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US sanctions force The Netherlands off Microsoft and toward alternative NixOS

388 points · 396 comments · mywacaday

guidoiaquinti · 1790685221 · focus · HN ↗
Several International Criminal Court (ICC) judges have been unable to access their bank accounts or receive routine salary payments and financial transfers due to financial blockages triggered by United States sanctions. In the country where they live
1. rapsey · 1790686393 · focus · HN ↗
  ICC judges getting the right wing activist treatment, except the activists get it from their own government.
  1. flohofwoe · 1790687230 · focus · HN ↗
    Concrete examples to verify such claims please? Also in civilized countries such things are decided by the justice system, not the government (which to the surprise of many simple minded people - like a certain US president and his fanbase - is independent from the government).
    mhh__ · 1790688294 · focus · HN ↗
    This is only really true in certain countries that don't really do democracy. In Britain for example parliament is sovereign.
    rapsey · 1790688378 · focus · HN ↗
    Farage was debanked. So was Trump and Melania, AfD politicians, Le Penn in france.
    mhh__ · 1790688544 · focus · HN ↗
    I may have misread the topic of conversation but he was debanked by a private bank - I was arguing against juristocracy but possibly incorrectly aimed
    mike_hearn · 1790692846 · focus · HN ↗
    He was debanked by every bank in the UK, for entirely political reasons, and then they lied about it.
    To what extent this was explicitly coordinated by the government versus people who are merely strongly ideologically aligned with it is unclear; in systems as totalitarian as the UK is becoming it's a distinction without a difference as anyone not so aligned is quickly removed for one plausible reason or another and replaced with someone who is.
    foldr · 1790694029 · focus · HN ↗
    Err, no, he was debanked by the flashy private bank Coutts. A bank that would refuse to give most people an account.
    mike_hearn · 1790695082 · focus · HN ↗
    Err, no, he was debanked by Coutts and then denied accounts at every other bank. You apparently didn't read the statement he made at the time, so here it is:
    > I emailed the chairman, a lackey phoned me to say that it was a commercial decision, which I have to say, I don’t believe for a single moment. So I thought, well, there we are, I’ll have to go and find a different bank. I’ve been to six, no seven banks actually. Ask them all, could I have a personal and a business account? And the answer has been no.
    Denied accounts at seven banks, and in the end he was right - the reason Coutts tried to close his account was simply because some woke committee hated him, it was purely political. There are no legal or commercial reasons to deny him an account, yet somehow, every bank does so. With no bank in the UK he cannot make payments and without that ability he cannot live there, so the banks came very close to ensuring that the British people could not vote for him even though Reform is now the most popular party.
    The British establishment is entirely homogenous on this, because they claim anyone who supports Farage is insufficiently committed to "diversity and inclusion" (leftism) and thus must be forced out. It's indistinguishable from the banks all being directly controlled by the Labour party. The only reason Farage was able to stay is because Coutts were impatient; it was the dying days of the Conservative administration and they suddenly realized what was about to happen to them if they didn't make changes sharpish, so they stuck the FCA on NatWest and some heads rolled. But if Coutts had waited a bit longer until the next Labour government, there would have been no help coming and British democracy would have become even more sickly and fake than it already is (I say this as a British citizen).
    someonebaggy · 1790696399 · focus · HN ↗
    It's ironic because Farage would support every bank having the GOD-given right to deny people to have accounts.
    mike_hearn · 1790697411 · focus · HN ↗
    He launched a (short lived) website and organization to try and support people who had been debanked, so no he wouldn't. Farage is not focused on libertarian politics, if he ever was.
    foldr · 1790697299 · focus · HN ↗
    As far as I can discover, we only have Nigel Farage's word for the seven subsequent refusals from other banks. The issue with Coutts is on the record, as there was subsequent legal and regulatory action, etc. I for one don't believe Farage here. He may have been turned down by some other fancy private banks, but that is not the same thing as being debanked. In fact, NatWest (owners of Coutts) explicitly offered him a standard bank account when they notified him of closure of his Coutts account: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/nigel-farage-says-set-lose-coutts-account-offered-natwest-one-instead-2023-07-04/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/nigel-farage-says-set-lose-...
    The notion that banking, of all industries, has been taken over by woke leftists (please supply your own scare quotes for the first of those appellations – I give up) is for the birds. As for the establishment, your own take on this is inconsistent, first saying that the establishment is entirely homogenous and aligned against Farage, and then pointing out that the government of the day helped Farage to get his Coutts account back.
    mhh__ · 1790739259 · focus · HN ↗
    Banking has been taken over by HR and regulators
    foldr · 1790758998 · focus · HN ↗
    >taken over by HR
    Who hasn't?
    > and regulators
    Good! (I wonder why?)
    This is quite different from the claim that Coutts, of all organisations, was in hoc to 'woke leftists' while the country was under a Conservative government.
    mhh__ · 1790786656 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't actually think the Tory party is right wing, surely?
    Theresa May et al instituted net zero basically without a vote, huge liberalisation of various social matters, enormous spending on welfare, locked the country down, and then imported 4 million people!
    foldr · 1790787645 · focus · HN ↗
    I do not think that the Tory party is leftist, or 'woke' (whatever that even means these days).
    mhh__ · 1790791015 · focus · HN ↗
    They are or at least were in those years died in the wool woke. They minted coins with "diversity built Britain" on them, rishi held one up for the camera!
    foldr · 1790792542 · focus · HN ↗
    Again, we run into the fact that 'woke' is now a meaningless term of abuse. Most people would take it as an uncontroversial and largely apolitical observation that ethnic minority communities have made a significant contribution to the history of Britain (which was the point of the coin). If you think that's an example of woke extremism of some kind, it says more about you than about the Conservative party.
    Sunak himself certainly didn't present as a dyed in the wool wokist in the lead up to his permiership:
    > Whether it’s pulling down statues of historic figures, replacing the school curriculum with anti-British propaganda or rewriting the English language so we can’t even use words like ‘man’, ‘woman’ or ‘mother’ without being told we’re offending someone [... etc. etc.]
    <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/29/rishi-sunak-liz-truss-culture-war-woke-nonsense" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/29/rishi-sunak...

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