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Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

musings.martyn.berlin

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Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#71

Post by pegasus »

ericmay wrote: post #69
pegasus wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said exactly why: because Trump's policies are unpredictable. Before that, there was no problem, really. Of course, it's a political movement and Trump is much a symptom as a disease, but you're saying we should thank him for bringing about this unpredictability — because now we can see that unpredictability is possible? There's something seriously loopy about that argument. It's like asking one to thank the burgl…

i think you re over-indexing on Trump and not recognizing that this has been a problem for Europe for much longer than Trump has been a serious political figure. Europe has and to some extent is still very much asleep and holding on to a world that no longer exists. Hyper-focusing on Trump is a dangerous manifestation of that antiquated understanding of the world. The US is at the bottom of Europe’s list of problems.

You've just reiterated the exact same points you made in the comment I replied to. Consider that it might be you who is getting hung up* on the "Trump" name, which, in common discourse, can, and usually does function as a signifier not just for the man himself but for the Trumpist political attitude and movement, and even more generally, the quasi-fascist/quasi-monarchist regressive politically infantile post-truth nationalist/authoritarian-revival movements which we are witnessing world-wide. Declaring that this phenomenon is "at the bottom of Europe's list of problems" might sound like surprising and important, but it's just plain false.

As for Europe being "asleep", who isn't? I would say the US is just as much (if not more) asleep, wondering unwittingly into a techno-dystopian future. Or look at how they have been whiplashed by China's rise (which has their own big problems too). Not to mention the more recent disastrous reputational decline on the world scene. Of course, that wouldn't happen if Americans would recognize these dangers and not imagine themselves self-importantly as singularly awake at the wheel of international politics and economics while the car is heading head-long into the proverbial ditch.

*I assume that this is what you mean by "over-indexing" – I'm not feeling like digging around for the origin and exact meaning of this phrase, which is definitely not common English.

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#72

Post by xg15 »

politician wrote: post #68
xg15 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean... Yes? People and data about people are two different things - as is who is doing the "movement" in the first place. Would you also support free movement of all the valuables in your bank vault?

This doesn't make sense as a rebuttal. Article is OK with people moving uncontrolled in/out/around Europe. Article is NOT OK with data moving uncontrolled in/out/around Europe. It's stupid. It's quintessential luxury belief thinking. The article supposes that there exists people that fear their data being misused but don't fear their taxes being misused on welfare for a random population of benefit seekers. The artic…

Because you have so much insight how your taxes are used otherwise. But welfare, that's where you draw the line...

Just ask yourself who would be doing the misuse to see that this comparison makes no sense.

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#73

Post by sam_lowry_ »

tormeh wrote: post #5
petcat wrote: post #2

> Yes, the EU “cloud providers” are lagging behind but they’re catching up. Scaleway, Herzner, and others are there, and you should check them out if you’re starting a business in the EU. I would argue that these aren't even "cloud providers", they are just VPS providers. Which is fine, but it's not the same thing. There really isn't any European "cloud" service at all, which is a huge part of the problem. And I doub…

You cannot possibly with a straight face claim that Scaleway is a VPS provider. Hetzner, sure, but Scaleway offers compute and database services in the same way that AWS does - just fewer.

Hetzner for sure?

Hetzner Cloud is simple to use, but it's a distinguishing feature, not a bug.

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#74

Post by green7ea »

izacus wrote: post #63
green7ea wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the grandparent references many referendums that rejected EU treaties: - Maastricht Treaty, 1992, Denmark, - European Constitution, 2005, France and Netherlands, - Lisbon Treaty, 2008, Ireland. The votes were usually redone and passed. The exception is Norway which refused to join twice. > Clearly not everyone loves the EU but the majorities are very much in favour (and certainly this is the case among the pe…

It's always interesting to see accounts popping up in this thread trying to delegitimize EU and spew out bunch of vague misleading statements against it. Why is that? Which EU citizen protection is angering you? :)

Nothing of that is angering me, I live in the EU and life is pretty nice.

My comment above was meant to provide context and to point out that both sides of the argument can be legitimate.

The comment is neutral, you shouldn't be able to infer what I think about the EU from it. It simply points out facts and says that reducing a point of view to being uninformed is too easy.

My stance on the EU is complex: it does good, it does bad, it affects each member states differently, it changes over time. Those are all pretty neutral statements too, only siths live in extremes ;-).

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#75

Post by tormeh »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #73
tormeh wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot possibly with a straight face claim that Scaleway is a VPS provider. Hetzner, sure, but Scaleway offers compute and database services in the same way that AWS does - just fewer.

Hetzner for sure? Hetzner Cloud is simple to use, but it's a distinguishing feature, not a bug.

I think in order to call youself a cloud you must offer blob storage, managed Kubernetes, and managed Postgres. That is the absolute minimum to me.

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#76

Post by ericmay »

pegasus wrote: post #71
ericmay wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think you re over-indexing on Trump and not recognizing that this has been a problem for Europe for much longer than Trump has been a serious political figure. Europe has and to some extent is still very much asleep and holding on to a world that no longer exists. Hyper-focusing on Trump is a dangerous manifestation of that antiquated understanding of the world. The US is at the bottom of Europe’s list of problems.

You've just reiterated the exact same points you made in the comment I replied to. Consider that it might be you who is getting hung up* on the "Trump" name, which, in common discourse, can, and usually does function as a signifier not just for the man himself but for the Trumpist political attitude and movement, and even more generally, the quasi-fascist/quasi-monarchist regressive politically infantile post-truth n…

> I'm not feeling like digging around for the origin and exact meaning of this phrase, which is definitely not common English.

Just to start here, the term is very common in America.

> Declaring that this phenomenon is "at the bottom of Europe's list of problems" might sound like surprising and important, but it's just plain false.

Well I can think of 3 problems right now that are much more pressing for Europe:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the broad inability of the EU to come to its aid in 2022.

China and hollowing out of European manufacturing. Germany in particular is shedding manufacturing jobs - common knowledge but happy to provide a few sources if this is a new development for you.

Migration crises and war in the Middle East that the EU is unable to address militarily or diplomatically.

Donald Trump saying a few mean words and initiating tariffs obviously start to fall in the EU problems rankings once we just start talking about the global geopolitical and strategic situation.

> As for Europe being "asleep", who isn't? I would say the US is just as much (if not more) asleep,

Both the US and China are leaving the rest of the world behind. As you noted, both have issues. The US started during the first Trump term to begin addressing posed by China’s continued economic and military challenges and continued through the Biden term via various legislation and policies, and now continues again during Trump’s 2nd term.

You seem to look at actions like arresting Maduro or attacking Iran from the perspective that such actions are harming international reputation or are the whims of, well pick whichever word you already used to describe him, but these are actions showing that the US is instead of “sleeping” actually very much awake and taking important strategic and necessary action. I can walk you through those as well if you’d like.

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#77

Post by politician »

xg15 wrote: post #72
politician wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't make sense as a rebuttal. Article is OK with people moving uncontrolled in/out/around Europe. Article is NOT OK with data moving uncontrolled in/out/around Europe. It's stupid. It's quintessential luxury belief thinking. The article supposes that there exists people that fear their data being misused but don't fear their taxes being misused on welfare for a random population of benefit seekers. The artic…

Because you have so much insight how your taxes are used otherwise. But welfare, that's where you draw the line... Just ask yourself who would be doing the misuse to see that this comparison makes no sense.

[dead]

Re: Let's talk about EU Sovereignty (2025)

#78

Post by spwa4 »

goobatrooba wrote: post #42
einpoklum wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such heresy is detrimental to EU sovereignty... next you're going to remind people that some states are in the EU despite their citizens having opposed going in there. TBH, EU member states can be plenty oppressive when they want to, so - why not just take it to the next level and have all-European overlords?

That's a rather odd point. One country has left the EU due to a very narrow 'exit' vote, so it's not anyone's prison. Across surveys the EU enjoys broad support, often even more so than the national government. Clearly not everyone loves the EU but the majorities are very much in favour (and certainly this is the case among the people who actually understand politics, economics, etc.).

That was not because the EU didn't want or try to stop it, but because they couldn't.

The EU was going to pause it indefinitely because of the border issues. UK diplomats in Brussels were actually helping with that. And the UK just went ahead with it ... That option would not be open to anyone except very large countries.

Now make of that what you want, but the EU definitely doesn't want to let people just leave, and the UK leaving is not a great illustration.

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