401–410 of 640 posts
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With Nord Stream, the elites tried to gaslight their population using the media into believeng an stupid made-up story about how Russia blowed up their own pipe. Very convenient for the US, not so for the EU
Only if it were Russia can Trump stay quiet about Nord Stream, which he has.
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Coca cola is bottled locally. It does not make any sense to move water, sugar, nor the syroup. Probably they move a bit of their secret sauce, but rest is probably sourced locally. So impact of tariffs on coke in Germany is mininal. During WW2 german bottlers missed some ingredients so they've started making Fanta.
Surely they ship [components of] the syrup because otherwise they have to ship the raw coca leaves? Is the global supply of coca extract processed by the Stepan company in USA? Profits move the other way through IP payments. We can cut off the bleeding of profits by buying products with locally owned IP.
Europeans were perfectly happy to buy American tech und military exports, thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. - it really was perfect for the U.S. But the US decided that it was actually a BAD DEAL and they wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU. So now EU is investing in their own tech and military, thus reducing the amount of money US is get…
The situation laid out in the article doesn’t really indicate in any way that people are just mad at Trump and fleeing to EU alternatives. Yeah that’s obviously part of the acute response in 2025, but everything indicated by the data and the points made in the article seems to say that, whether Trump made people newly aware or motivated aside, people are looking for privacy-focused software products. Mind you, a spir…
Also, these people don’t come from cowboys; they’re unrestrained salesman-on-TV personalities humiliated by poor competitiveness. I think that slightly matters; never seen it in a cowboy.
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They're not confusing popular and electoral votes. Trump won a majority of electoral votes, and a plurality of the popular vote, as they claimed; that is from the official count, not preliminary counts. He did not win a majority of the popular vote, but that is also the case both for Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton (twice, though one of those was a rare three candidate race where a majority would have been unlikely)…
No one claimed he won the majority of the vote though. The claim was just that he "won the popular vote" (this time, in 2024, not in previous elections). And winning a plurality is winning the vote, in almost all electoral systems (of course, the popular vote is ultimately meaningless in the USA, but that doesn't mean we should apply some other arbitrary threshold for what it means to win it).
>And winning a plurality is winning the vote, in almost all electoral systems
I'd argue that there are many electoral systems that realize the potential problems this causes, and either use runoffs, or IRV/STV, to avoid it. The US (and UK...) just have very antiquated electoral processes that, especially in the US, have not benefited from the last two centuries of research on voting systems.
I think Americans underestimate the double effect of Trump’s saber-rattling towards neighboring countries and his simultaneous full-throated support of Putin. Europeans feel under threat from two directions now. His military threats against Greenland are an extremely serious matter. Imagine if the USA had an ally who sold you much of your military equipment and maintained bases on your territory. One day that ally wo…
My main takeaways: governments sabotage Fr cloud by giving huge contacts to US companies + lack of understanding of the software development by EU and Fr decision makers.
Europeans were perfectly happy to buy American tech und military exports, thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. - it really was perfect for the U.S. But the US decided that it was actually a BAD DEAL and they wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU. So now EU is investing in their own tech and military, thus reducing the amount of money US is get…
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I liked a comment by Sarah C. Paine, about how Communism is a really great system for taking power from within a state (think Mao), and then staying in power, but it's horrible for generating prosperity. When evaluating the choices of certain people, it's clarifying to not think in terms of prosperity, but, rather, power. I think there's a case to be made about Trump seeing advantage in making enemies of his politica…
The same Sarah Paine that speaks about how China lifted 1B+ people out of poverty and created tens of millions of millionaires?
Europeans were perfectly happy to buy American tech und military exports, thus earning U.S. money and making EU technologically and politically dependent from the U.S. - it really was perfect for the U.S. But the US decided that it was actually a BAD DEAL and they wanted to extort even more money and dependence from EU. So now EU is investing in their own tech and military, thus reducing the amount of money US is get…
There is a weird attitude among European elites where on the one hand, they point out how European countries have always been in a subservient position within the American sphere of influence, but then, instead of cheering that this era is ending, they seem to be all upset about it and want their collar to be put back on. Help me understand this. To me it seems that maybe the interests of EU elites differ from the in…
it's all about rhetorics being used to manipulate for personal gains of a small elite. the kind of elite who makes billion dollar contracts via sms and then accidentally loses such sms.
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An important distinction is that US and EU interests aligned on many important areas up until recently. So it was less of a subservient relationship, and more of a mutually beneficial one. Now that the US wants to turn it into a subservient relationship, the EU is naturally looking for other options.
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