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On July 20 2020 22:29 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 21:52 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 21:41 MoltkeWarding wrote:I made no such claim. As usual he is fleeing into some weird philosophical limbo that is, if at all, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand. No. All I ask if for people to read what I wrote properly. He was making an attachment that I never made. He was somehow attaching two comments that I made, and assumed that they were somehow connected. On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:On July 18 2020 04:33 Nouar wrote:
Still, these kind of sanctions when there is no PROOF that Huawei hardware is rigged is over-the-top. The USA just threatened sanctions on TSMC (Taiwanese company) if they were to provide processors to Huawei.
Now, if there was proof, I'd argue differently. For now it just seems like a commercial war to push the US of A's own equipment to me. Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here. We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this? Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted. I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. On July 20 2020 19:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:
[quote]
Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here.
We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this?
Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted.
I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. I do not know what you are talking about here specifically,so let us here just stick with the issue of the "Fishing waters." The "Common fisheries policy," which is a huge part of the British economy, was set up in 1970...the EU changed itself in order to have more British fish. They "changed" the rules, so that new member countries, with very rich fishing waters, would have to pay their price for entry into the EU. You steered the conversation here so I will ask you again, what is punishing or vindictive about the EU wanting to ensure sustainable fishing in the region where both the UK and the EU are fishing from? I was not talking about sustainable fishing. There are other complaints that the British isles have related to the EU policy, which does not have anything to do with the endangerment of certain fish species. By all means bring them up and explain how its the EU being vindictive and not just following their own established policy.
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Nothing? As long as it was within lines of British rules? In England, most of the quota of their fishing has been swallowed up by foreigners anyhow. "Agriculture" is in any case a very small part of the British economy, but fishing is a large part of British "agriculture." I do not know the details, but I assume that the ever-shrinking British fishing industry is dying off, and being replaced. I doubt young Englishmen go into fishing at all today.
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On July 20 2020 23:07 MoltkeWarding wrote:
Nothing? As long as it was within lines of British rules? In England, most of the quota of their fishing has been swallowed up by foreigners anyhow. "Agriculture" is in any case a very small part of the British economy, but fishing is a large part of British "agriculture." I do not know the details, but I assume that the ever-shrinking British fishing industry is dying off, and being replaced. I doubt young Englishmen go into fishing at all today.
Could you please reply to my post regarding quotas?
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On July 20 2020 22:43 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 22:29 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 21:52 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 21:41 MoltkeWarding wrote:I made no such claim. As usual he is fleeing into some weird philosophical limbo that is, if at all, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand. No. All I ask if for people to read what I wrote properly. He was making an attachment that I never made. He was somehow attaching two comments that I made, and assumed that they were somehow connected. On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:On July 18 2020 08:32 Belisarius wrote:
[quote]
Okay, this isn't the position I expected from you here.
We know that the CCP has an unprecedented level of control over its citizens and its companies. Xi has instituted a clear and strong shift in his foreign and domestic policy toward suppression and projection of power. The chinese state is aggressively expanding its footprint: physical, digital and cultural, often in blatant defiance of international law. It is pushing disinformation and suppressing speech critical of it in every domain it has access to. There is a well-documented record of chinese cyber-attacks all around the globe, and these have accelerated dramatically in recent years. Do you disagree with any of this?
Acro said it fairly clearly; the only option left to most nations in the world is to choose who they would prefer to be spied on by. For all of Trump's.... Trumpness, any society built on liberal democracy will reluctantly select the US. By a third Trump term in a US that's gone full neofascist, that choice may be harder and both options worse, but there is still some hope that that timeline will be averted.
I've had the feeling for a while that a large part of Europe is still in denial about either the CCP's ambitions or their ability to execute them. Here in their backyard, I feel we are more aware of the dragon we are sleeping next to. You are military, afaik. You are generally pretty pragmatic. If you are blase about this, what is the average euro thinking? Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. On July 20 2020 19:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:[quote] Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. I do not know what you are talking about here specifically,so let us here just stick with the issue of the "Fishing waters." The "Common fisheries policy," which is a huge part of the British economy, was set up in 1970...the EU changed itself in order to have more British fish. They "changed" the rules, so that new member countries, with very rich fishing waters, would have to pay their price for entry into the EU. You steered the conversation here so I will ask you again, what is punishing or vindictive about the EU wanting to ensure sustainable fishing in the region where both the UK and the EU are fishing from? I was not talking about sustainable fishing. There are other complaints that the British isles have related to the EU policy, which does not have anything to do with the endangerment of certain fish species. By all means bring them up and explain how its the EU being vindictive and not just following their own established policy.
I said "if." Obviously, what we are experiencing now is still waiting to be settled. Obviously there are differences of opinion in the EU itself, and it is not clear by a long shot how it will ultimately be settled. A few care about Union Cohesion more than anything else. Most I am guessing do not. The UK itself has other options across the globe.
Could you please reply to my post regarding quotas?
Which aspect? I am not sure what you wanted to address. I just said that most of English fishing today is committed by foreigners. I never eat fish myself, so I do not know the bureaucratese behind it. Are you implying that "foreign fisheries" are an entity apart from "foreign fishermen"? I just assumed that they amounted to the same thing. Most English fishermen are today foreigners. Presumably foreign fisheries did their hiring practise among those people.
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On July 20 2020 23:24 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 22:43 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 22:29 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 21:52 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 21:41 MoltkeWarding wrote:I made no such claim. As usual he is fleeing into some weird philosophical limbo that is, if at all, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand. No. All I ask if for people to read what I wrote properly. He was making an attachment that I never made. He was somehow attaching two comments that I made, and assumed that they were somehow connected. On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:[quote] Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. On July 20 2020 19:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:
[quote]
Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts.
Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse.
What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed.
One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage.
The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. I do not know what you are talking about here specifically,so let us here just stick with the issue of the "Fishing waters." The "Common fisheries policy," which is a huge part of the British economy, was set up in 1970...the EU changed itself in order to have more British fish. They "changed" the rules, so that new member countries, with very rich fishing waters, would have to pay their price for entry into the EU. You steered the conversation here so I will ask you again, what is punishing or vindictive about the EU wanting to ensure sustainable fishing in the region where both the UK and the EU are fishing from? I was not talking about sustainable fishing. There are other complaints that the British isles have related to the EU policy, which does not have anything to do with the endangerment of certain fish species. By all means bring them up and explain how its the EU being vindictive and not just following their own established policy. I said "if." Obviously, what we are experiencing now is still waiting to be settled. Obviously there are differences of opinion in the EU itself, and it is not clear by a long shot how it will ultimately be settled. A few care about Union Cohesion more than anything else. Most I am guessing do not. The UK itself has other options across the globe. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit. You seem to be walking back a lot of what you are saying. Maybe you should take some time to actually think about what your position is and why you hold that position.
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On July 20 2020 23:24 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 22:43 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 22:29 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 21:52 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 21:41 MoltkeWarding wrote:I made no such claim. As usual he is fleeing into some weird philosophical limbo that is, if at all, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand. No. All I ask if for people to read what I wrote properly. He was making an attachment that I never made. He was somehow attaching two comments that I made, and assumed that they were somehow connected. On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:[quote] Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. On July 20 2020 19:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:
[quote]
Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts.
Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse.
What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed.
One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage.
The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. I do not know what you are talking about here specifically,so let us here just stick with the issue of the "Fishing waters." The "Common fisheries policy," which is a huge part of the British economy, was set up in 1970...the EU changed itself in order to have more British fish. They "changed" the rules, so that new member countries, with very rich fishing waters, would have to pay their price for entry into the EU. You steered the conversation here so I will ask you again, what is punishing or vindictive about the EU wanting to ensure sustainable fishing in the region where both the UK and the EU are fishing from? I was not talking about sustainable fishing. There are other complaints that the British isles have related to the EU policy, which does not have anything to do with the endangerment of certain fish species. By all means bring them up and explain how its the EU being vindictive and not just following their own established policy. I said "if." Obviously, what we are experiencing now is still waiting to be settled. Obviously there are differences of opinion in the EU itself, and it is not clear by a long shot how it will ultimately be settled. A few care about Union Cohesion more than anything else. Most I am guessing do not. The UK itself has other options across the globe. Which aspect? I am not sure what you wanted to address. I just said that most of English fishing today is committed by foreigners. I never eat fish myself, so I do not know the bureaucratese behind it. Are you implying that "foreign fisheries" are an entity apart from "foreign fishermen"? I just assumed that they amounted to the same thing. Most English fishermen are today foreigners. Presumably foreign fisheries did their hiring practise among those people.
The part where it is an effect of UK's own government policies and not a fault of EU.
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On July 20 2020 23:24 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 22:43 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 22:29 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 21:52 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 21:41 MoltkeWarding wrote:I made no such claim. As usual he is fleeing into some weird philosophical limbo that is, if at all, only vaguely connected to the topic at hand. No. All I ask if for people to read what I wrote properly. He was making an attachment that I never made. He was somehow attaching two comments that I made, and assumed that they were somehow connected. On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:On July 19 2020 18:36 Nouar wrote:[quote] Oh I am not in denial about the amount of influence China is asserting in Asia, Africa and even Europe (Greece took a big hit for example). I am also aware of the shit it's doing at home and their imperialistic views in their region. However, this is about something else. For countries that declare themselves respectful of laws, capitalistic, open to concurrence etc, I just find the hypocrisy in just barring another country's company from markets with no proof so... shameless ? It's just to cave to foreign pressure, and not based on facts. Just an excuse to favor your own companies (or allies'), no real root in counter-intelligence, just assumptions and possibilities. It's mainly lying to the public. In fact, this is furthered by this article, that states that British officials told Huawei that the ban was mostly due to geopolitical pressure from Trump and might be reversed if he loses the election : https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jul/18/pressure-from-trump-led-to-5g-ban-britain-tells-huaweiThere is a well documented record of everyone doing cyber-attacks on everyone, be it France, five-eyes, Israel, China... Every country is fighting for influence, China is doing it to get its place in the world, the US has done it for decades via soft or hard pressure, Europe is still trying to do it here and there but it's not very efficient anymore, Russia is... This is a invisible war, and we (europe) are mainly being dominated by huge powers. I am blasé about it because I know and see what everyone is doing, including our "allies", not just what's shown in the news. The NSA having access to nearly every US company's data through backdoors, while these are the most used platforms worldwide and foreign data is physically sent and hosted in the US, is for me a much larger issue than "maybe Huawei devices can have a hardware backdoor but we are not sure". One that is slowly getting fixed by european laws. You need to take these items one by one, or if you're not happy, start a war against China ? If we start by not respecting international and trade laws, why should they ? You cannot put official pressure on them if you don't respect the rules yourself. If you don't, it ends up on a slope to all-out war (not necessarily immediately with arms, but a cold war at first, and then you end up with covert ops like Iran is doing, except China won't have the need to do it covertly). Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts. Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse. What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed. One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage. The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. On July 20 2020 19:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 19:12 Gorsameth wrote:On July 20 2020 12:38 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 20 2020 11:30 ggrrg wrote:On July 19 2020 20:08 MoltkeWarding wrote:On July 19 2020 19:08 Wombat_NI wrote:
[quote]
Well indeed. Partly why I was so critical of our government earlier in the thread. Although didn’t do a very good job in articulating my thoughts.
Either the threat to security was there with Huawei to begin with, or it wasn’t and was overblown. As far as I’m aware very little has changed there on that technical level, so either the wrong decision was made initially and reversed, or the inverse.
What has changed is the US taking a harder stance on China far as I can tell and boom it’s reversed.
One of my main reasons for wanting us to remain in the EU was to keep Europe as a more powerful bloc in resisting the US and China, as well as fearing a more isolated UK being vulnerable to such leverage.
The effects of which we’re seeing earlier than I expected due to the US and China’s relations dipping in the way they have lately. The EU as it is presently set up does not work. For one thing, the finances. The UK got a better deal out of it than Germany, at least. These are three loaded claims that would each require quite a bit of elaboration to even be considered as possibly having some factual basis. My response in order from last to first: - Given the non-existant explanation I am considering using the popular term "lol"... In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU? Besides being too early to judge the effects yet, it is certainly worth mentioning that the UK, and more specifically London, was the financial business heart of Europe. This is very likely to change after they leave the EU. And when comparing the UK to Germany: Germany gets to keep its free market access to every EU country. UK is likely to be out of the common market very soon. - I can only assume that you are refering to the financial union being discussed. Yes, there are issues within the EU. This is however no basis to claim that the EU "does not work". If anything this is an issue that is being discussed and assessed currently and I would not be surprised to see an attempt at a resolution very soon. - "Does not work" needs a whole lot of elaboration to even know what to respond to it... But as a citizen within the EU, I can at least give some examples of things that clearly work: Not a single war on European EU soil since the inception of the EU (as opposed to the decades of warfare within Europe before that or the countless wars around the world in the past 50 years); No EU countries falling victim to civil wars or outside aggression (as opposed to other European countries: see Yugoslavian wars, Kosovo, Montenegro, Ukraine, and if you will: Georgia and Armenia); No EU countries being outright puppets of foreign powers (what most Eastern EU countries were before '89 and what enough countries in Africa and Asia still are); No executions, disappearances, or any kind of totalitarian oppression (a common thing in all former Eastern block EU countries during their communist eras); No dictators in any EU country as of yet (unlike Belarus with its last European dictator, or a bit more abstract and inaccurate but still kind of relevant - Russia with Putin); freedom of travel and cultural exchange (good luck travelling through the iron curtain before '89 or even to the next city (never mind the next country) if you happened to be in the Eastern block). Honestly, for these things alone the EU is already worthy of near unlimited praise. All the other benefits and advantages of the EU would require extensive elaboration as well juxtaposition with all the things going sub-optimally within the union. So I will just leave it at the most obvious examples, since I don't feel like listing a whole bunch of other stuff without the necessary backing and explanations that would require way too much effort to be appropriately described. On the UK, concerning its finances and the EU: en.wikipedia.orgIn terms of net contributions, Germany is by far the largest net contributor to the EU, even excluding all of the "bailouts." The second question revolves around this "Brexit" problem. To me, it is obvious what is happening now. The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit." If the EU wants to try to be vindictive, let them try. You cannot really account for what is going on inside of the Brussels insiders' heads. Both sides are pro-free-trade, officially, even after Brexit. The marginalia concerning rules and regulations are what the argument is about. I did not say anything about the "Financial union." There has not been a war inside the EU, because no one has an answer to nuclear weapons. There can be no war between the major powers until someone solves the problem concerning nukes. And no country not under some foreign nuclear cover can implicitly be attacked without concerning oneself with nukes, and that means most of Europe at the moment. Again, it depends on what your definition of a "puppet power" is. Some may argue that West Germany was a de facto puppet. And why do you think De Gaulle first vetoed UK's entry? Again, no power in Western Europe is comparable to Eastern Europe. We are talking about very different cultures. As I said, "totalitarian oppression" does not mean anything to me, and even if Russian rule in Eastern Europe was unpopular with the locals, the governments there were predicated upon the Russian occupation. And Russia had a Russian-style government. There was another country which had never experienced democratic government throughout its long history. They created your country, Bulgaria, in the 19th century, but that was as much an anti-Ottoman measure as anything. Every country must be seen in the realisation of its own national historical discourse. Germany was occupied in the west by the Anglo-Americans. France has had many revolutions, and came to be what it is during the Cold War. There are still cleavages between French and British national politics. Every country has its own story. Russia became a de-facto "democracy" in the last 30 years. It is a de-facto one party state, with the second most popular party in Russia nowadays being the Communist party. Nonetheless, Russia, whatever it has become today, has been officially "democratic" a lot longer than many European examples. A lot of what many people today, especially the Anglo-Americans think of as "democracy" is ironically the English political model. And that model has itself undergone a very crooked path. The word "dictator" also does not mean anything. Some of the so-called "Dictators" were very popular in their time. Very few "dictators" would have held onto power for long, if they did not have massive popular support at home. Perhaps an illustration of the point: qz.com EU's trade rules are public knowledge. Everyone can look up what is needed to get free trade with the EU. The UK is unwilling to make the commitment to those rules, that is part of why they decided to leave in the first place. I don't see how the EU sticking by its own rules is them being vindictive towards the UK. People have been talking since day 1 about how this would be a problem. I do not know what you are talking about here specifically,so let us here just stick with the issue of the "Fishing waters." The "Common fisheries policy," which is a huge part of the British economy, was set up in 1970...the EU changed itself in order to have more British fish. They "changed" the rules, so that new member countries, with very rich fishing waters, would have to pay their price for entry into the EU. You steered the conversation here so I will ask you again, what is punishing or vindictive about the EU wanting to ensure sustainable fishing in the region where both the UK and the EU are fishing from? I was not talking about sustainable fishing. There are other complaints that the British isles have related to the EU policy, which does not have anything to do with the endangerment of certain fish species. By all means bring them up and explain how its the EU being vindictive and not just following their own established policy. I said "if." Obviously, what we are experiencing now is still waiting to be settled. Obviously there are differences of opinion in the EU itself, and it is not clear by a long shot how it will ultimately be settled. A few care about Union Cohesion more than anything else. Most I am guessing do not. The UK itself has other options across the globe. Which aspect? I am not sure what you wanted to address. I just said that most of English fishing today is committed by foreigners. I never eat fish myself, so I do not know the bureaucratese behind it. Are you implying that "foreign fisheries" are an entity apart from "foreign fishermen"? I just assumed that they amounted to the same thing. Most English fishermen are today foreigners. Presumably foreign fisheries did their hiring practise among those people.
You brought up the poetic idea of fishermen working to maintain their way of life rather than for the money, and that EU policy was materialistic and oblivious to this aspect, and thus "forcing" the UK to do stuff they didn't want to in the context of EU. Meanwhile under UK's policy (not EU) it turns out that, no, fishermen have been selling off all their fishing quotas to foreign fishermen rather than using them themselves, and not pursuing that way of life at all: the EU had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this, so the deterioration of the UK's fishing trade is entirely self-inflicted. As a country, they obviously still maintain their rights to the waters, and cal sell quotas as they wish, but the EU has these quotas in order to at least attempt to make fishing sustainable. The UK agreeing with these sustainable quotas doesn't squeeze quaint traditional fishermen out of their way of life. It most definitely doesn't have anything to do with the EU being vindictive.
Seeing as you brought it up as an example of this, I am a bit confused why you don't want to discuss any of the aspects of it and are now claiming ignorance to everything surrounding it.
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On July 20 2020 20:35 stilt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2020 09:12 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 08:36 stilt wrote:On July 18 2020 20:13 Acrofales wrote:On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. It is simply wrong. What happens is that life continues as normal except that the shoemaker on the corner suddenly disappears and if you try to ask what happens you get shushed. And if you don't shush then maybe you disappear as well, but most people shush. And then when the butcher opposite disappears they join in doing the shushing. And life continues for these people mostly the same as it was before except they can't talk about certain topics. Of course, if you happen to be a Jew, or gay, or gypsy then no matter how much you shush, you got disappeared. And China isn't dissimilar right now with how they're rounding up Uyghurs and "reeducating" them. Oh, and the "social credit" ranking program is something the Nazis could only dream of. Reeducating them doesn't mean exterminating them, they have to process the love of the state for the sake of this sort of confucian social order, it isn't racially motivated. Well, not that I agree but I believe it should calm down unless the cia finances some terrorists which is bound to happen. Anyway, this comparaison is quite stupid. Nazi Germany was a protestant and capitalist country with a tradition of decentralism just like the USA and GB (ah, the benevolant british empire...) which actively try to genocide/destroy culture by assimilating and overwhelming them with this mindless entertaining industry. This is exactly the same elite, the same people, the same political horizon, the same racial capitalism that american "progressists" and let's call the international bourgeoisie you're probably part of now use masterfully with identity policies. Now, if you combine it with this remnant of manifest destiny, we got imperialist power which base their political culture on identitary conflicts. Which leads naturally to the idea that genocide is in the ethos of those countries... And this theory is quite true, when Germany tried to destroy Russia, some historians presented it as the courageous german soldiers who fought to prevent the commies threatened western civilization and they were rights in the sense that Nazi Germany is indeed the true face of the world dominated by USA with an elite absolutely certain of its superiority and ready to wash the world of everything which isn't them. A world my country is now part of as our elite is pretty happy with these consumerism combined with this mindless entertainement for the masses and has thus decided to adopt the american way of life. As a result, there is no difference between a french bourgeois and an american one, they speak the same language, read the same stuff (1984, on the road => the little catechism of the liberal, after this, they are now ready to die for freedom, how cute) and think totally alike. But when people resist, well, it turns into a civilization conflict in which for example every arab nation who doesn't compel is mercilessly destroyed, humiliated, bombed or even stolen while you are being extremely good at building narrative to justify it : your superiority of values, "Democracy" (well, considering how uneducated and instrumentalized people are in the West, I would rather called this a perfectly locked oligarchy and idiocracy) and ofc, the "good side of history" which is quite easy to do when it's people of your class which wrote it but I am pretty sure that one day, the West today will probably be considered as way worse than any of his ennemies. But I am being pretty optimistic because the derugalation of economy, the careful destruction of social and polticial bodies with identity policies really make me wonder how things can be done for climate change when everything is done to incapacitate strong moves in this matter. As would say Maggie, there are no society or politics, just communities. Edit : I am obviously support the idea of China taking over the world over Western barbarism, maybe they could even accidentally save Europe from it. You think the Han Chinese don't think themselves superior to those around them? Ha. Your knowledge of China is severely limited. The Chinese State is awful and Han Nationalism is a big problem which has contributed to the eradication of Uighur communities (and who knows what else as it is very secretive in that part of China). If you think ICE detention centers on the Mexican border are bad, that's nothing compared to Chinese treatment of their Uighur population (or how they've treated the Nepalese they've displaced, etc.). My point being that you don't need to compare all awful Governments to Nazi's to make a point how awful they are. It just obfuscates the real issues and leads to pointless semantic debates. I'm not even going to address how you believe enlightenment values are barbaric, but let's just say in practice I'm not sure you're going to enjoy Chinese authoritarianism very much if you ever get to experience it. You'd probably have a low social credit score and wouldn't be able to fly, ride a train or bus, buy luxuries / decent food or have a good job. (Which is conveniently not addressed by Nyxisto) Political oppression and curtailment of civil liberties is very high in China, some of the worlds worst in fact, made worse by widespread technological application. Just because some cities have relatively free economies is not really fully addressing the issues (which is why I brought up Pinochet in the first place). Ofc they feel superior, everybody feel superior to entairtainement industry as a culture. Reality show, disney, Harry Potter, Twilight, all the kitch of Las Vegas, sure, most people have a feeling of superiority toward it. As far as enlightment for the West, well well, Auchwitz. I mean, this is the pure product of racial capitalism. My point being nazi germany and usa share a very similar legacy and political culture. With its parody of american dream (Arbeit macht frei), his process of dehumanisation already discribed by Hugo in the Miserables (Fantine sell her body then her teeth, her hair...) isn't really enlightment just like the genocide attempt in Russia in 41-45, 25 millions deads while we're celebrating Normandy's landing... Or the attempt of destruction on this country in the 90s by the West, sth China experimented during the second part of the 19th century and almost imploded in the 20th. You can reject the fault on Putin and the CCP but in the end, these two countries would have opted for strong and authoritarian regimes just because the West want to destroy them. If you're talking about human right, well, french revolution is definetely a antiwestern thing with its universalism, centralism and progressive enphasis on social rights and brought the declaration of human right, end of slavery so... For question like feminism, this is even more hypocrite. Current feminism is dominated by anglosaxon ideology which means it is heavely identitary. My gf who happens to be arab and have a very patriarcal father (the guy is admirable in a lot of way but this is still a big problem) didn't receive much support because "we shouldn't judge a culture", I guess the West only judges the culture and condition of women when they bombard arab countries. It's funny, you're like "yeah yeah, look at what China does" while you're currently strangulating Lebanon and syria (after attempting to destroy it). I can continue with Syria and Iraq which usa totally FUCKED, Palestine which has been stolen with your total collaboration. Moreover, the french elite almost speaks better english than french, you just have to read the transcription of political debates 50 or 100 years ago to see the use of our language is in bad shape. In french university, les "départements de poésie" are replaced with "cultural studies", not even translated, we are fully american now and of course, the bibliography is full of western ouvrages all the more anglosaxon ones, in the end, our universities are just factories who are producing individualist and liberal fanatics who think they are so uniques and rebellious while they are exactly what they have been formed to be. Our bookshop are depleted of french classic or other monument of literature (no way you would find a Ernst Junger, Knut Hamsun books in the major brands), the most visited thing is Disneyland Paris, the most aceptised bs in Europe... I mean, my culture is just dying, the us is absorbing or eradicating absolutely everything. And to justify it, you're implying the oppression/imperialism of the european culture but it's just a pretext for your liberal cultural revolution, every major culture has reposed on pretty bad stuffs (but still way less bad than yours !), this is just a pretext for barbary who is spreading though the whole world. Racial capitalism from the West is probably the most stable capitalist society there is with people only concerned about identitary conflicts with a smokescreen called democracy but which is rather a total plutocraty with a drowsiness of the masses. My colleagues who happen to be teacher are not even able to defend themselves when 15%-20% of their pension is retired for the benefit of the assurance, they don't have the energy for this, freaking molluscs, there is no cohesion, the only thing which can move them on might be identitary conflict. In conclusion, while I don't have much illusion on China, for the sake of Middle East, my country and every cultures and nations in the world, it would be nice if usa was beaten by China.
Please never use Auschwitz in any way or form for an argument, ever again. Ever. It is fucking distasteful to compare any form of cultural influence, if you like it or not, to a factory with the goal to transform humans into ash. Oh boohoo, France is influenced by anglo-american culture. France has for centuries exported their culture to every other nation it knew of, and it still does. All culture is evolving and is always influenced by culture from outside of a nation. Germans have for centuries spoken french when they wanted to show how cultural they were. I bet you would not have been sad for the poor germans for their destroyed culture. And speficially in regards to France, it's your own fault. France has tried so hard to resist all outside influence that it made the youth love it so much more. No other european country has tried so hard to keep the barbarians out, i would not be surprised if this means that your youth now is especially hungry for content from outside of your glorious cultural heritage.
By the way, if i sound especially salty about this, ask a 14 year old german boy why he is so bitter about french nationalism and superiority complex and he will answer that in several vacations to France, trying to connect with the people there, speaking passable french for 2 years of school. His experience, France is the only country in which some people are not sure if they hate you more for speaking French as a German/Foreigner or English/German. In no other country he has ever seen people not preferring to be addressed in their own language, in France, well....
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I was 3 months in France. They clearly like it if you ask in french, while looking at you like some absolute moron for your accent. Still better than the reaction if you instantly try german or english  .
I liked my time there but oh boy... Are the french "french" with all the good and bad that comes with it.
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You seem to be walking back a lot of what you are saying. Maybe you should take some time to actually think about what your position is and why you hold that position.
I said exactly what I mean. You just need to read what I said. I cannot read anyone else's mind, and neither can you. That was the "if" part. Every word that I write means something. I am not making any jumps here. Maybe double-check your own assumptions about what I wrote, before you write.
The part where it is an effect of UK's own government policies and not a fault of EU.
I do not eat fish, and am unaware of how much of the UK's fishing industry is now in the hands of the EU, rather than other immigrants. Matters are still being hashed out,in terms of the economic agreement as we speak.
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Or maybe You should explain Yourself more clearly as people evidently have problems deciphering what You actually mean.
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The talks are still ongoing, so we do not know how this will all turn out. I cannot make factual statements for a future scenario, unless it be on the level of a prognosis.
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On July 21 2020 01:11 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +You seem to be walking back a lot of what you are saying. Maybe you should take some time to actually think about what your position is and why you hold that position.
I said exactly what I mean. You just need to read what I said. I cannot read anyone else's mind, and neither can you. That was the "if" part. Every word that I write means something. I am not making any jumps here. Maybe double-check your own assumptions about what I wrote, before you write.
Okay, I went to some effort to understand your point about fisheries, and I think I have it:
The British in the 1970s were very attached to their fishing industry. So in order to protect those fishing rights better, *after* the UK joined, or maybe as a concession in order to get them to join (?), the EU changed its policy on fishing rights in order to protect the UK's fisheries. Therefore, the EU is not opposed to changing its rules, and should be open to changing them in order to accommodate a trade policy with the UK.
Did I understand that correctly? If so, please tell me why you are comparing apples to oranges. The EU passes new legislation all the time. Some of it is no doubt, pork. The most obvious example of idiotic pork legislation is how the parliament moves up and down between Brussels and Strassbourg as an age-old concession to the French. It also has arcane labyrinthine farming subsidies that cut out exclusions, inclusions, exclusions to inclusions, etc. in order to keep all its members happy. And.. I haven't read anything about the fishing rights and quota not being negotiable, but it is a sticking point. Because obviously treaties are already in place with Norway, and all the EU countries want stuff to not change, or if they do, then for the better for them. What absolutely is non-negotiable, though, is the 4 freedoms. You can have all 4 of them, or you can leave all 4 of them, but you cannot pick and choose. Access to the single market cannot be achieved without taking all of it. That has been so since Maggie Thatcher proposed it in the 80s and it was placed into law in the Treaty of Maastricht, which is basically the founding document of the modern EU. In theory, an exception *could* be made for the Brits, but if an exception were to be made for the Brits, I suspect the EU would crumble. Everybody else would also want an exception. So in practice, they cannot be separated without ending the EU as we know it. While I'm sure the Brits would be delighted, the rest of us wouldn't. So there is quite a big difference between asking for a negotiation over fishing rights (fine) and wanting free movement of goods, but not of people.
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Northern Ireland25071 Posts
On July 21 2020 01:50 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The talks are still ongoing, so we do not know how this will all turn out. I cannot make factual statements for a future scenario, unless it be on the level of a prognosis.
Well no, but pursuit of said future undecided scenario seems to be something you were for the U.K. doing, with the example of the EU’s fisheries policy. Or at least that’s what I got from your initial posts.
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On July 21 2020 01:11 MoltkeWarding wrote:Show nested quote +You seem to be walking back a lot of what you are saying. Maybe you should take some time to actually think about what your position is and why you hold that position.
I said exactly what I mean. You just need to read what I said. I cannot read anyone else's mind, and neither can you. That was the "if" part. Every word that I write means something. I am not making any jumps here. Maybe double-check your own assumptions about what I wrote, before you write.
You said, when asked how the EU is vindictive, that you said "if the EU is vindictive".
That if wasn't meant as "if they decide to be vindictive", but the same way you say "if he wants to cry, let him cry" to your partner when your kid is having a fit.
The EU intends to sink the UK to punish it for "Brexit."
There's no "if". That's the sentence right before the one you're suggesting wasn't meant as a "fact" because you said "if". You, in fact, said that this is obvious to you.
In regards to reading, glasshouse and stuff.
You answered this question:
In what way did the UK get a good deal from leaving the EU?
With a wikipedia link to the UK rebate. Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything regarding his question. Zero.
If you get caught bullshitting, own up to it rather than trying to ride a wave of pretentiousness out of it. There's no harm to accepting that you're wrong.
Second, don't argue about things you clearly have no understanding about, like fishing. The only reason we're talking about it is because one of the smallest industries in the UK (0.12% of the GDP, employs less than 0.1% of the UK workforce) has some of the biggest lobbyists in the country. Experts are baffled to this day why this is even argued, fishing is completely irrelevant. You can dry out the rivers and sea tomorrow and it would barely have an impact on the UK as a whole.
Compare that to the financial and service sector. That's almost 80% of the entire UK GDP (and 85% of britains workforce), and both sectors get shafted big time.
But yeah.. Huge part of the economy, fishing is.
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On July 21 2020 00:58 Broetchenholer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2020 20:35 stilt wrote:On July 19 2020 09:12 Wegandi wrote:On July 19 2020 08:36 stilt wrote:On July 18 2020 20:13 Acrofales wrote:On July 18 2020 19:54 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 19:45 sharkie wrote:On July 18 2020 18:45 Nyxisto wrote:On July 18 2020 08:19 Sermokala wrote:
China is definitely everything nazi Germany was if Hitler wasn't making explicit speeches about hating jews and just wanted to kill them in private. Its a wildly corrupt combination of state-owned industries, partially state-owned industries working as proxies, and no real accountability at any level of government that is controlled through one party that decides every other position in government.
Theres really nothing communist or socialist about the country anymore. They just keep the fiction running to stay in power. Having state-owned business doesn't turn you into Nazi Germany, what the hell lol. I was in Shenzhen for work about a year ago and I can safely tell you that it was nothing like Nazi Germany. China is an autocratic state, not a totalitarian one. The country is depoliticized, not caught in a giant struggle for life and death and total war. China's private sector is also large, probably 60-70% of the economy, a lot of it informal. In many ways the country is so capitalist it makes the US look socialist, competition between private firms is cutthroat in ways you don't find in many other places. So you know what it was like in Nazi Germany? Being German, having family who lived through World War 2, having talked to actual holocaust survivors I'm pretty sure I have a better grasp on what it was like in Nazi Germany than someone comparing every non-democratic government on the planet to it, yes. For most people, Nazi Germany was just another government. In fact, initially maybe even better than the previous one, because they stopped paying the ridiculous reparations and invested in huge government projects that gave many people jobs. We have this weird idea that because a regime is terrible, it must be awful for everyone living there. It is simply wrong. What happens is that life continues as normal except that the shoemaker on the corner suddenly disappears and if you try to ask what happens you get shushed. And if you don't shush then maybe you disappear as well, but most people shush. And then when the butcher opposite disappears they join in doing the shushing. And life continues for these people mostly the same as it was before except they can't talk about certain topics. Of course, if you happen to be a Jew, or gay, or gypsy then no matter how much you shush, you got disappeared. And China isn't dissimilar right now with how they're rounding up Uyghurs and "reeducating" them. Oh, and the "social credit" ranking program is something the Nazis could only dream of. Reeducating them doesn't mean exterminating them, they have to process the love of the state for the sake of this sort of confucian social order, it isn't racially motivated. Well, not that I agree but I believe it should calm down unless the cia finances some terrorists which is bound to happen. Anyway, this comparaison is quite stupid. Nazi Germany was a protestant and capitalist country with a tradition of decentralism just like the USA and GB (ah, the benevolant british empire...) which actively try to genocide/destroy culture by assimilating and overwhelming them with this mindless entertaining industry. This is exactly the same elite, the same people, the same political horizon, the same racial capitalism that american "progressists" and let's call the international bourgeoisie you're probably part of now use masterfully with identity policies. Now, if you combine it with this remnant of manifest destiny, we got imperialist power which base their political culture on identitary conflicts. Which leads naturally to the idea that genocide is in the ethos of those countries... And this theory is quite true, when Germany tried to destroy Russia, some historians presented it as the courageous german soldiers who fought to prevent the commies threatened western civilization and they were rights in the sense that Nazi Germany is indeed the true face of the world dominated by USA with an elite absolutely certain of its superiority and ready to wash the world of everything which isn't them. A world my country is now part of as our elite is pretty happy with these consumerism combined with this mindless entertainement for the masses and has thus decided to adopt the american way of life. As a result, there is no difference between a french bourgeois and an american one, they speak the same language, read the same stuff (1984, on the road => the little catechism of the liberal, after this, they are now ready to die for freedom, how cute) and think totally alike. But when people resist, well, it turns into a civilization conflict in which for example every arab nation who doesn't compel is mercilessly destroyed, humiliated, bombed or even stolen while you are being extremely good at building narrative to justify it : your superiority of values, "Democracy" (well, considering how uneducated and instrumentalized people are in the West, I would rather called this a perfectly locked oligarchy and idiocracy) and ofc, the "good side of history" which is quite easy to do when it's people of your class which wrote it but I am pretty sure that one day, the West today will probably be considered as way worse than any of his ennemies. But I am being pretty optimistic because the derugalation of economy, the careful destruction of social and polticial bodies with identity policies really make me wonder how things can be done for climate change when everything is done to incapacitate strong moves in this matter. As would say Maggie, there are no society or politics, just communities. Edit : I am obviously support the idea of China taking over the world over Western barbarism, maybe they could even accidentally save Europe from it. You think the Han Chinese don't think themselves superior to those around them? Ha. Your knowledge of China is severely limited. The Chinese State is awful and Han Nationalism is a big problem which has contributed to the eradication of Uighur communities (and who knows what else as it is very secretive in that part of China). If you think ICE detention centers on the Mexican border are bad, that's nothing compared to Chinese treatment of their Uighur population (or how they've treated the Nepalese they've displaced, etc.). My point being that you don't need to compare all awful Governments to Nazi's to make a point how awful they are. It just obfuscates the real issues and leads to pointless semantic debates. I'm not even going to address how you believe enlightenment values are barbaric, but let's just say in practice I'm not sure you're going to enjoy Chinese authoritarianism very much if you ever get to experience it. You'd probably have a low social credit score and wouldn't be able to fly, ride a train or bus, buy luxuries / decent food or have a good job. (Which is conveniently not addressed by Nyxisto) Political oppression and curtailment of civil liberties is very high in China, some of the worlds worst in fact, made worse by widespread technological application. Just because some cities have relatively free economies is not really fully addressing the issues (which is why I brought up Pinochet in the first place). Ofc they feel superior, everybody feel superior to entairtainement industry as a culture. Reality show, disney, Harry Potter, Twilight, all the kitch of Las Vegas, sure, most people have a feeling of superiority toward it. As far as enlightment for the West, well well, Auchwitz. I mean, this is the pure product of racial capitalism. My point being nazi germany and usa share a very similar legacy and political culture. With its parody of american dream (Arbeit macht frei), his process of dehumanisation already discribed by Hugo in the Miserables (Fantine sell her body then her teeth, her hair...) isn't really enlightment just like the genocide attempt in Russia in 41-45, 25 millions deads while we're celebrating Normandy's landing... Or the attempt of destruction on this country in the 90s by the West, sth China experimented during the second part of the 19th century and almost imploded in the 20th. You can reject the fault on Putin and the CCP but in the end, these two countries would have opted for strong and authoritarian regimes just because the West want to destroy them. If you're talking about human right, well, french revolution is definetely a antiwestern thing with its universalism, centralism and progressive enphasis on social rights and brought the declaration of human right, end of slavery so... For question like feminism, this is even more hypocrite. Current feminism is dominated by anglosaxon ideology which means it is heavely identitary. My gf who happens to be arab and have a very patriarcal father (the guy is admirable in a lot of way but this is still a big problem) didn't receive much support because "we shouldn't judge a culture", I guess the West only judges the culture and condition of women when they bombard arab countries. It's funny, you're like "yeah yeah, look at what China does" while you're currently strangulating Lebanon and syria (after attempting to destroy it). I can continue with Syria and Iraq which usa totally FUCKED, Palestine which has been stolen with your total collaboration. Moreover, the french elite almost speaks better english than french, you just have to read the transcription of political debates 50 or 100 years ago to see the use of our language is in bad shape. In french university, les "départements de poésie" are replaced with "cultural studies", not even translated, we are fully american now and of course, the bibliography is full of western ouvrages all the more anglosaxon ones, in the end, our universities are just factories who are producing individualist and liberal fanatics who think they are so uniques and rebellious while they are exactly what they have been formed to be. Our bookshop are depleted of french classic or other monument of literature (no way you would find a Ernst Junger, Knut Hamsun books in the major brands), the most visited thing is Disneyland Paris, the most aceptised bs in Europe... I mean, my culture is just dying, the us is absorbing or eradicating absolutely everything. And to justify it, you're implying the oppression/imperialism of the european culture but it's just a pretext for your liberal cultural revolution, every major culture has reposed on pretty bad stuffs (but still way less bad than yours !), this is just a pretext for barbary who is spreading though the whole world. Racial capitalism from the West is probably the most stable capitalist society there is with people only concerned about identitary conflicts with a smokescreen called democracy but which is rather a total plutocraty with a drowsiness of the masses. My colleagues who happen to be teacher are not even able to defend themselves when 15%-20% of their pension is retired for the benefit of the assurance, they don't have the energy for this, freaking molluscs, there is no cohesion, the only thing which can move them on might be identitary conflict. In conclusion, while I don't have much illusion on China, for the sake of Middle East, my country and every cultures and nations in the world, it would be nice if usa was beaten by China. Please never use Auschwitz in any way or form for an argument, ever again. Ever. It is fucking distasteful to compare any form of cultural influence, if you like it or not, to a factory with the goal to transform humans into ash. Oh boohoo, France is influenced by anglo-american culture. France has for centuries exported their culture to every other nation it knew of, and it still does. All culture is evolving and is always influenced by culture from outside of a nation. Germans have for centuries spoken french when they wanted to show how cultural they were. I bet you would not have been sad for the poor germans for their destroyed culture. And speficially in regards to France, it's your own fault. France has tried so hard to resist all outside influence that it made the youth love it so much more. No other european country has tried so hard to keep the barbarians out, i would not be surprised if this means that your youth now is especially hungry for content from outside of your glorious cultural heritage. By the way, if i sound especially salty about this, ask a 14 year old german boy why he is so bitter about french nationalism and superiority complex and he will answer that in several vacations to France, trying to connect with the people there, speaking passable french for 2 years of school. His experience, France is the only country in which some people are not sure if they hate you more for speaking French as a German/Foreigner or English/German. In no other country he has ever seen people not preferring to be addressed in their own language, in France, well....
This is not a auchwitz comparaison, auchwitz is deep rooted inside western culture, just accept it rather than painting youselves as the savior of the world. You're not, you are his destroyer, and this is not only about France but for the whole world.
"Ask a 14 yo german" lol, what a argument, I am quite speechless, just like the QQ because a french dude didn't answer you in english or treated you badly, poor soul, do I have to apologize for it, will you one day forgive a whole culture for this affront ? I hope you're recovering well. The funny thing is I spent some time in Germany too when I was 14 and it was a fucking nightmare, the very worst moment of my short life at this time, but alas, I didn't use this very personal experience to generalyze.
Anyway don't worry, our yourh is not different that you and other from Europe, they act like they are supposed to do and they love what they are determined too, there is no difference, that's the point but it's not only the youth, I am not into generation conflict, this thinking is so stupid, that's the whole society since ww2.
At least, you seem to agree that my culture is absorbed and are pretty happy about it which proves every points I developped.
Now, I guess you will tell me a arab spat on you one day so they deserve what is happening to them in middle east is that right ?
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What are you even talking about? Auschwitz is not rooted in western society. You did it again, throwing something in a conversation it has nothing to do with. There have been zero repeats of Auschwitz since it has happened. Not in western culture nor in any other. It is, to this day, the one worst thing our species has done and it has zero to do with cultural imperialism. So stop it.
On the rest, yeah, of course you would cling to the anecdote. That France has been trying harder then other countries to enshrine their past culture and resist outside influence is well known, at least compared to Germany. We did not have quotas for German songs in the radio for example. This however, is like trying to turn back time. So you also want to go back to the time, where everybody listens to classical music? Which arbitrary time in the past do you want to mimic?
And just to get this straight, I have absolutely no beef with the French, my encounters with a few of them were unpleasant and showed a pattern but were way too few to generalize from it. I just believe that sentences like the French culture is absorbed is fucking stupid. It's like saying my air is being polluted, as if your air was somehow seperate from the rest of the air and had special qualities to it. And it's also implying that your air is more precious then the rest and you get to decide who gets to change that air and who does not.
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We did not have quotas for German songs in the radio for example.
That is incorrect:
Radio stations have been created in a manner to create safe havens for national/regional music. Why else do you think there are so many radio and TV stations on a regional level? At least in Austria I know that much of the money for national television and radio goes directly into the politically controlled federal studios.
Huge amounts of subventions have been going into the creation and distribution of German music e.g. Schlager in all three German states.
The GDR had a 60:40 quota for East music over West music.
The situation has gotten better though in the past decades.
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Another interesting area for that is the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy in a lot of EU countries. As far as I know most of those are put into the local pockets. Another way to promote local culture apart from the direct payments from the government as part of their cultural money.
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On July 21 2020 16:31 Broetchenholer wrote:
What are you even talking about? Auschwitz is not rooted in western society. You did it again, throwing something in a conversation it has nothing to do with. There have been zero repeats of Auschwitz since it has happened. Not in western culture nor in any other. It is, to this day, the one worst thing our species has done and it has zero to do with cultural imperialism. So stop it.
On the rest, yeah, of course you would cling to the anecdote. That France has been trying harder then other countries to enshrine their past culture and resist outside influence is well known, at least compared to Germany. We did not have quotas for German songs in the radio for example. This however, is like trying to turn back time. So you also want to go back to the time, where everybody listens to classical music? Which arbitrary time in the past do you want to mimic?
And just to get this straight, I have absolutely no beef with the French, my encounters with a few of them were unpleasant and showed a pattern but were way too few to generalize from it. I just believe that sentences like the French culture is absorbed is fucking stupid. It's like saying my air is being polluted, as if your air was somehow seperate from the rest of the air and had special qualities to it. And it's also implying that your air is more precious then the rest and you get to decide who gets to change that air and who does not.
The French have their own issues with their cultural purveyance, but so do the Germans. I read that in some schools today, half of the pupils are Arabs. In France obviously they have much more experience with these Arabs, due to colonisation. Some of the horror stories that you hear around Paris may be coming to Germany.
Mass immigration is a difficult issue for every Western country. Obviously, the West gets a lot of it, because it is rich and successful. People want your resources the world over. Yet they come in, pay no attention to Western laws, sometimes in Germany do not even learn German.
Is this a generational thing? Perhaps. I am an immigrant to the "West" myself, and I have mentally adjusted. But perhaps religion is another one of those odd things which you cannot really stamp out of a people. Many religions have made many prophecies, like that doomsday Christian cult in the USA, which made so many predictions about the end of the world. But every time, they just update their predictions and do not even want their kids to go to school, etc.
But it has been going on for more than a century, and no doubt Islam will too. Here, I have a few friends from "Muslim" countries. None is a Muslim. One belongs to the religion of the "Ba'hai." She came here to study, because Iran has banned her kind from going to university. The other is from Saudi Arabia, who told me that she is an atheist. Saudi Arabia declared all atheists to be "terrorists," so obviously she could not say it at home.
On the other hand, if you ban all immigration, I would still be Chinese. Right now I am thinking: maybe allow a manageable amount in every generation, but not so much as to overwhelm the native population.
You said, when asked how the EU is vindictive, that you said "if the EU is vindictive".
That if wasn't meant as "if they decide to be vindictive", but the same way you say "if he wants to cry, let him cry" to your partner when your kid is having a fit.
The negotiations are still going on. As I said, if you read my words properly, the EU has many minds about the Brexit issue. I cannot read minds, and made no forecasts. IF meant IF. Basic reading comprehension there.
There's no "if". That's the sentence right before the one you're suggesting wasn't meant as a "fact" because you said "if". You, in fact, said that this is obvious to you.]There's no "if". That's the sentence right before the one you're suggesting wasn't meant as a "fact" because you said "if". You, in fact, said that this is obvious to you.
That was a small prognostication on my part. Of course, spliced with my earlier statement that the EU has many minds about the UK, you must take it as a kind of thing that they are still arguing about in Brussels. But that sentence was unconnected with the previous one, and if you wanted to, you could have linked it to my many statements about many opinions in the EU about Brexit, but chose not to. In my experience, where you have two minds about something, you often meet in the middle. Like with this coronavirus bailout package for the EU. They met in the middle. There is every reason to believe that they will do so for future Brexit positions too.
With a wikipedia link to the UK rebate. Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything regarding his question. Zero.
If you get caught bullshitting, own up to it rather than trying to ride a wave of pretentiousness out of it. There's no harm to accepting that you're wrong.
Okay. You are wrong. Try to keep up with the conversation, if you are going to engage in it. What I said was linked to another person's point. Read his and then talk about it, if you want. Stop being wrong though.
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EPT
