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Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

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Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#251
post #40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation needed. The people pushing for more integration are politicians and bureaucrats, not normal people. Most of the EU (indeed most of the Western world) is in a democratic crisis - moving decision-making even further away from citizens by centralizing it in Brussels is only going to exacerbate that, leading to more anti-EU sentiment and more brexits.

First Google result: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/the-european-u... >The people pushing for more integration are politicians and bureaucrats, not normal people. That's simply not true. There are multiple civil society organizations pushing for a closer union. People are voting for parties that are explicitly pro-European.

Not one of the linked questions from that survey measured whether the respondents wanted more integration between EU countries, only how favorably they viewed the EU. So just to be clear: Those two things are very different. There's a world of difference between wanting more international cooperation (or actually, just liking the current amount of international cooperation) and wanting to give up more sovereignty. I'm not arguing against the EU being viewed favorably by the citizens of the EU - that is indeed generally the case. Case in point, I myself view the EU favorably, yet I'm also very concerned that about the push toward making it more of a supra-national organization (above its member states legally, who have given it sovereignty, and are forced into new deals, even ones its citizens disagree fiercely with) and less of an international organization (a forum for discussion and facilitator of agreements between its member states, who maintain their sovereignty, and are able to opt out of deals they don't want to be in). The people driving this push are indeed politicians and bureaucrats, not the general electorate. And why wouldn't it be - if you asked a normal person on the street "would you prefer that the laws governing your country are made by the politicians in your parliament that you know the names of, and have a say in electing, or primarily by hundreds of politicians from other countries, that might have a completetely different culture than you, and that you have no say in electing?" what do you think the response would be?

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative doesn't really mean much anymore on its own. CDU might be considered conservative by Western European standards, but it's liberal by Eastern European standards.

> CDU might be considered conservative by Western European standards, but it's liberal by Eastern European standards. Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious-authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting goalposts. CDU also was modernized by Merkel after the right-wing conservatives got booted off/sidetracked in the early '00s following a massiv…

>> CDU might be considered conservative by Western European >> standards, but it's liberal by Eastern European standards.

> Which is mostly a result of Eastern European countries > turning outright fascist (Hungary) or religious- > authoritarian (Poland), it's a classic game of shifting > goalposts.

You are seriously wrong aka naive or intentionally missing truth.

a) current Hungary and Poland ruling parties just trying to make their countries strong, finish with some colonialism-like practices. Nothing fashist or autoritarism here. b) liberal and socialist (ex commies hire) disqualificate themselves via scams and -gates, stupidity and not doing ANYTHING for their own ppls.

You should better start to be concern about democracy in France (military state by now), Germany (censorship) and Espana (country suicide).

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#253
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservative doesn't really mean much anymore on its own. CDU might be considered conservative by Western European standards, but it's liberal by Eastern European standards.

A lot of political labels have a different, often opposite, meaning in Europe compared to the US. A liberal in Europe refers to classical liberalism. We also have many political parties, so a liberal here is not necessary a christian conservative. Politics is more nuanced.

I disagree. Perhaps it meant so in the past, but nowadays most commentators in Europe use liberal and left-wing almost interchangeably.

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#254
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly there was a similar case in Saudi Arabia a few years back, where McKinsey hired the sons of bureaucrats in Aramco and other government departments in exchange for all the lucrative consulting contracts. Goldman Sachs did the same with 1MDB and Libya and were caught. It's an open secret now that giving the kids the jobs is a foolproof route to getting contracts.

People are misunderstanding the nature of this stuff. This is not corruption, it's just favours. Nobody is awarding a major contract to get their kid an associate job at McKinsey. The contract is awarded to McKinsey, if the person holding the purse has someone looking to get into such a role, then it's a nice thing that McKinsey can do in return. My mother was a director of customer service and used to hire all of my…

Except McKinsey didn't hire them after getting the contracts, but before, which clearly positions it to get many contracts. A few years back, it was clear as day that most of the govt business went to McKinsey in the Middle East, while BCG and Bain often received scraps.

Relevant article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-growing-saudi-business-mckin...

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> heck EU members don't really have a name do they? This is very funny assuming you are from the USA. What do you call yourselves?

Americans? Do you identify as solely as European?

The funny part is that you don't have a name that only applies to people from your country. As the other comment said, there many millions of Americans that are not from the US.

In the same vein, people from the EU call themselves Europeans even though there are many millions of Europeans that don't live in EU countries.

To answer your question: I identify myself as European, Spaniard and Catalan. Just like I'm pretty sure there will be some people in the US that consider themselves Americans and Texans or Californians or New Yorkers or whatever...

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The economic migrants that have travelled to Europe illegally are mostly illiterate and with few skills. They are consistently borne out to be at the bottom of society and over-represented on welfare rolls and jails. Essentially they will form a permanent underclass in Europe and a forever burden. They come into Europe to work on huge farms owned by wealthy Europeans. Here is an example - essentially all of the manua…

That's just complete bs! most migrants are escaping humanitarian crisis caused in the first place by the west!

Sure, it's not like the current lines of conflict haven't existed for hundreds of years or anything. This reductionist mentality is really starting wear thin.

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#257
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of political labels have a different, often opposite, meaning in Europe compared to the US. A liberal in Europe refers to classical liberalism. We also have many political parties, so a liberal here is not necessary a christian conservative. Politics is more nuanced.

I disagree. Perhaps it meant so in the past, but nowadays most commentators in Europe use liberal and left-wing almost interchangeably.

Do they? Are you talking about UK? They don't do so in Sweden at least. UK is quite different from the rest of Europe on many points so they don't really count.

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#258
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of political labels have a different, often opposite, meaning in Europe compared to the US. A liberal in Europe refers to classical liberalism. We also have many political parties, so a liberal here is not necessary a christian conservative. Politics is more nuanced.

>" a liberal here is not necessary a christian conservative" // They're pretty much opposite sides of the political spectrum in UK. Where are they anything other than that?

Liberal economic policies means low taxes, so in Sweden they are a right wing party. Why would they be anything but right wing?

Basically the most liberal party is for low taxes, for diversity and for secularism. If you want high taxes then you aren't a liberal.

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did her son have to do with anything? And quite frankly, even though the optics were probably not very good, I don't know of any corruption on the part of Ursula von der Leyen that was conclusively shown.

She hired the company where her son was working using taxpayer money. And then that company paid commission for it to her son. So she indirectly paid taxpayer money to her son.

That's not the problem. The problem is that if you are IBM or Microsoft you better hire Ursula's sons to get contracts. How much money her sons receive is irrelevant.

Re: Germany will violate international agreements with Unitary Patent, says FFII

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>" a liberal here is not necessary a christian conservative" // They're pretty much opposite sides of the political spectrum in UK. Where are they anything other than that?

Liberal economic policies means low taxes, so in Sweden they are a right wing party. Why would they be anything but right wing? Basically the most liberal party is for low taxes, for diversity and for secularism. If you want high taxes then you aren't a liberal.

In Germany the liberal party is the FDP, who are seen as centric (so between left and right). The left wants your taxes for social programs, the right wants your taxes for security, the FDP just wants lower taxes (but achieved by reducing bureaucracy and overheads, not by running a deficit like the US's political right).
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