This is classic American arrogance, trying to undermine international law for its own selfish agenda.
It reinforces the need for the EU to break free from US tech.
noobermin · 1d ago
America? How is what Israel wants American arrogance?
tartuffe78 · 1d ago
Are you not familiar with the relationship between America and Israel?
includenotfound · 1d ago
It would be good to get a honest, objective, non ideological explanation somewhere - but almost any source I find is heavily biased.
What's your take on that relationship?
runarberg · 1d ago
Nothing wrong with getting information from biased sources, as long as you acknowledge the bias and read counter arguments.
I think a good place to start is what advocates for this relationship claim. As staunch proponent of Palestinian rights, I think a good starting point is to simply read what AIPAC says about this relationship: https://www.aipac.org/policy-relationship just know they have a vested interest in exaggerating how good this relationship is and lie about how important it is to strengthen it.
trod1234 · 1d ago
You are wrong. It is not 'American' anything.
This is plain corporate malfeasance and corruption.
If anything its highly anti-American, borderline communist/state regime.
American values include many things, one of the more important being free speech.
Such a violation deserves reciprocity, stop blaming issues on the wrong things.
Sure, that is the de-jure definition of 'American' that a lot of good folks in the US also adhere to - I know many of them personally :).
However, that's not the de-facto definition of the US as a geopolitical player right now and Europe can't afford to pretend those two are the same.
thejazzman · 1d ago
American values are what they are. Whether they're perceived that way is something else. And whether the people who hold those values are hypocrites or have any self-realization is irrelevant to the fact that the people believe they have and practice free speech.
trod1234 · 18h ago
It appears you misspoke.
We are clearly talking about two different things.
exceptione · 1d ago
myth <-> reality
(50) In the same vein, study the right wing concept of
"free market" as an exercise.
I clicked on this expecting it to be caused by some sort of bug. Lo and behold, to nobody's surprise, oppressors have no shame.
mathgradthrow · 2d ago
The US position on the ICC is very reasonable. Absolutely no one should agree to be under the jurisdiction of an independent international court, but at least many of its members signed on to it.
The court believes that it has jurisdiction over anyone involved in a conflict with a signatory. This is why the president is preauthorized by congress to use military force against the Netherlands, in the event that an american or allied service member is held there.
fwn · 2d ago
This seems like a tangent. The article isn’t about whether the ICC’s jurisdiction is valid—it's about how dependent international institutions (or anyone, really) are on US-based tech providers, and how that exposes them to US executive power, like sanctions or account blocks.
I’m not convinced that “digital sovereignty” is the right framing for this problem. What I think is more important here - and probably more interesting to HN - is the fragility introduced by technological monocultures and lack of service portability. Open protocols, interoperability, and reducing concentration risk matter more than trying to build a digitally fenced-off Europe.
saubeidl · 2d ago
I think either approach works.
China is definitely digitally fenced-off and you don't see it having these issues.
fwn · 2d ago
> China is definitely digitally fenced-off and you don't see it having these issues.
China is the textbook example of this problem. Political power in China routinely uses infrastructure to suppress or punish those who deviate from approved positions. This is precisely the risk that the article raises.
And obviously, if the ICC were to switch to Chinese infrastructure, it would just be trading one leverage for a more active one.
pk-protect-ai · 2d ago
Now this happens in US too... ICC must use its own mail servers. Actually any government or international organization must use its own infrastructure. Dependency on any 3rd party is an attack vector.
saubeidl · 1d ago
That's a separate issue. Infrastructure is never suppressed in China because somebody outside of China disapproves of a position. The sovereignty of the Chinese state is maintained.
trod1234 · 1d ago
> who deviate from approved positions.
That's making it sound like those approved positions are unchanging. They constantly change, and punish those that didn't change quick enough.
The anaconda in the chandelier in a locked room of blind people.
mathgradthrow · 1d ago
Of course its a tangent. The article is trying to talk around the fact the the ICC is a unique diplomatic object wrt the US. Bringing this fact into focus in the conversation is tangential to the article because the article fails to incorporate it.
trod1234 · 1d ago
> Open protocols ... concentration risk matter more...
Well it all comes down to the incentives and money. Money printing sieves money into such titans, concentrating business. You gotta look at the banking cartel before anything else.
saubeidl · 2d ago
That position is pure hubris.
mathgradthrow · 1d ago
Can you use hubris is a different sentence, so that I can make sure I inderstand what you think it means?
saubeidl · 1d ago
It was imperialist hubris for Russia to attack Ukraine.
mystified5016 · 2d ago
No, the president of the US should just be considered by all to be the god-emperor of the planet.
aegypti · 1d ago
ICC signatories:
- Europe
- LATAM
- subsaharan Africa
ICC nonsignatories:
- US
- China
- India
- Russia
- Turkey
- Israel
- Pakistan
- Egypt
- Saudi Arabia
Hubris is imagining a situation in which The Hague Act is ever tested in the first place!
polski-g · 1d ago
Israel never agreed to abide by the ICC and they're still trying to claim authority over Israeli actions? That's crazy.
dlubarov · 1d ago
Yeah, the ICC considers itself to have jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-parties if they're within the territory of a party to the Rome Statute.
Here the argument goes that the State of Palestine is a party, and Gaza is somehow its territory, even though it has never controlled or governed Gaza.
runarberg · 1d ago
The State of Palestine has two government at the moment which govern separate territories, just like Libya, Yemen, or China. Neither government of Palestine disputes the ICCs jurisdiction over Gaza. And unlike China there have been numerous attempts to unify the two governments, most of them were stopped by Israel.
I think the ICCs argument of jurisdiction is entirely reasonable, and consistent with how the court has ruled previously.
EDIT: Since this is Hacker News and we like nerdy details, I’ve linked below the 2021 ruling that established it’s jurisdiction of Palestine. The ruling was 3-1 and explicitly included the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
Hamas' feelings about the case aren't really relevant to jurisdiction, partly because the ICC doesn't recognize Gaza as a state, and partly since Hamas hasn't accepted the ICC's jurisdiction. The latter would require Hamas to accept ICC jurisdiction over crimes committed by themselves, not only by Israel, so I don't think that would happen regardless of the statehood matter.
Libya, Yemen, and China are a bit different since they used to be unified states. It's great that there's a vision for a unified State of Palestine, but I don't think it makes any sense for the international community to pretend that exists today. In reality the current State of Palestine is represented only by the PLO, which has never controlled Gaza, not is it supported by most Gazans.
China is an interesting comparison though. Hypothetically if the PRC wanted to join the ICC, would the ICC understand that as including Taiwan, regardless of what the ROC or the people of Taiwan wanted? If so, that seems like a bad situation made possible by China's leverage, and not something the international community should try to replicate with Palestine.
runarberg · 20h ago
I want to make one correction, the verdict was not 3-1 but 3-0 with one of the justices issuing a Partly Dissenting Opinion, meaning they agreed with the verdict but disagreed with the reasoning (more on that later).
So you obviously disagree with the 2021 ruling of the court, and subsequently 2024 ruling which denied Israel‘s appeal to that ruling, thus reaffirming jurisdiction. That is fine. That verdict has not gone without criticism. But it is ultimately irrelevant the court’s interpretation of the Rome Statute, and Palestinian statehood is that the ICC does have jurisdiction over Gaza. In particular the verdict did not claim that Hamas needed to accept the jurisdiction.
Now I’m not very good at reading legal documents, but from what I can gather, the court determined that it “is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community.” ([1] para. 108) and that it did not want to resolve border disputes (para. 113 and para. 115). Rather the court based its ruling on the right of self determination and the Palestinian right to their own state (para. 116). For this they used internationally recognized borders which were defined in other UN resolutions.
I guess you can point out the colonial nature of such a ruling, that this in effect allows some groups to determine the rights of separate groups as long as the former is internationally recognized, but not the latter. I‘m not gonna argue for how just this system is, but this is consistent with international law, as argued by justices of the ICC, on at least two separate rulings. For better or worse, this is how international law works.
As for the partially dissenting opinion[2] as I understand it—again, I‘m not good at reading these things—disagreed that the court couldn’t determine Palestinian statehood, and argued that the Oslo accords gave Palestine their statehood, and the court derived their jurisdiction from that. This ends up being the exact same territory.
It reinforces the need for the EU to break free from US tech.
What's your take on that relationship?
I think a good place to start is what advocates for this relationship claim. As staunch proponent of Palestinian rights, I think a good starting point is to simply read what AIPAC says about this relationship: https://www.aipac.org/policy-relationship just know they have a vested interest in exaggerating how good this relationship is and lie about how important it is to strengthen it.
This is plain corporate malfeasance and corruption.
If anything its highly anti-American, borderline communist/state regime.
American values include many things, one of the more important being free speech.
Such a violation deserves reciprocity, stop blaming issues on the wrong things.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/come-on-obviously-the-purpo...
However, that's not the de-facto definition of the US as a geopolitical player right now and Europe can't afford to pretend those two are the same.
The court believes that it has jurisdiction over anyone involved in a conflict with a signatory. This is why the president is preauthorized by congress to use military force against the Netherlands, in the event that an american or allied service member is held there.
I’m not convinced that “digital sovereignty” is the right framing for this problem. What I think is more important here - and probably more interesting to HN - is the fragility introduced by technological monocultures and lack of service portability. Open protocols, interoperability, and reducing concentration risk matter more than trying to build a digitally fenced-off Europe.
China is definitely digitally fenced-off and you don't see it having these issues.
China is the textbook example of this problem. Political power in China routinely uses infrastructure to suppress or punish those who deviate from approved positions. This is precisely the risk that the article raises.
And obviously, if the ICC were to switch to Chinese infrastructure, it would just be trading one leverage for a more active one.
That's making it sound like those approved positions are unchanging. They constantly change, and punish those that didn't change quick enough.
The anaconda in the chandelier in a locked room of blind people.
Well it all comes down to the incentives and money. Money printing sieves money into such titans, concentrating business. You gotta look at the banking cartel before anything else.
- Europe
- LATAM
- subsaharan Africa
ICC nonsignatories:
- US
- China
- India
- Russia
- Turkey
- Israel
- Pakistan
- Egypt
- Saudi Arabia
Hubris is imagining a situation in which The Hague Act is ever tested in the first place!
Here the argument goes that the State of Palestine is a party, and Gaza is somehow its territory, even though it has never controlled or governed Gaza.
I think the ICCs argument of jurisdiction is entirely reasonable, and consistent with how the court has ruled previously.
EDIT: Since this is Hacker News and we like nerdy details, I’ve linked below the 2021 ruling that established it’s jurisdiction of Palestine. The ruling was 3-1 and explicitly included the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.
https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-issues-...
Libya, Yemen, and China are a bit different since they used to be unified states. It's great that there's a vision for a unified State of Palestine, but I don't think it makes any sense for the international community to pretend that exists today. In reality the current State of Palestine is represented only by the PLO, which has never controlled Gaza, not is it supported by most Gazans.
China is an interesting comparison though. Hypothetically if the PRC wanted to join the ICC, would the ICC understand that as including Taiwan, regardless of what the ROC or the people of Taiwan wanted? If so, that seems like a bad situation made possible by China's leverage, and not something the international community should try to replicate with Palestine.
So you obviously disagree with the 2021 ruling of the court, and subsequently 2024 ruling which denied Israel‘s appeal to that ruling, thus reaffirming jurisdiction. That is fine. That verdict has not gone without criticism. But it is ultimately irrelevant the court’s interpretation of the Rome Statute, and Palestinian statehood is that the ICC does have jurisdiction over Gaza. In particular the verdict did not claim that Hamas needed to accept the jurisdiction.
Now I’m not very good at reading legal documents, but from what I can gather, the court determined that it “is not constitutionally competent to determine matters of statehood that would bind the international community.” ([1] para. 108) and that it did not want to resolve border disputes (para. 113 and para. 115). Rather the court based its ruling on the right of self determination and the Palestinian right to their own state (para. 116). For this they used internationally recognized borders which were defined in other UN resolutions.
I guess you can point out the colonial nature of such a ruling, that this in effect allows some groups to determine the rights of separate groups as long as the former is internationally recognized, but not the latter. I‘m not gonna argue for how just this system is, but this is consistent with international law, as argued by justices of the ICC, on at least two separate rulings. For better or worse, this is how international law works.
As for the partially dissenting opinion[2] as I understand it—again, I‘m not good at reading these things—disagreed that the court couldn’t determine Palestinian statehood, and argued that the Oslo accords gave Palestine their statehood, and the court derived their jurisdiction from that. This ends up being the exact same territory.
1: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/CourtRecords/CR2...
2: https://www.icc-cpi.int/sites/default/files/RelatedRecords/C...
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2x7gzdr01o