Sanctions were once sold as a gentler foreign policy tool for exerting pressure on dictatorships and terrorist organizations. Yet measures like banning individuals from having bank accounts or traveling are increasingly used to chill free speech in Europe.

Sanctions were once sold as a gentler foreign policy tool for exerting pressure on dictatorships and terrorist organizations. Yet measures like banning individuals from having bank accounts or traveling are increasingly used to chill free speech in Europe.

  • TheObviousSolution@thebrainbin.org
    1·
    2 days ago

    In August 2025, Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the International Criminal Court, found himself locked out of the financial system and most online services. Why? Because the United States had placed him on a sanctions list that also includes al-Qaeda members, drug smugglers, and Vladimir Putin, simply because the court issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Five other ICC judges and three prosecutors have also ended up on the sanctions list.

    So … the opposite of the title? Europe placed an arrest warrant against Netanyahu and it was the US who placed these sanctions …

    Jacques Baud, a former employee of the Swiss intelligence service, military analyst, and regular commentator on the international Russian news channel RT, ended up on a sanctions list due to alleged support for Putin, by which EU authorities mean his pro-Russian analyses of Western policy in the run-up to the war in Ukraine.

    Ah, there it is.

    Gonna have to take the objectivity of the article into question, although it does employ a lot of truths to try to reach the conclusion it wants to reach.