| to slow down Chinese advancement in areas relying on those
| chips, AI in particular. Both measures will lead to short-
| term issues, long-term lost growth, and mid-term new
| industries in the respective countries/markets.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Like with China_
|
| The best example with China is actually their rare earth wolf
| warrior bullshit. It's taken a lever that could have been
| decisive in a war and neutered it.
| vincvinc wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The US government is not free to use frivolous sanctions to
| indirectly make payment processors stop serving a foreigner.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It definitely is.
| gusfoo wrote:
| > 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.
| jatsek wrote:
| Please look up what happened to Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras
| or Costa Rica when they tried banning whatever US firm they
| wanted.
| vkou wrote:
| The EU has more weight than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras,
| Costa Rica, Cuba, or Grenada.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Pretty much all companies only offer accounts without any
| guarantees, that can be realistically closed on a whim without
| any mandatory notice period.
|
| The only exceptions are the high end enterprise accounts.
| hn_acker wrote:
| Companies can voluntarily close accounts for almost any
| reason or no reason. The US government needs a legal
| justification for forcing companies to close an account.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How is this relevant to my comment?
|
| I didn't claim any company received a binding order to do
| this or that?
| layer8 wrote:
| Companies are generally free to choose who they are doing
| business with.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| The Law requires that they do it if their (the US) government
| demands.
|
| If you are asking how it's OK, it's not. It's wrong on many
| different levels. But it's legal (or at least the US has laws
| that mandate that same thing, I don't know if they were the
| ones applied here).
| bn-l wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
|
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| Yoric wrote:
| I think that it's actually the opposite.
|
| I haven't followed in the recent past, but a few years ago,
| if my memory serves, Netanyahu was largely funded by a group
| of US Evangelists.
|
| It's not Israel or Zionism controlling the US. It's some
| subset of US Evangelists using Israel as a puppet for
| whatever eschatological purpose they have in mind.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Because that president is also soaked in some of that blood.
| Just in terms of ordnance alone - Israel would have run out of
| bombs to drop on Gaza a long time ago in the US were not
| supplying it with them.
|
| On the personal/political level - Trump's largest political
| backers in the 2024 campaign have been: Elon Musk, Timothy
| Mellon, and Miriam Adelson. Musk is an avowed Zionist, Mellon I
| don't know about, but it is Adelson's $108 Million that come
| attached with the string of staunch support for Israel and its
| policies of death destruction and oppression.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Let us remember what this is about:
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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-he...
| SadTrombone wrote:
| 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/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-
| interactive/2025/aug/21...
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/israeli-intelligence-
| health-...
| joe463369 wrote:
| And The Lancet?
| Niten wrote:
| Additionally, it's crucial to recognize how Hamas's health
| ministry numbers never distinguish between combatant and
| civilian deaths
| einpoklum wrote:
| Indeed, Hamas is the governing party in the Palestinian
| authority following the 2006 elections. So, the ministry of
| health is "Hamas-controlled", similarly to how, say, the
| French ministry of health is "Rennaisance-party-controlled".
| (Yes, 2006 is a really long time ago and there should have
| been elections; the split between Gaza and the West Bank, and
| Israeli restrictions, have frustrated efforts to hold them
| again; and then came the last two years and now who knows
| what's going to happen.)
|
| > have already been statistically dubious
|
| No, they have not. You're citing an opinion piece in a pro-
| Israel publication, the author of which has never conducted
| any investigative work on the matter, and its arguments are
| rather frivolous.
|
| For a discussion (and refutation) of that claim in the
| professional press, see:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.
| ..
|
| What _is_ certainy the case, though, is that the ministry is
| not counting deaths where the bodies do not reach its
| employees/representatives. And - it is not including deaths
| which may indirectly caused by the Israeli onslaught. For
| example, if you die of cancer and you might have gotten
| treatment had it not been for the destruction of the
| hospitals and the lack of water, electricity etc. - you are
| not included in the count.
|
| The AP ran a story about how they count:
|
| https://apnews.com/article/israel-hamas-war-gaza-health-
| mini...
|
| which also includes their record from past Israeli military
| campaigns against Gaza, vis-a-vis the UN figures.
| Yoric wrote:
| That is true. And Hamas has always had very a imaginative use
| of statistics.
|
| However, if you look at the few times that IDF published
| casualty estimates, they were pretty close to the numbers
| published by Hamas.
|
| That's perhaps one of the saddest things about this war:
| there are so many casualties that even Hamas doesn't need to
| inflate the number.
| gusfoo wrote:
| > 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.
| joe463369 wrote:
| A markedly different tone in this thread to the ones discussing
| Ofcom's attempt to fine 4chan.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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_ wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The death spasms of a dying empire.
| gold72 wrote:
| 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.
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