>> Casper Klynge, a former Danish and European Union diplomat who worked for Microsoft, said the episode was in many ways the “smoking gun that many Europeans had been looking for.”
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
Aliabid94 · 2h ago
The US continues to burn its soft power capital to defend Israel - this guy was only targeted because of his investigations on Israeli war crimes.
Atlas667 · 1h ago
Would the Epstein/Israel/Trump blackmail conspiracy have anything to do with it?
The MAGA anti-war vs. Trump pro-war split with Iran has got me thinking they got some pull on him.
bee_rider · 1h ago
Was Epstein particularly connected to Israel? I mean, Israel already has very strong lobbying in the US. What would they have needed the weirdo for?
adamnemecek · 58m ago
There is absolutely no way he was not. There is a direct connection between Maxwell and Israel, her father was very involved with formation of the country.
rusk · 44m ago
Her father was also a hugely influential British media mogul with deep ties to Israel
Quarrelsome · 55m ago
some people suggest he was working for Mossad creating a web of blackmail for them to exploit, in order to further strengthen the lobbying, as well as spread out into other industries and nations. You can see there are claims even on his wiki page about the links.
> White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade"[0][1]
What "Epstein/Israel/Trump blackmail conspiracy?" It's already known that Trump is in the Epstein files. He's already admitted to sexual assault, has been found liable of sexual abuse and is a convicted felon. He's one of the most openly venal and corrupt Presidents in history. There's literally nothing Israel could have on him that would surprise anyone.
Every American President will defend Israel at any cost. The American military industrial complex depends upon the existence of an aggressive, Zionist Israeli government constantly starting shit and creating the pretext for American imperialist doctrine. Conservative and evangelical Christians believe it is their literal sacred duty to defend Israel (see recent comments by Ted Cruz citing the Bible to that effect) It doesn't matter who is in the White House, or what party, and no coercion or blackmail is required.
throw310822 · 1h ago
Correct, but let's not forget that at the end of all this complicated mess it's Israel that reaps the benefits (money, territory, its enemies reduced to rubble). It's hardly by chance.
zombiwoof · 1h ago
And because Israel bought Trump
ryandrake · 1h ago
Let's not overlook that Israel has bought all previous US presidents back to its founding, and more than enough Congresscritters. We have been treating Israel as if it were the 51st state, including unconditionally funding and defending it.
Quarrelsome · 1h ago
I think we can point to Trump as a particular outlier, who in his first term green lit the capital move from Tel Aviv to Jeruselum, burning considerable political captial among Israel's detractors, in exchange for..... absolutely nothing (seemingly). As well as his general rhetoric (like his comments on Gaza) being considerably out of keeping with most of the Presidents before him.
throw310822 · 50m ago
His son in law (and business partner, and advisor) Jared Kushner is a personal family friend of Netanyahu.
Besides this, Trump's muscular rhetoric probably just assumed that Israel was a piece of the US, more or less. I'm sure he also got very solid support at the elections from all the usual lobbies.
yoavm · 11m ago
> because Israel bought Trump
I don't think the US ever had a president who cared less about Israel than Trump. The few times Trump has been on the Israel side seem to be only because Israel was "winning" some conflict, and Trump just prefers being on the winning side. He doesn't seem to care (or understand) the slightest whether Jews have a state, whether they can defend themselves, etc.
threatofrain · 2m ago
What mission does Trump care about beyond a convenient calculus of politics and money?
barbazoo · 7m ago
Imagine having access to all these experts but no interest in the subject matter. smh
CommanderData · 38m ago
Because any US president is expendable if they don't comply.
JumpCrisscross · 32m ago
> because Israel bought Trump
This is a self-defeating and untrue meme.
Most Americans don’t say Israel is very important to them, favourably or not [1]. Historically, Israel was popular in both parties; that has now changed. As a result, being anti-Israel was dumb not because of some APAC [EDIT: AIPAC] conspiracy but because voters generally don’t respond to foreign policy issues (versus kitchen-sink ones) and the voters who would tended to were predominantly pro-Israel. So the safe electoral strategy has been, until maybe the last year, to say something nice about Israel and then move on.
So no, there isn’t some undefeatable (and frankly, steeped in historically-racist characterisations of Jews) shadow government. This is basic electoral incentives. Incentives which are shifting. Because if there is an undefeatable shadow government, there are better things to talk about and focus on.
This is not a binary of either NWO conspiracy or paranoid antisemitism . AIPAC is a lobby, just like many other lobbies. They boast on their website[1] that they've paid $53M to politicians. Just like any other lobby, the electorate has a right and responsibility to judge whether the influence it has bought is in their best interests.
Sure. One among many. They’re influential, but not deterministic.
> that they've paid $53M to politicians
No, they don’t. They’re reporting campaign donations.
There is a tendency, when we disagree with an election, to tally up the donations made to the other side while ignoring all the times the best-funded candidate got trounced. (Jeb!) The influence of money in politics is one of sharply-diminishing returns. It is invaluable for name recognition. It doesn’t swing people on fundamental issues.
Israel has had unique sway in America because for most of its history it has been uniquely popular. Partly because of our Jewish diaspora. Partly because they were a reliable ally. And partly because they give us a lot of money. But two out of three of those factors also apply to the Gulf states, and we tend to be a bit less deferential to them because they’re just not as popular.
revnode · 2h ago
The ICC continues to be targeted because it is a threat to American sovereignty and has been for a long time. The US is not a party to the treaty. Neither is Israel. That the ICC is targeting Israel is clear evidence that the ICC can and will target the US at some point.
jeremyjh · 2h ago
That sounds...appropriate? I would have no issues with every living former US President being accountable for their crimes, and I expect they would all be convicted.
SllX · 1h ago
It’s not appropriate for an international court that we’re not even a part of to put our Presidents and their subordinates on trial, nor is it something we should meekly concede to.
JimBlackwood · 1h ago
It is however appropriate for a group of nations to agree that a person who has committed crimes (according to them) is to be arrested upon entering one of their nations.
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
kragen · 17m ago
Historically speaking, Westphalian sovereignty meant that there was no such thing as an "international criminal court", nor "war crimes". An ICC party such as France hypothetically arresting, for example, Netanyahu, for things that he did in Israel, would amount to a substantial erosion of Israel's sovereignty in the Westphalian sense. Under the Westphalian system, Israel's prince would have sole jurisdiction in such cases.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
SllX · 1h ago
Sure, but we’re going to interpret the arrest of a sitting or former POTUS, their direct subordinates or military personnel for the purposes of trying them in the ICC as a political act, not an act to maintain law and order in their home countries and its going to be much easier for us to justify invading and evacuating those people.
JimBlackwood · 1h ago
That is definitely true. I can imagine the ICC would fall shortly after (since I think enough member states will not execute the arrest order and so it’s existence does not do much)
kragen · 16m ago
You're imagining this happen in a world where the US has the political status it had ten years ago, not the political status it will have ten years in the future.
SllX · 13m ago
We’re only talking about today, bruh. There’s no sense worrying about a tomorrow that may never come, but I’m willing to bet that 10 years from now we still have the strongest military in and around The Hague and even beyond, very very few would ever be willing to threaten war with us to back up the ICC.
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
soulofmischief · 1h ago
We decided to not be a part of it. Meanwhile, we systematically bully other nations and kill high ranking officials with impunity. We can't have our cake and eat it too.
SllX · 1h ago
Put another way, we defend American interests.
jeremyjh · 51m ago
We defend some of America's interests, and harm some of its other interests. Mostly we defend the interests of the richest people in America and its military industrial complex.
SllX · 22m ago
We also elect the leaders that make those decisions and form the parties that nominate leaders to choose from. The winners of those elections get to choose the direction to lead.
snickerbockers · 1h ago
I agree that America needs to cut back on to be sabre-rattling but you actually can have your cake and eat it too if nobody is both capable and willing to stop you.
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
369548684892826 · 1h ago
Why not? Someone has to do it.
SllX · 1h ago
We have the Uniform Code of Military Justice for military personnel, and on paper, a Congress to hold the President accountable, although that obviously needs to be beefed up because the results lately have been unsatisfactory. It does not need to be the ICC, nor should we allow it.
369548684892826 · 1h ago
I don't understand what you mean by "allow it". The ICC are free to do what they like, and the US are free to ignore it (outside any sanctions the international community impose).
SllX · 1h ago
The US electing to ignore the ICC’s activities with regards to ourselves or our allies is functionally the same actively allowing their activities.
cyberax · 1h ago
And then we have presidents that almost uniformly pardon people convicted of the grossest war crimes.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
SllX · 16m ago
All I’ll say is the President’s pardon power either needs to die, or be massively rethought. I’m not a fan lately.
Quarrelsome · 52m ago
given a future where the US slides into despotism, who would hold it to account and be a champion for its people?
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
SllX · 46m ago
I’m sure you want to try and catch me in an act of hypocrisy but I think I’ve been clear throughout this thread.
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
Muromec · 56m ago
Yes it is. FAFO
SllX · 17m ago
Given we’re not party to the ICC, we maintain a permanent seat on the UNSC, and nobody within striking distance of The Hague is willing to back you up on this, it is decidedly not appropriate.
jeremyjh · 1h ago
Was Germany a part of any such treaty? Or was it inappropriate for those Nazis to be held accountable for their crimes?
SllX · 1h ago
Germany also lost the war. Their highest ranking officials and military were not in a position to prevent it; moreover I’m pretty okay with having applied the winner’s justice over Nazi Germany. Put us in the position where we can’t say “no” before you apply your own justice, but we’re still going to do everything in our power to defend ourselves.
jeremyjh · 1h ago
What does that have to do with what is appropriate?
SllX · 1h ago
I thought I was clear on this, but I guess not: it was entirely appropriate. They lost so thoroughly and the Holocaust was so repulsive that it was arguably necessary. Germany itself was also in such a precarious position that the continued existence of the German State was in jeopardy, and probably the only way it could continue to exist in any form even after being divided was to go through the Nuremberg Trials first. Don’t forget Stalin and the USSR was out for blood and new additions to the Eastern Bloc.
jeremyjh · 54m ago
Those are reasons it was feasible. It was appropriate for moral reasons, and the same is true of US leaders.
SllX · 25m ago
I would have thought calling out the repulsiveness of the Holocaust and the health and wellbeing of a continued German-state would have been the moral justifications, but okay, sure.
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
Veen · 1h ago
The Hague Conventions and the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Although, in reality, it was a matter of the winners deciding on a suitable punishment for the losers. They did, however, go to considerable lengths to find legal justification in international law for the prosecutions and punishments of Nazi leaders. They could have just shot them: Churchill and Stalin both supported summary execution, although Churchill later changed his mind.
CamperBob2 · 1h ago
You know who else said that?
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?
JimBlackwood · 1h ago
How is it a threat to American sovereignty? It has no jurisdiction in America, only within nations that are party to the treaty - which is their sovereign right?
Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?
If the US is in the wrong, why should I as a citizen not want our government officials held accountable?
ptero · 1h ago
"In the wrong" is often jurisdiction specific. I do not want otherwise reasonable candidates to avoid the ballot because of the risk of being convicted by some external court.
vidarh · 1h ago
If they're planning to do something that might get them indicted for crimes against humanity, then they are not reasonable candidates.
ptero · 1h ago
Unfortunately, there are enough courts that are very willing to slap any label on any suitably vilified candidate. Pick any president of India; you can probably find a Pakistani court would be willing to convict for "crimes against humanity". And vice versa. Or pick some Iraq-Iran pairings. Or Armenian- Azerbaijani, etc.
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
vidarh · 57m ago
We're talking about any random court, however, but the ICC.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
pineaux · 9m ago
This is exactly right. "Might makes right" is very true on the international stage. The ICC tried to fix that, but they have been muzzled when it comes to real might.
JumpCrisscross · 29m ago
To the degree the ICC has precedent, it’s in being powerless over great powers.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it.
mdhb · 25m ago
There is absolutely zero evidence that you can point to that credibly suggests this court would or has done anything like you’re describing.
spwa4 · 1h ago
If you look at the history of the ICC, what makes you think they hold people accountable for human rights violations? Never mind effectively.
The ICC is a cool idea in theory. The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
lurk2 · 1h ago
> The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
How is that?
spwa4 · 1h ago
For example: selective enforcement, for example states vs terrorists. Even Russia became a victim of that, which I'll point out in hopes of avoiding discussion on Israel.
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
The ICC takes actions against people. It very specifically does not have jurisdiction over conflicts between states.
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
spwa4 · 23m ago
> The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute
If this is the case can you explain ICC action against US and Israel, neither of which are parties to the Rome statute? This is one aspect of their selective justice. And some of the crimes they accuse Russia of (e.g. the ones relating to treatment of POWs) happened in Russia too, you could even say the same of their "great success" in Yugoslavia. The ICC respects boundaries selectively.
Also from the other side: the ICC most certainly COULD sue South Africa for working with Putin and Bashar Al-Assad to help them escape justice. They chose not to. Frankly, MANY signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to ever hold up their end.
Also, of course, this rule is also selective justice if it is applied.
In a lot of state vs "resistance movement" the ICC has systematically failed to do anything about sometimes truly abhorrent crimes by movements. No shortage of examples there.
And your claim "they follow their own rules" ... you also neglected to discuss why the ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE to sue Israel ... once during the trial I might add. Same with US. Not that "we couldn't convict the Jew, obviously the law is wrong, let's change the law" isn't a longstanding legal tradition. Not very just though ...
As I said, the ICC is a beautiful theoretical idea. Unfortunately the ICC is not even remotely close to that idea and will never be. Their rules form selective justice even if they were applied and what they practically do is much worse than that.
dybber · 1h ago
Danish digitization ministry will soon attempt a move away from Microsoft because of this. We can only hope that this is only the first step, and that broader move away from US tech companies will follow.
With USA threatening invasion of Denmark - it's not surprising. :/
xvilka · 47m ago
Same about GitHub, it's better to push for federated or truly decentralized system instead, like in Forgejo's roadmap [1]. This way everyone can benefit instead of ceding control to a sole organization wherever it might be.
Great, but look at this. This is a joke. Let's see ... the EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year, and have been funding it for 50 years (starting at 0 of course). How much software does the EU expect to get for "between 5000 and 50000 euro"? (one-time). A software engineer in Bangalore can expect to make more than that, even after tax!
The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.
Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.
Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.
Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).
So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!
This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?
And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.
And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.
They aren't.
This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.
The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
guiriduro · 1h ago
It doesn't need to throw out the baby with the (US-controlled) bathwater. The EU should present Microsoft with an ultimatum similar to what China might: setup a non-controlled european licensee to own and manage all MS & Azure infrastructure in the region, or have some legislators force a similar structure on them. Complete control, full sourcecode, EU-only support/access - as a condition for corp HQ being allowed to have a monopolistic market share. Either way, nothing the US might decide to do should have any effect in "EU Microsoft", short of severing US Microsoft off completely, in which case EU MS just becomes fully autonomous and bye-bye US. Clearly, a US-controlled Microsoft without this structure is a deep security risk to europe now.
adgjlsfhk1 · 1h ago
the problem the EU has is that such an ultimatum lacks teeth. China gets to make these demands because they've down willingness to fund and build homegrown alternatives and then blacklist the foreign competitor. If the EU wants the leverage to make these sorts of demands, they need to start by giving out a couple million here and there for the competitors they want to see.
spwa4 · 1h ago
There is another problem: EU politicians would immediately use this against each other. For example, the Spanish governments in Barcelona and Madrid constantly do anything they can to sabotage each other. And this is not the only such pair. Hell, the French and German governments, the main force behind the whole EU, still hate each other.
fakedang · 1h ago
The amount of dilly-dallying on the Israeli question (which is at the heart of the OP issue also) is enough evidence that the EU is a has-been power - they can't even make up their minds, what with France against the Iran strikes, while Germany likes Israel "doing our dirty work".
And both are centre-right governments to boot! If the White House is the clownshow in the circus, the EU is the acrobatics act.
rat9988 · 32m ago
France has been okay with iran strikes
whatshisface · 2h ago
A $200B grant would be globally unprecedented. The LHC only cost $5B. European countries are market economies, moving more in that direction, and would like a local competitor.
spwa4 · 2h ago
LHC is funded by more than just the EU.
A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
Cheer2171 · 1h ago
Just think if any EU business didn't have to pay the Microsoft tax or the open source TCO tax/labor, because there is a non-profit full-stack solution running at cost. Make any business out of the EU pay retail rates to subsidize development. It would be a huge competitive advantage. Just like payments have become so much easier in the EU over the past decade.
anigbrowl · 1h ago
You make some very good arguments, but
EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year
???
dmoy · 1h ago
Yea that seems like the vast majority of Microsoft's total worldwide revenue for a given year.
The relevant number is probably the EU only fraction, and maybe just the EU governments' part. Which I'd guess is at least like 1/10 or smaller? Idk
FirmwareBurner · 2h ago
This, 100X this. The EU wants to have the shiny SW toys the US has spent decades and trillions building, but without forking up the money needed to develop them. They want everything done on cheap labor. Paying rank and file engineers shit tonne of money is not part of European business owner culture (barring few exceptions). You're expected to be grateful you've been given a job.
Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.
China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.
Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.
There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
cnames · 1h ago
I’m in the U.S. and don’t want to rely on this stuff either, but I don’t know that I’d really trust any sufficiently complex software. Anything can be compromised. Even if you build from source, your compiler might be compromised, or you buy a cool new usb peripheral and plug it in- boom! Compromised. Bought a new device? Compromised already. That printer you bought years ago? Compromised and in your secure wireless network. Your sniffer and firewall? Compromised. Firefox? Compromised. Tor? Compromised. Wikileaks? Compromised. Your dishwasher? Compromised. You drive out in the woods without any devices and live in a tent. Hiker comes along and takes photos. You and tent are compromised. Walking out in the middle of nowhere naked hiding under a bush my ass.
mikewarot · 1h ago
I see it as strong evidence we should all run our own servers. Internet Access instead of internet connectivity needs to end.
It is possible using IPv6 to make end to end connections without having to do weird hole punching through NAT, etc.
boredatoms · 2m ago
Each house with its own ASN
ptero · 4h ago
Please do. Some real competition would be good for all sides!
The US could save an enormous amount of money if the US military were sized to defend the US and only the US.
HenryBemis · 3h ago
US has never been "good". Listening to Sachs and Measrheimer they keep saying (in these or other words) that "you know a US president is lying because their mouth is moving". Microsoft is just one more cog in the power-hungry apparatus of the US.
And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena.
The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
decide1000 · 5h ago
This is insane. They aimed his corporate account. Europeans move away from the US even faster now. This guy is literally breaking decades old relationships.
CommanderData · 37m ago
You think Europe would really behave any different?
Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
NewJazz · 5h ago
They didn't even resist/appeal the order? It is an EO, not a law. Goes to show just how subservient and feckless Microsoft is. Nominative determinism much?
a_bonobo · 5h ago
You have a bunch of tech execs getting sworn in as lieutenant colonels for the Army Reserve, SF aligns itself with the White House just like Germany's big industry aligned itself with the NSDAP. It doesn't particularly matter whether an order is legal or not, it only matters if the ones in power want it.
boredatoms · 4h ago
What would motivate them to join the army?
BLKNSLVR · 4h ago
The power that comes with military contract-type money, connections, and influence.
That's the kind of situation that gives CEOs lifelong reputations (that they think it's in a good way).
a_bonobo · 4h ago
The NSDAP-style alignments went both ways: if the industry bigwig joined the party, he got access to lucrative contracts and insider information. The NSDAP also helped strike down strikes for the bigwigs, and later, supplied slaves from concentration camps for cheap. In turn, the party got to deeply control the bigwig: don't toe the party line and you're either out, or you're in danger. Join the party and publicly demonstrate your allegiance to the leadership.
It was a very mafia-like arrangement. Loyalty meant being rewarded with lucrative opportunities but it also meant you owed them and sooner or later they'd come back asking for one favour or another.
pavlov · 3h ago
Nazis were very good at making both industrialists and military feel rich. The German stock market went up like a rocket between 1933 and 1941.
And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:
” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”
With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?
kragen · 11m ago
Do you have any idea how the investors in the German stock market in that period made out after the war? I'm guessing that they probably lost a lot, especially in East Germany, but I'm interested in reading more detailed accounts or investigations of the situation.
JumpCrisscross · 27m ago
Yup. All of those men will need to be investigated and, if appropriate, tried for corruption.
pjc50 · 3h ago
Like the days of the British Army selling commissions, it's for corruption opportunities and cosplay.
vkou · 2h ago
Fascism is the last step in the merger between the state and corporate power, the state is currently trying its best to take the country there, and the sycophants who are ready to assist it are getting in line.
And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.
---
[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.
Jtsummers · 1h ago
It gives them a chance for grift. They're going into an "innovation" unit whose job is to get the Army (or DOD more broadly, but they're in the Army now) to select particular technologies moving forward. Naturally, they'll recommend whatever their employer produces, and recommend to their employer that they expand into other areas so they can get the Army to buy that as well later on.
Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.
foogazi · 4h ago
FOMO
phendrenad2 · 4h ago
People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations. Corporate behavior is well-established science at this point. They almost always do what is in their own financial interests. "Feckless" means "lacking initiative or strength of character". Corporations have one character: Making money. Fighting the government over a few user accounts has no short-term or long-term monetary value. It doesn't even win you a PR victory because it's unclear how many people support or don't support this.
freehorse · 2h ago
This is what makes it interesting: banning the professional account of an employee of an organisation based in another part of the world makes the existing trust issues against that company even worse, and enhances the process of orgs in these places to move away from it. Currently microsoft is a stone pillar in the IT infrastructure in a lot of european organisations. I do not think this will be the case in 1-2 years.
So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.
waffleiron · 1h ago
> People really need to resist the urge to anthropomorphize corporations.
I understand where you are coming from, but this also sounds like a way to remove individual responsibility from the people that make up a corporation.
NewJazz · 3h ago
How's that making money thing going to go when Europe boycotts American tech for several decades?
stackskipton · 2h ago
As far as I know, we haven't seen widescale pull out of Europeans from American Tech companies, alot of talk but not a ton of action. Also, email is so centralized at this point between 365 and GMail, they probably figure there is nowhere to go.
Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.
jeroenhd · 3h ago
Microsoft has claimed in the past to want to fight for their European customers in an attempt to gain trust and not lose out on billions in their European contracts.
They did appeal a few times, but this time it seems like they're no longer interested. To be fair, Trump could probably illegally deport half the Microsoft employees to a foreign prison camp if he'd feel like it and the courts seem powerless to stop him, so I don't blame Microsoft for falling in line.
I do blame the Dutch government for being blasé about the American threat and their refusal to move away from American technology for critical infrastructure.
malcolmgreaves · 3h ago
50% of people do not support this. That’s a made up number. Trump has barely over 40%. He is an unpopular criminal who has shown time and again he will break the law. What even makes you think a criminal like this would win an election fairly?
jeroenhd · 2h ago
Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.
He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.
I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.
As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.
tanaros · 6m ago
> Trump won the majority vote in an election that brought out a huge amount of voters compared to previous elections, and Republicans won every other government body.
For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.
I think what's missing from the 40% number is that it says nothing about how passionately the other 60% feels.
I'm not concerned about the fact that the election was close.
I'm concerned that, post election, the country is so deeply polarized. For the first time in my life, I fear there's a small but real chance that we're headed for civil war.
NewJazz · 1h ago
Donald Trump has never won a majority vote in any public election. 49.9% is not a majority.
logicchains · 2h ago
Trump won an election but the majority of his voters are anti-Israel; polls show all Republican demographics apart from boomers have a net-negative view on Israel (and a non-trivial amount are outright anti-Semitic).
phendrenad2 · 3h ago
That's a good point.
LadyCailin · 1h ago
70% of voting eligible Americans didn’t do the bare minimum to prevent Trump. 30% voted for him directly, and 40% couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. I’m even willing to excuse third party voters. But the Trump voters and non-voters don’t get a pass, not at all. It’s absolutely the majority of Americans.
averysmallbird · 4h ago
Not quite as clear cut. The EO triggers a national emergency under IEEPA, which is the basis of sanctions — so there is a well established legal underpinning. Unclear whether Microsoft has standing to challenge the designation of the ICC, and the courts give a lot of deference to the President on foreign affairs/national security. Microsoft is more “stuck” than “feckless” I think.
whimsicalism · 9m ago
the last three administrations (Trump I, Biden, Trump II) have shown a willingness to use the law to punish the companies of political opponents. in this light, many companies are going to be reluctant to challenge the feds here
perihelions · 4h ago
- "It is an EO, not a law."
Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power.
I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don't recall reading once, i.e. at the time of the sweeping China or GPU sanctions, a peep of protest along the lines of, "This should *not* be something a President should be able to do unilaterally! That's far too much discretionary power in the hands of one person! Congress should have to debate it". We didn't invent an imperial presidency in 2025; it's the agglomeration of decades of civic apathy.
It’s a result of Congress being unable to actually debate anything or fundamentally deadlocked for decades. While many Americans do not want the President to have this power, likely more don’t want Congress to have it either.
boston_clone · 4h ago
You not reading that commentary and it not taking place are two very different things! Plenty of folks expressed constitutionality concerns for several types of actions that the Biden admin took. However, you may find that the enacted sanctions hold up significantly better under meaningful scrutiny than Trump cutting off email for one person investigating the war crimes and evidence of genocide in Gaza at the hands of our proxy state in the ME.
whatshisface · 2h ago
Israel is not a proxy state, they self-determine oftentimes against what their allies have wanted them to do.
boston_clone · 2h ago
for the sake of understanding your position, could you provide some examples? to me it doesn’t seem clear that israeli foreign policy is far removed from US foreign policy or even in contention. The way we vote at the UNSC proves our support for some of the most grotesque of actions - deliberately killing infants and children. Their recent preemptive strike on Iran is, imo, further evidence of that proxy status.
kayodelycaon · 1h ago
Israel is very much not in the control of the US. The US didn’t want Gaza razed to the ground. The US didn’t want to start another regional war. We were try to get out if this mess. Our population voted to get out of military action in the Middle East.
Unfortunately for the US, we’re stuck with what Israel decides to do. A lot of Americans are in favor of supporting Israel for one reason or another. If Irsael is somehow controlling the United States via lobbying or whatever, that kind of invalidates the whole client state idea.
US is the most powerful country in the world but that doesn’t mean we directly control our allies as client states.
NewJazz · 1h ago
Well, Biden and Netanyahu famously did not get along by any means.
surge · 4h ago
That commentary was far less prevalent and met a lot of resistance from the same people here.
Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.
boston_clone · 3h ago
My point is that those conversations were happening in earnest, irrespective of the GPs perception or lack thereof. Additionally, the element of scrutiny I described would still be interesting to explore with the particular EOs referenced by the GP.
Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.
Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.
US tech dominance has long been seen as a benefit and this administration is ruining that position.
chii · 2h ago
> this administration is ruining that position.
this administration is ruining many things. China doesnt even have to fight to win new soft power - the US is doing it to themselves.
bigyabai · 1h ago
Agent Krasnov, mission accomplished.
nickdothutton · 2h ago
Europe had a plan after they learned Merkel’s blackberry contents were going to Fort Meade, but they never enacted it. They planned their own MS Office (and email) replacement. Even got as far as scouting data centre sites and identifying first 40M accounts.
snickerbockers · 1h ago
The EU seems to have a problem with the whole "talk is cheap" thing. They're always making grand announcements of new initiatives like this but they hardly ever materialize.
I cant see the Azure salespeople in EU having a good day after this
crazygringo · 19m ago
It looks like Microsoft is doing everything it can to avoid repeating this in the future:
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, visited the Netherlands and announced new “sovereign solutions” for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for “a time of geopolitical volatility.” Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers.
benced · 1h ago
Perhaps Europe should try building their own tech industry so they have fewer problems like this.
sschueller · 1h ago
Europe needs to stop selling its tech industry to non-European companies.
whimsicalism · 7m ago
yeah, the problem Europe faces is insufficient barriers to foreign capital.
Quarrelsome · 50m ago
the EU does. US corps acquire most of our successful companies.
Towaway69 · 22m ago
Having worked in the startup scene in Europe, the main exit strategy was to sell off to the American original - because most European startups were copycats of their American counterparts.
So I won’t say it’s all just the US coming in and buying everything up. It was partly European investors wanting to make a profit.
Quarrelsome · 1m ago
sure but that's a consequence of US firms having that capital. Ultimately all European investors and owners want an exit, its just that US firms buying you out is the most likely exit.
timsh · 3h ago
not trying to justify it even a bit, but shouldn't people in his position (actively acting against the US-supported position) use something more secure?
Like proton for starters?
I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).
makeitdouble · 3h ago
They're not activists, but a 900 people intergovernmental org representing 100+ countries that needs to deal with a lot of bureaucracy efficiently.
They might start spending the time and money to move away from Microsoft's control, but there's few solutions that reliably work at that scale and for their needs, and I honestly wouldn't fault them for assuming that the arrangement that worked for decades wouldn't suddenly fall apart.
bjackman · 3h ago
I think that's just another side of the same coin.
Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.
Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.
Not great news for the US tech industry...
fuzzy2 · 2h ago
Do we know by now whether this was an Office 365 enterprise account or a regular "Hotmail" (Outlook.com) account?
ChrisArchitect · 1h ago
Month old news.
Some previous discussions:
Microsoft blocked the email account of Chief Prosecutor of the ICC
Not surprising that the biggest tech companies are complicit in the biggest war crimes and atrocities of a generation. In the 1940s it was IBM providing holocaust tabulation machines. In the 2020s, it's companies like Microsoft providing the tech infrastructure for AI-assisted targeting and pervasive surveillance in the ongoing Gaza holocaust.
can we stick with the word genocide? i don't understand the need to make constant comparisons with the holocaust - they only undermine the point in my mind and are unnecessarily incendiary. it feels to me to be a product of a certain style of left-wing oneupsmanship
They aren't even able to count the number of civilians killed by Israel due to all of the hospitals in Gaza being blown up. There is no way to gauge the population (not that that would matter for the definition of genocide anyway). Israel is killing Palestinians as fast as the world will allow.
iammjm · 4h ago
Disgusting. Yet another reason for Europe to ditch US-tech. Its also interesting to see how the US managed within a couple of month to destroy its trust, influence and soft-power it has built over many decades. Kinda like Musk did, but on a nation-wide scale. the orange emperor truly has a talent for wrecking anything he touches. maga all the way baby
zombiwoof · 1h ago
Israel can do no wrong apparently
buyucu · 2h ago
This is why my company will never, ever use any Microsoft product.
snickerbockers · 1h ago
How on earth does the ICC plan to arrest Netanyahu or Putin? Even if one of them does make the mistake of setting foot in a compliant country, do they really think arresting a foreign head of state wouldn't be seen as an act of war?
layer8 · 39m ago
The ICC doesn’t arrest anyone themselves, they issue arrest warrants. The 125 ICC signatory states are required to comply with the warrants under the Rome Statute.
dudeinjapan · 2h ago
In the late 90's Microsoft suspended my email, thepimp@hotmail.com, with no warning or possibility to recover. We should view this latest ICC prosecutor suspension as part of a much larger, more sinister pattern.
3eb7988a1663 · 2h ago
Do not know why this personal tragedy is so funny to me. Continue to let that fury burn.
aaomidi · 4h ago
Microsoft should’ve sued the government instead of immediately complying.
yahoozoo · 4h ago
Israel strikes again.
jmyeet · 3h ago
This administration is destroying US soft power in a way that no rival could ever have imagined possible. The big winner here is China.
DOGE? Absolutely performative. Even things like USAID are a trival amount of money and miss the point that it's a very cheap way of getting influence. Plus I'm sure there's some CIA money buried in there too.
Abusing the power in such a trivial manner like suspending this account does nothing but hasten this downfall.
It's always worth adding that 20+ years ago the US passed a law colloquially known as the "Hage Invasion Act" [1], which not only authorized but requires the US to invade the Hage if ever any US servicemember are brought up on charges to the ICC. And this extends to servicemembers and leaders of allies.
Empires don't die quietly or quickly. This is going to be long, drawn out and chaotic.
Great way to build up European comms business and take revenue from American companies.
litigator · 6h ago
Europe already own the US comms network. Nokia and Erricsson are the only real players there.
otterley · 2h ago
Qualcomm and Cisco are both American companies that play an enormous role in our telephony and network ecosystem.
modzu · 3h ago
about as shocking as if a russian company did the same. if you dont get it yet, do you get it now?
kergonath · 3h ago
Except that one is an ally and presumably the leader of the free world or something like that. The other is an aggressive dictatorial kleptocracy. So yeah, just as shocking.
dismalaf · 4h ago
Did everyone miss the last line of the article and/or is everyone unaware of the fact this particular prosecutor has been suspended and is being investigated by the police for rape? Kind of pertinent to the story...
His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
pentamassiv · 4h ago
He is not being investigated for rape. The article says "sexual misconduct"
dismalaf · 3h ago
Read other articles about the accusations themselves. It's rape.
No comments yet
cheema33 · 1h ago
> His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
At my organization, if an employee is suspended, I don't expect Microsoft to manage it. We have to do it ourselves. It is different elsewhere?
aaomidi · 3h ago
Even if so, do rapists not get email accounts anymore?
croes · 4h ago
Rape allegations?
Reminds me of Assange.
And he also lost his bank account, that’s hardly because of the allegations
boston_clone · 4h ago
Impertinent and disingenuous if you pay attention to the timeline; the EO was issued in February. The ICC has changed internal policies, and other members of the body sanctioned post-hoc have not had their email accounts suspended. The sexual misconduct allegations surfaced in May.
dismalaf · 4h ago
The sexual assault allegations were reported internally at the ICC last year.
Thank you for providing that context. My follow up question is do you think that had any pertinence towards the issuance of that particular executive order and subsequent suspension of their email account? Or, is it perhaps a persuasive nugget put in there to lend mild credibility to what Trump is doing?
hk1337 · 4h ago
I missed it because it was at the very end so thanks for pointing it out.
Sounds like Trump’s EO had nothing to do with with suspending the account?
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
aaomidi · 3h ago
ICC could’ve suspended his email themselves if they wanted to. Microsoft corp didn’t need to be included.
croes · 4h ago
> The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
That sounds exactly like it was because of Trump‘s EO but MS doesn’t want to do it anymore
shswkna · 2h ago
Get angry at Europe, not Microsoft and USA.
Europeans live in a fairy land dream and need to wake up.
kspacewalk2 · 1h ago
No one's angry. This just gives a bigger impetus to de-Americanizing the tech stack. I've recently taken part in a decision at our university to use a non-US based cloud storage provider for some relatively sensitive health data. The risk is just too high, and justifies paying a slight premium elsewhere. Sadly we're not likely to migrate away from Office 365 over here, but for any new vendor decisions, US now definitely equals premium for risk of fuckery.
smpretzer · 1h ago
What should we be getting angry at Europe for in this context?
Lariscus · 1h ago
Not seeing this coming, I guess. IT experts where warning of this for years but where essentially ridiculed instead. I still blame the US for backstabbing their allies though.
bigyabai · 1h ago
I can perfectly well blame my home country of America for this. This is terrible business policy that destroys America's business advantages with unjustifiable federal overreach.
That's an issue with America. For all American businesses.
StefanBatory · 16m ago
It's funny seeing Americans start to repeat Russian line of thought.
"Who allowed you to live like that"...
hermanzegerman · 41m ago
The Trade Balance between the US and Europe was very balanced if you included services. So the US wasn't getting ripped off in Trade.
The dumb actions by the current US Administrations give the EU a big incentive now to buy their services elsewhere in the future, so Trumps fever dream about the disbalance might come true thanks to his own actions
Damn right. Strong evidence that Europe should look after their own, and not rely on the good old US of A. Written by an Australian who thinks we should do the same down here.
The MAGA anti-war vs. Trump pro-war split with Iran has got me thinking they got some pull on him.
> White House official" reported that Alexander Acosta, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida who had handled Epstein's criminal case in 2008, had stated to interviewers of President Donald Trump's first transition team: "I was told Epstein 'belonged to intelligence' and to 'leave it alone'", and that Epstein was "above his pay grade"[0][1]
[0] https://www.thedailybeast.com/jeffrey-epsteins-sick-story-pl...
[1] https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-intelligenc...
Every American President will defend Israel at any cost. The American military industrial complex depends upon the existence of an aggressive, Zionist Israeli government constantly starting shit and creating the pretext for American imperialist doctrine. Conservative and evangelical Christians believe it is their literal sacred duty to defend Israel (see recent comments by Ted Cruz citing the Bible to that effect) It doesn't matter who is in the White House, or what party, and no coercion or blackmail is required.
Besides this, Trump's muscular rhetoric probably just assumed that Israel was a piece of the US, more or less. I'm sure he also got very solid support at the elections from all the usual lobbies.
I don't think the US ever had a president who cared less about Israel than Trump. The few times Trump has been on the Israel side seem to be only because Israel was "winning" some conflict, and Trump just prefers being on the winning side. He doesn't seem to care (or understand) the slightest whether Jews have a state, whether they can defend themselves, etc.
This is a self-defeating and untrue meme.
Most Americans don’t say Israel is very important to them, favourably or not [1]. Historically, Israel was popular in both parties; that has now changed. As a result, being anti-Israel was dumb not because of some APAC [EDIT: AIPAC] conspiracy but because voters generally don’t respond to foreign policy issues (versus kitchen-sink ones) and the voters who would tended to were predominantly pro-Israel. So the safe electoral strategy has been, until maybe the last year, to say something nice about Israel and then move on.
So no, there isn’t some undefeatable (and frankly, steeped in historically-racist characterisations of Jews) shadow government. This is basic electoral incentives. Incentives which are shifting. Because if there is an undefeatable shadow government, there are better things to talk about and focus on.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/04/08/how-ameri...
This is not a binary of either NWO conspiracy or paranoid antisemitism . AIPAC is a lobby, just like many other lobbies. They boast on their website[1] that they've paid $53M to politicians. Just like any other lobby, the electorate has a right and responsibility to judge whether the influence it has bought is in their best interests.
1. https://www.aipacpac.org/home
Sure. One among many. They’re influential, but not deterministic.
> that they've paid $53M to politicians
No, they don’t. They’re reporting campaign donations.
There is a tendency, when we disagree with an election, to tally up the donations made to the other side while ignoring all the times the best-funded candidate got trounced. (Jeb!) The influence of money in politics is one of sharply-diminishing returns. It is invaluable for name recognition. It doesn’t swing people on fundamental issues.
Israel has had unique sway in America because for most of its history it has been uniquely popular. Partly because of our Jewish diaspora. Partly because they were a reliable ally. And partly because they give us a lot of money. But two out of three of those factors also apply to the Gulf states, and we tend to be a bit less deferential to them because they’re just not as popular.
It’s not really something you can or cannot concede to, unless you are of the opinion America is the only sovereign state in the world.
Of course, that doesn't necessarily tell us anything about whether it's good or bad. Eroding Westphalian sovereignty in such a sense is the whole point of the ICC, the EU, and arguably even the UN (though, of these three, only the ICC would have the particular result described in my previous paragraph). But it's worth pointing out that it's a major difference from centuries of historical precedents, not American exceptionalism.
Now, 20 years from now? 30 years from now? 50? Who knows.
Also how does the Hague get off imposing itself like that? Doesn't that make their judges a legitimate target by the same "can't have your cake and eat it too" principle if they actually apprehend somebody from a non-signatory? Under that logic the Hague invasion act seems less ludicrous.
Trump pardoned Clint Lorance who ordered murder of civilians. Before that, William Calley convicted of multiple murders had his sentence commuted by Nixon to 3 years of house arrest.
The US has several ways to acquire jurisdiction over foreign defendants. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction_over_int...
If Macron were to sell old GREs online then, as the Raju case determined, the US can try him, and if Macron fails to appear for the trial, he defaults on the case and is subject to arrest should he appear in the US, or any county which has the appropriate extradition treaty.
If the US can legally do that for selling GREs, it can surely do it for far more serious crimes.
If the US can do that to citizens of other countries, then other countries should be able to do that to US citizens, including the president.
The solution for American presidents is simple - never visit any place subject to the ICC.
Just like Pinochet should never have visited the UK where he was subject to European Union extradition law letting him be moved to Spain to be tried for his abuses in Chile on Spanish citizens.
US presidents should also be concerned about their support of "extraordinary rendition."
So let me put it to you this way, if the Chilean President had the power of the POTUS backed up by a military equivalent to or superior to the US Military, would the UK have arrested and extradited him on behalf of Spain?
So the solution for American Presidents is even simpler than the one you propose: disregard the ICC in its entirety and continue to make state visits with impunity.
> and the same is true of US leaders.
The thing is, there isn’t enough in the way of shared morality between nations of the world to make this claim. From our perspective, the POTUS is imbued with the power to deal with foreign nations, and this includes both diplomatic and war functions, and to do so in a way that is beneficial to America. That’s what he is elected for, so imposing the ICC’s international justice on our elected leaders is in essence the same as trying to impose a foreign justice on America. We have our own laws, and govern our military with our own code of justice passed by our Congress, therefore we cannot abide by the ICC’s infringement on our sovereignty, nor will we tolerate a threat from it against our elected leaders.
If we don't want to keep our own house clean -- and the re-election of Trump makes it crystal-clear that we don't -- is it such a surprise that other people will?
Is a foreign nation convicting an American tourist for crimes in said nation also a threat to American sovereignty?
Allowing external courts to judge presidents is a bad idea. It is a slippery slope even for cases that seem obvious. My 2c.
It does not have a history of "slapping any label on any suitably vilified candidate".
Put another way: The US has a history of deciding it is allowed to start actual wars to overthrow the kind of people committing the kind of crimes that gets you targeted by the ICJ.
The US just wants its own people to not be subjected to what it has a long history of imposing on others.
I don’t know what the solution is. But an essentially advisory body like the ICC probably isn’t it.
The ICC is a cool idea in theory. The implementation pretty much causes human rights violations.
How is that?
Russia, of course commits human rights abuses in Ukraine. But Daesh committed serious human rights abuses against Russia [1] [2], as did a number of other islamist, nationalist and even a socialist group. Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
But this is a general problem. The court undertakes action against states, especially if they are currently unpopular in the UN (who appoints the judges), but never against the many groups that commit large scale human rights abuses against those states.
A third problem is that ICC convictions are entirely optional if you're in power. Any government is allowed to ask the ICC to not sue anyone for things either they did, or that happened on their soil. Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that. The ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE last year to sue Israel, and has done so before against the US. A relevant question would be "is the ICC allowed to change it's own statutes?" ... and of course the answer is no.
Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
Or to focus on a different problem, there's constant human rights abuses essentially everywhere on the planet in the prison system, including juvenile justice systems and just general youth services. This happens everywhere, with famous incidents in Romania, the US, France, Australia, ... you will not hear the ICC on this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocus_City_Hall_attack [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_siege [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Morocco [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_religion_in_Turkey#...
The ICJ pursues cases against states.
> Not one iota of attention of the court ever went to that.
The ICC only has jurisdiction over the territories and nationals of the State Parties to the Rome Statute. In the case of Israel, the actions are taken on the basis of alleged crimes in Palestinian territory, the same basis they have used for pursuing Palestinian crimes. They have not "changed their own statutes".
In the case of Daesh/ISIS, the court has issued statement that affirm that there are serious crimes involved, but pointing out that for those crimes taking place in Syria and Iraq, the ICC had no territorial jurisdiction because neither state were parties to the Rome Statute.
In the case of your examples of Daesh actions in Russia, Russia is also not a State Party to the ICC, and so it was Russias own choice to ensure that Daesh can not be pursued by the ICC.
> Sorry, any government EXCEPT the US and Israel are allowed to ask that.
The US and Israel are not parties to the ICC. They should have no expectation that a court they have explicitly refused to be part of will allow them control over how the court exercises the mandate given to it by those who are actually parties to the court.
> Or you could point out less serious, but ubiquitous human rights abuses that the ICC won't touch for various reasons. For example, every last muslim-majority state violates freedom of religion, a human right. Even Morocco and Turkey do [3] [4]. You will not hear the ICC on this issue.
The "various reasons" being that the ICC does 1) *not have jurisdiction over states, 2) the Rome Statute does not allow the ICC to pursue individuals for violating freedom of religion.
In other words: While I'd be all for protecting freedom of religion and for the ICC to be able to prosecute people preventing it, it is not a power the ICC has been granted by its signatories.
Effectively your complaints against the ICC all boil down to the ICC following its own rules about what its jurisdiction is and which crimes they are allowed to prosecute.
If this is the case can you explain ICC action against US and Israel, neither of which are parties to the Rome statute? This is one aspect of their selective justice. And some of the crimes they accuse Russia of (e.g. the ones relating to treatment of POWs) happened in Russia too, you could even say the same of their "great success" in Yugoslavia. The ICC respects boundaries selectively.
Also from the other side: the ICC most certainly COULD sue South Africa for working with Putin and Bashar Al-Assad to help them escape justice. They chose not to. Frankly, MANY signatories to the Rome statute have zero intention to ever hold up their end.
Also, of course, this rule is also selective justice if it is applied.
In a lot of state vs "resistance movement" the ICC has systematically failed to do anything about sometimes truly abhorrent crimes by movements. No shortage of examples there.
And your claim "they follow their own rules" ... you also neglected to discuss why the ICC changed it's own statutes TWICE to sue Israel ... once during the trial I might add. Same with US. Not that "we couldn't convict the Jew, obviously the law is wrong, let's change the law" isn't a longstanding legal tradition. Not very just though ...
As I said, the ICC is a beautiful theoretical idea. Unfortunately the ICC is not even remotely close to that idea and will never be. Their rules form selective justice even if they were applied and what they practically do is much worse than that.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dum...
[1] https://codeberg.org/forgejo-contrib/federation/src/branch/m...
The EU got INCREDIBLY lucky after Microsoft's rise. Linux gained marketshare. Linus Torvalds and a team. So you could probably get away by paying 100x less to Linux and really make things happen.
Did they do anything? Support it, say with half the money they paid to Microsoft? No. Anything at all? Perhaps, but not worth mentioning.
Yes. They immediately tried to push extra expenditures on Linux. To solidify the position of Microsoft. Tried to declare Linux illegal due to supporting copyright infringement/piracy. They tried to force "software warranty". Tried to make software without accessibility features illegal.
Oh wait! Linus Torvalds got paid! But ... by a US company. Plenty of companies tried to push Linux. All but one are US companies (the only real one that tried, SUSE Linux, was not just not supported, it was bought out by a US company after effectively going bankrupt).
So now we're here: if the US wanted to force Linux to implement sanctions against the ICC, they are in a much better position to do it than the EU is to stop them. No US or US ally is allowed to furnish the ICC with a Linux distro ... so who would do it? The EU doesn't control THEIR OWN BANKING SYSTEMS!
This is a repeating problem in the EU, not just for software. They utterly, absolutely, completely refuse to pay for any software at all, and as a result the EU economy pays more by literally a factor of millions. Then they refuse to see this as a problem ... and effectively US companies levy a tax on EU business, for decades. Where's the problem with that?
And this is actually an underestimation of the problem. The Microsoft ecosystem isn't just the software. It's the network, it's the applications by other firms. It's even the CPUs. SAP, Oracle, Adobe, Intel, AMD ... spending should be added to to the total. As should the spending on computers. Fucking Taiwan is in a better position than the EU when it comes to software independence.
And the EU "is working on replacing them" by spending less than ONE software engineer makes in Bangalore? Sorry, no.
They aren't.
This just means the EU doesn't care about software independence, and doesn't even care that the US taxes all software and hardware in the EU. Also they don't have a chance in hell to change it at this point. It would have been extremely cheap to do it 20 years ago, but now it'll cost tens of billions at minimum.
The ICC will be working without email, the EU can't change that and it's 100% the EU's fault. Hell, EU politicians have chosen to pay hundreds of billions EACH YEAR for the privilege of having the US control EU computer usage!
And both are centre-right governments to boot! If the White House is the clownshow in the circus, the EU is the acrobatics act.
A 10 million per year grant starting in 2000 would easily have done it. That it's such an amount is entirely, 100%, the EU's own fault. Taking linux and developing it, plus an office suite for it could easily be done for 100x less.
EU funded Microsoft to the tune of 234.26 billion USD per year
???
The relevant number is probably the EU only fraction, and maybe just the EU governments' part. Which I'd guess is at least like 1/10 or smaller? Idk
Expecting to make several times the national average gets you ousted as an evil greedy capitalist pig that wants to gentrify society, even though EU is full of stealthy elite royals and billionaires who own most of the continent's wealth, cosplaying as average people. So as long as you have a financial/tax system and a social contract that vilifies those seeking enrichment and upwards mobility through work and innovation, you're not gonna get FAANG competitors sprouting up thin air.
China could do it and become independent of US tech and they started off financially way worse than the EU. So the EU's tech failure is 100% self inflicted from policy short sightedness and mismanagement, by catering policies to the well off boomers and retirees, instead of the youth.
Stop taxing income, and start taxing inherited wealth more and you might see a change, just get off your asses politicians and actually do something, less talking and more doing. Otherwise keep buying American software running on Chinese hardware, while you hold grandiose speeches of tech independence.
There are reason why Linus Torvalds, Bjarne Stroustrup, Guido van Rossum, Anders Hejlsberg packed their toys and moved to the US to work for big-tech, instead of enjoying the amazing quality of life back home in Europe. Maybe the EU should talk to them and put them in charge of EU tech leadership, instead of the clueless unelected career bureaucrats like Von der Leyen and their lobbyists who's biggest success is selling the most diesel engines.
It is possible using IPv6 to make end to end connections without having to do weird hole punching through NAT, etc.
And of course they cannot be trusted. (Same applies for Google, Apple and any other entity in the US that can be served with a gag order and a subpoena.
The masks sometimes drop and we see the true face of who is what. And when Microsoft pulls a fast one like that it shows us the real face/where the loyalty is (and it is never to the client).
Israel is the wedge and leverage to eliminating governments of Iran, Pakistan, China and then India and weakening Russia further.
Colonialism hasn't gone anywhere, evidence? Europe fully protects settlers and their ambitions despite what they say publicly. It is a long road but the most realistic one they have.
That's the kind of situation that gives CEOs lifelong reputations (that they think it's in a good way).
See the secret industry meeting from 1933 as the prime example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_Meeting_of_20_February_...
And the military higher-ups were bribed with constant personalized handouts. Hitler even paid a wealthy general’s entire divorce settlement from taxpayer funds, as mentioned here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bribery_of_senior_Wehrmacht_of...
” Such was the success of Hitler's bribery system that by 1942, many officers had come to expect the bestowing of "gifts" from Hitler and were unwilling to bite the hand that fed them so generously.[10] When Field Marshal Fedor von Bock was sacked by Hitler in December 1941, his first reaction was to contact Hitler's aide Rudolf Schmundt to ask if his sacking meant that he was no longer to receive bribes from the Konto 5 ("bank account 5") slush fund.”
With the level of corruption in the current US administration, it seems entirely possible that it’s heading in a similar direction. For example, why shouldn’t Trump award a billion units of his crypto coin to loyal military leaders? What law prohibits that and who enforces it?
And if you want to close your eyes and believe things aren't that dire (they are), at minimum you have to admit that this is a regime that is incredibly blatant and open in its corruption and embrace of the spoils system. You'd have to be an utter idiot[1] to not try to weasel in to get your hand into the public purse.
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[1] Or hold on to something resembling moral principles when mountains of money and power is at stake, which in that part of the business world is a synonym.
Good news, that sort of behavior is technically illegal even if the current administration is wildly corrupt already. So give it 4 years and they open themselves to the possibility of being courtmartialed for their grifting.
So obviously microsoft will lose a lot of money in this. So if the decision is based on them making money, one has to wonder about the less obvious source of money that this decision serves.
I understand where you are coming from, but this also sounds like a way to remove individual responsibility from the people that make up a corporation.
Also, Europe does seem cautious about poking this tiger since Tech is critical industry and it's possible that Europe going "WE ARE DONE!" could prompt massive backlash in tariffs and such.
They did appeal a few times, but this time it seems like they're no longer interested. To be fair, Trump could probably illegally deport half the Microsoft employees to a foreign prison camp if he'd feel like it and the courts seem powerless to stop him, so I don't blame Microsoft for falling in line.
I do blame the Dutch government for being blasé about the American threat and their refusal to move away from American technology for critical infrastructure.
He's not unpopular and many people do support him, unfortunately. Best case scenario, the silent majority didn't bother to prevent Trump and his lackeys from taking over the American government.
I don't think denying Trump's popularity is going to solve anything. America spoke out in support of this guy, twice, and it'll keep doing that unless the underlying issues are tackled.
As for election fairness: I haven't seen any credible proof of large-scale election fraud, not when Biden won, not when Trump won.
For the curious, based on [1], turnout in 2024 was 63.1% of the voting eligible population, compared to 65.3% in 2020, 59.2% in 2016, and 58.0% in 2012.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/voter-turnou...
I'm not concerned about the fact that the election was close.
I'm concerned that, post election, the country is so deeply polarized. For the first time in my life, I fear there's a small but real chance that we're headed for civil war.
Still, backed by pretty solid statutory authority[0] (one created by Democrats and signed into law by Carter, in point of fact). Congress wanted the President to have this power.
I'll get scorched for this, but: I never once read a word of complaint about separation-of-powers, when Biden was sanctioning objects left and right for his own, self-declared, national-security emergencies. I don't recall reading once, i.e. at the time of the sweeping China or GPU sanctions, a peep of protest along the lines of, "This should *not* be something a President should be able to do unilaterally! That's far too much discretionary power in the hands of one person! Congress should have to debate it". We didn't invent an imperial presidency in 2025; it's the agglomeration of decades of civic apathy.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Emergency_Econom... ("International Emergency Economic Powers Act"; C-f "14203" for the current topic)
Unfortunately for the US, we’re stuck with what Israel decides to do. A lot of Americans are in favor of supporting Israel for one reason or another. If Irsael is somehow controlling the United States via lobbying or whatever, that kind of invalidates the whole client state idea.
US is the most powerful country in the world but that doesn’t mean we directly control our allies as client states.
Few people imagine something like a Department of Mis/Disinformation not being such a good thing if its their person in charge and don't imagine a situation where someone else takes over later on something like the Israeli/Palestinian conflict where there's a schism within parties about what is "misinformation". Instead they'll cheer lead it and downvote or debate detractors and accuse them of being an otherside shill because its immediately good for them. They don't take an adversarial view of how can this be abused, and if not by whose in power now, who maybe 5-10-20 years from now.
Here’s an example article from Reuters that details the potential national security implications with regard to Nvidia GPUs, novel AI technology, and military advancement.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/biden-cut-china-off-more-...
Fear-mongering aside, that’s much more digestible reason than muzzling someone rightfully investigating war crimes commanded by the leaders of our proxy state.
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US tech dominance has long been seen as a benefit and this administration is ruining that position.
this administration is ruining many things. China doesnt even have to fight to win new soft power - the US is doing it to themselves.
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
> Microsoft and other U.S. companies have sought to reassure European customers. On Monday, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, visited the Netherlands and announced new “sovereign solutions” for European institutions, including legal and data security protections for “a time of geopolitical volatility.” Amazon and Google have also announced policies aimed at European customers.
So I won’t say it’s all just the US coming in and buying everything up. It was partly European investors wanting to make a profit.
I think most of the activists know the drill (not to use gmail/outlook/icloud... in their activism-related communications).
They might start spending the time and money to move away from Microsoft's control, but there's few solutions that reliably work at that scale and for their needs, and I honestly wouldn't fault them for assuming that the arrangement that worked for decades wouldn't suddenly fall apart.
Until recently I'm sure people at the heart of the western political establishment saw the US as essentially trustworthy with regard to fundamental things like not stealing their emails.
Just like they wouldn't have expected the executive to deny them access to the product. Now it's clear expectations need to be updated.
Not great news for the US tech industry...
Some previous discussions:
Microsoft blocked the email account of Chief Prosecutor of the ICC
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44039719
Microsoft's ICC blockade: digital dependence comes at a cost
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44032717
DOGE? Absolutely performative. Even things like USAID are a trival amount of money and miss the point that it's a very cheap way of getting influence. Plus I'm sure there's some CIA money buried in there too.
Abusing the power in such a trivial manner like suspending this account does nothing but hasten this downfall.
It's always worth adding that 20+ years ago the US passed a law colloquially known as the "Hage Invasion Act" [1], which not only authorized but requires the US to invade the Hage if ever any US servicemember are brought up on charges to the ICC. And this extends to servicemembers and leaders of allies.
Empires don't die quietly or quickly. This is going to be long, drawn out and chaotic.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members%27_Pr...
His official work email was suspended because he's suspended from the organization...
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At my organization, if an employee is suspended, I don't expect Microsoft to manage it. We have to do it ourselves. It is different elsewhere?
And he also lost his bank account, that’s hardly because of the allegations
Look at this article discussing the allegations, by AP, from last year: https://apnews.com/article/war-crimes-international-criminal...
Sounds like Trump’s EO had nothing to do with with suspending the account?
> Microsoft said the decision to suspend Mr. Khan’s email had been made in consultation with the I.C.C. The company said it had since enacted policy changes that had been in the works before the episode to protect customers in similar geopolitical situations in the future. When the Trump administration sanctioned four additional I.C.C. judges this month, their email accounts were not suspended, the company said.
That sounds exactly like it was because of Trump‘s EO but MS doesn’t want to do it anymore
Europeans live in a fairy land dream and need to wake up.
That's an issue with America. For all American businesses.
"Who allowed you to live like that"...
The dumb actions by the current US Administrations give the EU a big incentive now to buy their services elsewhere in the future, so Trumps fever dream about the disbalance might come true thanks to his own actions