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EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

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Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#101

Post by inglor_cz »

saubeidl wrote: post #96
inglor_cz wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The will of the people never mattered. All that matters is ideology and force to execute on it." OK, hence your admiration of China. Now I understand. "Yeah, what's attractive for former Eastern Block countries is mooching off Western Europe, taking our money" As of now, places like Germany are stagnating so much that they are called "the sick man of Europe" again, while places like Poland show enormous economic ups…

> How dare those uppity Slavs have any ideas that conflict with our better wisdom, right? I am an uppity Slav myself, brate. > Neither Czech lands, nor Slovenia, Galicia etc. were, in any sense, Austrian colonies. It was an amalgamation of old medieval kingdoms under one ruling house. As citizens of the old empire, we were all equal under the law - not a colonial situation where the natives are usually second-class p…

Comparing Austria-Hungary to the former Soviet Union is pure lunacy. I wonder if you have been reading Mencius Moldbug too much.

"The reason Europe has been doing poorly lately is because of deluded utopists thinking it isn't. "

So you think that democracy is inherently poorer and weaker than autocracies? (Again, this sounds like Mencius Moldbug.) We have had our fair share of autocratic empires in Europe across centuries, all of them are gone. Many actually collapsed after losing a war. How so, if they are so inherently powerful?

We have different problems, such as aging of the population. But so does China, which worsened its own demographic situation by clinging to its autocratic One Child Policy until 2016, about 20 years more than it was even useful.

We also have a bureaucratic problem. Again, this is not specifically democratic disease. Every big country requires bureaucracy to run, and it can easily overwhelm the rest of the system.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#102

Post by saubeidl »

inglor_cz wrote: post #101
saubeidl wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How dare those uppity Slavs have any ideas that conflict with our better wisdom, right? I am an uppity Slav myself, brate. > Neither Czech lands, nor Slovenia, Galicia etc. were, in any sense, Austrian colonies. It was an amalgamation of old medieval kingdoms under one ruling house. As citizens of the old empire, we were all equal under the law - not a colonial situation where the natives are usually second-class p…

Comparing Austria-Hungary to the former Soviet Union is pure lunacy. I wonder if you have been reading Mencius Moldbug too much. "The reason Europe has been doing poorly lately is because of deluded utopists thinking it isn't. " So you think that democracy is inherently poorer and weaker than autocracies? (Again, this sounds like Mencius Moldbug.) We have had our fair share of autocratic empires in Europe across cent…

I am pretty much diametrically opposed to Yarvin ideologically. I think his plans are for a dystopia.

I do think that bourgeois democracy is just a thin veil for capitalist interest and that unless the economy is democratized, nothing is.

The closest model to follow would probably be post-Stalin-Split Yugoslavia under Tito. I especially like the concepts of worker self-management, which imo is a much more meaningfully democratic system than the autocratic capitalist ownership structures of western liberalism.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#103

Post by spurgu »

8fingerlouie wrote: post #74
mrtksn wrote: post #46

>At the beginning of the month, the Danish Presidency decided to change its approach with a new compromise text that makes the chat scanning voluntary, instead. Hmm, so this will probably make the life for those who don't scan quite hard and if they experience a high profile scandal getting out of it will not be easy I assume. I'm not sure what to think of it, not being mandatory and requiring risk assessment sounds…

They have removed the backdoor paragraph, and inserted a new one that states that scanning is entirely voluntary and best effort, and also state that the EU cannot force them to scan. As far as the mass surveillance scanning goes, it has completely been removed, and what remains is still the mandatory age checks, which might be problematic. From reading the specification, it appears to be reasonably well designed, wh…

Problem is that once you've gotten this thing through to begin with it's comparatively easy to make slight amendments later, also of course with the justification of "protecting the children".

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#104

Post by inglor_cz »

saubeidl wrote: post #102
inglor_cz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Austria-Hungary to the former Soviet Union is pure lunacy. I wonder if you have been reading Mencius Moldbug too much. "The reason Europe has been doing poorly lately is because of deluded utopists thinking it isn't. " So you think that democracy is inherently poorer and weaker than autocracies? (Again, this sounds like Mencius Moldbug.) We have had our fair share of autocratic empires in Europe across cent…

I am pretty much diametrically opposed to Yarvin ideologically. I think his plans are for a dystopia. I do think that bourgeois democracy is just a thin veil for capitalist interest and that unless the economy is democratized, nothing is. The closest model to follow would probably be post-Stalin-Split Yugoslavia under Tito. I especially like the concepts of worker self-management, which imo is a much more meaningfull…

Tito was, by all accounts, a very capable politician, but he also built a system that, 10 years after his death, disintegrated in a fountain of blood.

I like systems that withstood some test of time and adversary winds. Titoist Yugoslavia didn't.

OK, so you like the concept of worker self-management. At the same time, you admire the economic power of the US and China. Neither seems to be based on worker self-management.

Worker cooperatives are legal in most of the world, but regardless of local specifics, they seem to have trouble crossing a certain productivity level. The largest one is located in Basque country, where a local feeling of nationalism and somewhat of a siege mentality re larger nations (France, Spain) might have fueled its size. In general, cooperatives have trouble holding on to their best talent, because it can get better wages elsewhere.

If worker cooperatives were a globally competitive institution, we would see a lot more of them.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#105

Post by inglor_cz »

surgical_fire wrote: post #42
inglor_cz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask local armed forces, judges or police whether they would back Brussels or their local government if it came to an actual forceful showdown. This is the ultimate legitimacy test, not things written on paper.

> things written on paper. "things written on paper" is the basis of any serious, respectable country. "Things written on paper" should be respected, because when you are serious about your commitments, words matter. I don't want to see the country I live in become a shithole because local armed forces or police think themselves above the law. The ultimate legitimacy test is whether you are serious about the things y…

OK, let me formulate this better. Let us say that you have a serious conflict between two such papers.

One of them is the nation's constitution, the other is a decision from Brussels, and people from politicians down to the regular cop will have to choose their allegiance, A or B.

I claim that in such situation, in most EU nations, their constitutions will win. They are held in higher emotional regard, as they have behind them a long legacy of struggle and memory of people whose lives were martyred in a fight for national freedom.

Which is actually why Brussels shouldn't push some things too hard.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#106

Post by constantius »

saubeidl wrote: post #44
constantius wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this is sarcasm, but, for those reading, a unitary state is definitely not what those words meant. If they did, that would mean that 27 countries willingly and fully signed away their sovereignty, without knowledge of the public. The only times where this has happened before in world histoey was either surrender in the face if insurmountable odds, or a decision by the elites in exchange for unimaginable rich…

This has happened many a time. The US constitution is one such example.

Surely you can see the huge differences between EU and US? The context and outcome of these unions are incomparable.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#107

Post by sunaookami »

saubeidl wrote: post #93
sunaookami wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How has it morphed into a wierd political institution Von der Leyen, an autocratic fascist that is ruining this continent. She failed to push her agenda in Germany so she "failed upwards". Even how she got this position was highly controversial and went against the top candidate principle. The EU commission is exceeding their competencies. The EU is not democratic, there is no parliamentary oversight, the parliament…

All of this is disinformation and propaganda. There is parliamentary oversight, it's literally the next step in the process. We all voted for the EU commission through our respective elections for national governments, who appoint the comission. You could not be jailed for this comment, though sometimes I wish you could. Information warfare is real.

>All of this is disinformation and propaganda.

I suggest actually looking at how the EU operates instead of accusing others of "spreading disinformation and propaganda" which is a typical response when someone critizies EU institutions.

>There is parliamentary oversight

A rubber stamp is oversight I guess. Laws like the DMA and DSA give the commission way too much power without being kept in check.

>it's literally the next step in the process.

Ah yes the "informal trilogue" where all parties meet behind closed doors and the public and most parliament members are excluded. Only ten members allowed! Did you know that from 2009 to 2014 at least 93% EU-wide laws were "debated" this way?

>We all voted for the EU commission through our respective elections for national governments, who appoint the comission

That's a very generous definition of "voted". As I said people can't vote for the EU commission nor can the parliament vote for the members of the commission. Remember that the EU commission is the ONLY one that can propose laws, the parliament CAN NOT do this even though it's their job.

>You could not be jailed for this comment, though sometimes I wish you could

Yes let's jail everyone for online comments you do not like. How about that German journalist that critizied a politician regarding free speech and got probation? Or when the police raided someone's home because he called a politician on Twitter a "dick"? Is this your idea of democracy?

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#108

Post by spwa4 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #79
spwa4 wrote: post #52

Why follow the EU's press release instead of stating what's happening? The EU parliament voted - many times. They voted AGAINST having this law at all. The EU council is now threatening to fully override parliament, but "gives parliament another chance" to agree, in hopes this makes the member states more likely to cooperate. More correct would be to state the in power EU governments have decided to use the EU counci…

This is completely incorrect, the Parliament, the Council, and the Commission always come up with their own version of a proposed regulation (the Commission because they get to create new proposals, the other two because they have to react to comission proposal). Then all three parties sit down and negotiate a final text that becomes law.

Ah yes, going into details and then leaving out the crucial part. You're technically right about "regulations", which is a technical legal term with a surprise indirect meaning. The surprise is that "directives" also exist.

Of course the situation is that the EU parliament HAS come up with a version of the Chat Control law. It can be summarized very succinctly:

"NO" (obviously I mean that nothing passed parliament, I do get that they did work on a couple dozen versions of the actual law too. However the final outcome really is "NO")

Now, can you tell me how the role of parliament "changes" if they actually follow through on their threat *, which is of course to turn this from a regulation into a directive?

* the threat is that this is the EU council, not the EU Commission, which could do the same (and has in fact done the same for this law, but as pointed out they failed with parliament refusing to pass any kind of compromise at all). The only party that has the power to stop the Commission acting unilaterally to make this law is the EU council, so by getting the EU council to "propose" to parliament, the Commission is signaling that the EU council will choose their side against parliament, and there will be no way to stop them forcing this into law. After this the commission can then claim more legitimacy (because of what happened in the many local parliaments' "fuck the EU and your legitimacy" disasters of the past 2 decades, like the very dramatic fuck-you's to the division rules for illegal immigrants, you can see why they want maximum legitimacy on controversial laws).

Or to put it very very bluntly, this is the commission calling in daddy, because parliament doesn't want to cooperate and daddy EU Council saying "ok, we'll go to parliament together, PARLIAMENT! BEHAVE! You're going to listen and you're going to cooperate!".

And the problem is that in a democracy one might point out that if parliament doesn't want to cooperate, that's the end of the line. That is in fact a pretty good definition of the idea of democracy.

P.S. I must say, the EU Commission has never cared (at least not successfully) about social policy in the EU. Frankly, the Commission is normally opposed to social progress when it interferes with business. So I find it very hard to understand why the EU Commission is risking yet another legitimacy disaster over ... protecting kids? I've worked for them for a long time and despite the past, they really care about their legitimacy, they don't care about kids (or rather they see themselves as "the voice of reason" in a hopelessly divided Europe, and it's country parliaments that care about social issues, and sometimes even smaller parliaments (like ironically the Brussels parliament currently forcing a government shutdown over social spending). Now, the EU as a whole and the Commission specifically may be right about them often being the voice of reason but it's been made crystal-clear time and time again: the EU population does not want any voice overriding their countries' parliaments, reasonable or otherwise. This was made clear from the very beginning with the Charles De Gaulle - Robert Shuman incident "Un Boche, un bon Boche, mais un Boche tout de même", calling into question the wisdom of letting "Un bon Boche" (he means: a reluctant Nazi collaborator) unify Europe with the creation of the EU.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#109

Post by spurgu »

concinds wrote: post #56
aestetix wrote: post #14

Honest question. The EU was created as an economic and trade institution. How has it morphed into a wierd political institution, which NATO was already supposed to be? The root question: how did an organization that ushered in things like the Euro become a body that decides whether Europeans are allowed to have personal privacy?

The answer is pretty simple. This decision isn't "the EU". The European Commission has fewer employees than the Luxembourg government (and keep in mind, they're "running" a continent). This decision was the Council, i.e. simply the national member governments. Don't let anyone blame "the EU" for this, the national governments are the ones that proposed this, pushed it through EU institutions, and might now try to ove…

What you're describing is how the process in the EU works. So in essence it is "the EU".

It doesn't seem to have any limits or restrictions on what it can do as an institution. It forced idiotic bottlecaps on all of us for shit's sake... and it has little consideration for privacy laws or constitutions of individuals, otherwise this proposal would've been thrown out automatically each time, if there was anything resembling constitutional values governing the EU's mandates.

It's like being governed by a neurotic unhinged monarch.

Re: EU Council approves Chat Control mandate for negotiation with Parliament

#110

Post by spwa4 »

LudwigNagasena wrote: post #81
spwa4 wrote: post #52

Why follow the EU's press release instead of stating what's happening? The EU parliament voted - many times. They voted AGAINST having this law at all. The EU council is now threatening to fully override parliament, but "gives parliament another chance" to agree, in hopes this makes the member states more likely to cooperate. More correct would be to state the in power EU governments have decided to use the EU counci…

The EU parliament and the head of states that comprise the EU council are elected by the EU citizens. Why is there such discordance between the two? Isn’t it mostly the same people from the same parties?

Because in a democracy it's the legislative assembly - parliament - that decides on laws, not the executive.

The EU commission is the executive and represents the currently in power government, NOT parliament.

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