Really abhorrent how the current US government is spinning this into their tried and true "free speech" crusade despite it being mostly irrelevant. The DSA's core goal is transparency, shown clearly in the X ruling.
> The ‘blue checks’ charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. [...] As the Commission put it, the DSA “clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.”
> The ‘ads transparency’ charge stems from the DSA’s requirement that platforms must maintain a public archive showing what ads the platform ran, who paid for them, and other information. X fell drastically short of meeting this requirement
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
It's clear why the tech monopolies want to keep their secrets in the dark. There is a democratic consensus that what they're pulling either is illegal - or should be illegal. E.g. Scam advertisements, overt editorial practices by selective (de)amplification and/or monetization and looking the other way about bots and third-parties leveraging their systems for spreading political propaganda.
Transparency is their enemy. Free speech is their irrelevant but emotion-laden argument. Europeans see straight through it - the questions is, do the Americans?
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
The EU commission has no right to let researchers perform studies on users of the platform without the explicit consent of each user whose content is included in the study, so kudos for upholding their rights. There is also precedent that this 'research' loophole has in the past been abused to massively scrape data off Twitter.
Additionally, this whole thing isn't just about X, but also about "N"GOs like "Hat aid" who sue individual citizens for stating their opinion on the internet.
I find it deeply cynical that representatives of a federalized union call upon another union to disband in favor of national identity. It is a transparent ploy to sow division within another competing union for geopolitical gain.
Imagine the response to the EU calling for Texas leaving the US via that weird defunct line in their constitution.
Maybe breaking up the US would be a good idea. The blue states are funding the American government which is led by the people mostly popular in the red states. But you won't see EU politicians set up a well-funded plan to actually do it.
America has turned into a ridiculous cartoon of itself in such a short time frame.
You are really on to something. Imagine if the EU ran ads in the US encouraging US states to join the EU. Advertise the benefits of membership: NATO protection, socialized medicine, less gun violence, worker protections, a higher average standard of living...
Is the idea here to normalize what the Trump administration is doing as “what any hegemon would do”? As far as I’m aware, the US largely avoided using its power to directly prosecute one man’s personal vendettas?
The idea here is that all hegemonic power will eventually be abused, unless there's a system of checks on it. The same thing prevents "benevolent dictatorships" from existing.
The US has a system of checks, but 2.5 of the three of them are seriously compromised. A system of checks alone isn’t enough to prevent any abuse of power, and abuse of power isn’t limited to global hegemons. What really makes abuse of power dangerous is normalizing it. The more people expect power to be abused, the more likely it becomes that power will be abused.
Yeah, but geopolitics is a chaotic system and the US foreign policy has failed at pretty much everything for decades now - these are the people who managed to cement Taliban control of Afghanistan and appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe. If it is coming from the US State Department they are so bad at international politics that there is a pretty good chance that the path to thwarting them is following their plan. The most powerful era of Europe was literally when they had lots of small but technically and socially advanced countries competing with each other. It was literally a world-conquering combination that put them centuries ahead of everyone else. In some sense the reason the EU exists is to try and hold the Germans back; talking about breaking it up is one of those careful-what-you-wish-for requests.
> If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.
The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.
Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!
> appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
Not surprising at all considering that socialism and centrally planned economies are inherently more efficient than liberal free markets - by removing the constant pressure for quarterly profit and removing or severely limiting the bourgeoise who only exist to take the value generated by companies for themselves, you have a system that does a much better job of allocating labour and resources. For example, imagine how much better Windows 11 would be if Satya Nadella wasn't taking home a $100m salary and that money was spent hiring or paying developers.
Frankly, American capitalists got so high on their own supply after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they thought they didn't need to keep the boot on the necks of the communists any longer. As soon as the pressure came off the superiority of the Chinese communist system became evident and is virtually impossible to stop now.
As far as I can tell these people are not on the SDN list (which would defacto deny them a bank account anywhere in the west plus kill their azure ad login) but merely on a travel ban.
Funny how time and time again, users of this forum mix obvious fiction and facts about Europe and the EU. I guess it's too difficult to read up on these things before posting an opinion reflecting rightwing US politicians
This is apparently representative of what that means at this moment in time.
I think it's pretty extreme too, but on searching, none of the participants' positions seem to have been disowned by their own side. One of them actually fundraised $30000 afterwards.
For a country that actively bans school books on "gender ideology", fires federal workers that show any support for all things "WOKE", it is absolutely hilarious that they're also seeing themselves as the last bastion of free speech.
They are not serious people. Plain and simple.
The day these clowns are kicked out can't come soon enough.
At the level it existed before the 2nd Trump admin, it had supply chains of intelligence, capability, and the ability to project actual force and support.
Europe is struggling with an energy crisis because of its sanctions against Russia. I'm sure those Iranian and Venezuelan oil fields willook awfully enticing after the Americans break down more and more American-European trade ties. Who knows, maybe a sizable oil investment might convince the Iranians to stop contributing to the Ukrainian invasion.
This just isn't really true any more. The Scandinavian countries have become net green energy exporters including over winter (lots of wind power and biogas in municipal heating networks) and the block as a whole is banning Russian gas imports from next year. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IP...)
The price per kWh has dropped sharply in recent years compared to the invasion peak, though they are about double what they were before COVID (not inflation adjusted) - see https://skilky-skilky.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Househ.... It's the UK that's up the shitter but that's far from uncommon....
The day will come when we ban Steve Bannon, Elon Musk and JD Vance from the UK, and I think for the first two at least, the day is getting closer.
(I personally expect Vance to be banned from the UK - along with Denmark and Greenland - as soon as he is no longer VP. But then I suspect his days of international travel will end then more generally.)
But since diplomacy requires proportionality, maybe we start with Bannon, or Nick Fuentes, or Andrew Auernheimer. (They really should be banned from travel here like Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Don Black and Mark Weber already are.)
I don't think Dubya has been in Europe since his presidency, in 2011 he famously cancelled a speech in Switzerland because a human right groups called for his arrest for war crimes..
It'd be awkward to ban Vance as he's the Vice President so covered by the Vienna Convention. The others, I'm quite surprised they haven't been banned already, especially after Elon Musk quite literally attempted to incite violence on the streets of the UK.
A general atmosphere that we sometimes ban white nationalists and neo-nazis when they actively provoke violence or hatred or illegally interfere in our politics to destabilise the country?
Oh no, I'm sorry if this is upsetting or surprising to anyone!
Seriously: Vance will be persona non grata when this is over. The list of countries that should ban him is longer than the one I made (Germany should, for example). The list of countries he won't risk visiting is probably longer still. But then I think he won't risk leaving the USA at all after this is all over. And nor should he.
And as others have observed, Musk has actively attempted to foment violence in the UK; people get banned from other countries (including the USA) for that all the time.
Your country is being 'destabilized' by your own government refusing to address popular concerns. No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
Instead of addressing the underlying issues causing societal destabilization, just as countless failed governments have before, your government is focused on doubling down and making people shut up about it.
Yes, a lot of these people are bigots or cranks. But people living in well-run countries don't listen to bigots and cranks. They aren't a problem. People start listening to bigots and cranks when nobody else will listen to them. Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms. Silencing people to maintain public order and harmony is the siren song of every failing authoritarian government there's ever been.
> Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms.
Banning criminals and neonazis who act against our nation's interests is a simple matter of sovereignty and I hope we continue to do it despite your and JD Vance's opinions; it's a right the nation reserves.
> No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
This is pie-in-the-sky fantasy. It's just not true at all.
The tiniest, most meaningless, most temporary grievance can be exploited by demagogues and everyone knows it. Including the American president.
> No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
This is pretty much how extremism and cult recruitment work. Wording this as a disprovable statement was of utility.
People in well run companies listen to bigots and cranks. People listen to entertaining bigots and cranks all the time.
I mean, you are talking about the country which listened to the Brexit crowd.
Their current situation is also another massive self own, which happened because they listened to cranks!
Most of the west has been unprepared for how the information economy they grew up with from the 1940s onwards, has been taken over.
——-
I get the argument you are trying to make, that seeds only sprout when the conditions are right.
The supporting argument is adulterated since the advent of cable television and mass media. Rupert Murdoch has single handedly been able to decide what agendas survive for decades.
> This is pretty much how extremism and cult recruitment work. Wording this as a disprovable statement was of utility.
"On it's own" is the key hinge in that statement. They impact people the social system has already failed. The type of extremism is really irrelevant; the fact of extremism is a signal that something is going wrong. Suppressing the signal doesn't actually help anything. You or I could watch 200 hours of Nazi programming without feeling the slightest bit of inclination to start harming Jewish people. You have to be already screwed up to be seriously threatened by extremist content.
> I mean, you are talking about the country which listened to the Brexit crowd.
This is a great example. Remain had nearly unanimous elite support. Despite a massive state propaganda campaign, the Brexit campaign won the referendum. This should have been a huge flashing red light with air raid sirens to the UK elite class that something had gone horribly wrong with their management of the country. Instead, all that's happened is sneering contempt toward the stupid proles who voted at the behest of shadowy puppet masters against their own interests. Even the Brexiteer politicians themselves were obviously none too concerned about popular opinion, as Brexit was obviously in part driven by immigration fears, which they did less than nothing about - vote what you will, the UK politicians of either side know better than you. Indeed instead of addressing this at all, UK politicians have cracked down with increasing harshness on criminal opinions and speech, culminating in kafkaesque absurdities like Greta Thurberg being arrested for expressing support for the wrong side in a foreign conflict that should have nothing to do with the UK, or the laughable pretense that the UK government is utterly helpless to do anything about small boat landings other than put them up in hotels.
> Most of the west has been unprepared for how the information economy they grew up with from the 1940s onwards, has been taken over.
"Since the 1940s" is an important caveat. Broadcast media, in particular state control of broadcast media, really change the way the elite classes perceived the world. By installing their own people to control the media apparatus, they began to only see the world through their own lens and to believe that popular opinion could be largely controlled via the media, because that's all they saw. (In the US, for example, FDR used the FCC as a weapon to suppress dissent in radio.) Even print media was subject to enormous consolidation and unprecedented state control. What we're seeing now is something much more closely resembling the pre-war media environment, where the "wrong people" often got very large audiences, and false rumors and misinformation ran rampant. But all these sentiments and problems still existed postwar, they just stopped being visible to the political and intellectual elites.
I don't understand how Trump was ever allowed back into the UK on the basis of his criminality (e.g. a persistent offender who shows particular disregard for the law).
What purpose would a travel ban on those people serve? The UK is totally unable to police its own border nor remove violent predators. They've been reduced to paying perpetrators of sex offences to leave.
Bannon is a convicted criminal money-launderer and fraudster; we ban such people all the time (and so do other countries). But he's also agitating against UK interests (and interfered in our politics before).
Musk has literally called for violence on our streets; we ban people who do that too. We should consider banning foreigners who appear to be funding political activity here.
Vance is actively acting against the interests of the UK and EU (actively agitating against political union) in a way that benefits our adversaries, and he lionises neo-nazis.
In the last electoral cycle I've seen firsthand censorship applied to remote acquaintances because of the newly added EU DSA (this in and of itself would not be a huge disaster [by EU standards] if it wasn't accompanied by arrests), which was used as justification over some posts on TikTok and X; therefore I don't really care who hurts the pro-censorship faction within the EU. People have been arrested in WE for speech online for more than a decade now, but now it also happens in EE, where I live, bringing back communist-era "vibes". You would excuse me if the anti-Trump or anti-US (because of the current administration) rhetoric doesn't move me regarding this.
Or let me guess, "Trump bad and therefore we should accept DSA/Chat control 2.0/3.0/etc."? Sorry, I don't care. And people who think this is only about the recent X fine are also wrong (this started last year when Thierry Breton started influencing european elections while also boasting about how he can annul such elections without repercussions; you can deduce what I'm talking about by asking an LLM). This is in part US gov. protecting private companies (and thus itself) from fines, sure, but the broader point about censorship within the west applies. Everything that hurts the people making legislation regarding the Internet (or software in general) within the EU should be welcomed with open arms.
EU apologists would rather change the subject and talk about Trump and the polarizing social environment in the US rather than acknowledge that within the EU, there's not even a chance for discourse to be had about any policy(especially the nonexistent free speech) due to the aforementioned laws. The same people will act surprised when extreme positions regarding the EU are adopted by an ever-increasing number of people "until morale improves".
The EU does far too little to prevent election influencing. From Cambridge Analytica, proof of foreign bribery, algorithmic promotion of bot content by X and Meta specifically intended to undermine democracies, there's plenty of election fixing happening, and the EU should be much more aggressive about preventing it.
Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Everybody knows about Cambridge Analytica being used in the US/UK, but, for example, little to no one knows that Cambridge Analytica was also used by political parties within the EU (I won't give specific names [for now], but parties [from Italy, Malta, CZ, and Romania], members of the euro-parliamentary groups EPP/RE/SD, in the 2014-2016 period). Why did nothing happen back then? Those mentioned parties were usually pro-EU, so it's not really surprising no such "scandal" was being discovered until later on, when Cambridge Analytica was being used by the UK/US.
And the Cambridge Analytica "phenomenon" is not really something you can realistically prevent. I'm sure it happens now with some other better firm (Palantir probably), but this is really beside the point. The point is that normal citizens, like you and me, are effectively censored upon suspicion before any burden of proof is provided. Nothing says "protecting democracy" like deleting posts from social media and then finding out the context.
> Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Sure, nobody likes bots/paid shills. But of course, in a normal society, you have to prove those posts are made by actual bots/content farms before taking any action. Otherwise it's just censorship. Election interference always happens, without exceptions, but degrees vary. This is not to say we shouldn't point out when it happens, but to not do censorship against our own citizens because "the models indicate a pattern akin to foreign entities." Patterns are not burdens of proof, and thus employing a "crowdfunded" fact-checking system like Community Notes or the one from YouTube is at least partly the actual solution instead of directly removing content. Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.
"Interference" in elections, even foreign interference, is not a new problem. It has been a problem for at least 2500 years. The nice thing about a democracy, though, is you still have to convince masses of people to vote a certain way, rather than simply influencing a few bureaucrats/aristocrats. And well, if masses of people can be convinced to vote for something you don't like, in a democracy it's your responsibility to show them why they're wrong, rather than treating them like dummies without the intellectual capacity to make their own responsible decisions. If you think people are too stupid to make decisions in the face of the wrong propaganda, you are conceding that you don't believe in democracy at all - at best you believe in stage-managed popular support to make your non-democratic government appear legitimate.
The EU doesn't want to accept that millions of people don't share the EU elite consensus on several issues - usually still a minority of people, but a substantial minority. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to steer the ship of state with the winds of the times, they are simply declaring all bad political opinions to be the result of the Russians, the Americans, or the corporations, or some combination of the three. Countries in which serious conversations are had about banning one of the most popular political parties for wrongthink can only ironically be considered democratic.
The only arrest (including jail time) I've heard of over internet shit was someone named Tate, and I'm pretty sure it was over suspicion of online pimping/hustling (not sure how it ended up), so I would love to know who was arrested because of the DSA, to see if it match.
I disagree in principle, but let's say the people decide to do so. Not only in US (under section 230) those are not media companies, but in EU too, social networks like Facebook/Instagram/etc. are treated legally as "public squares" and not media companies like BBC/etc. When you defame somebody on Instagram, you're the one being held legally responsible, not Meta. Why would social networks be responsible for DSA violations made by the users? This is beyond the fact that implementing an "instant-takedowns" censorship mechanism is draconian. DSA's Articles 16-17 do not require the person (who can also be anonymous, which is ironic) who is reporting the content to provide >legally sufficient< evidence for the takedown. Which goes directly against what I would consider "normal" in a society where you're innocent until proven guilty. The "trusted flaggers" (article 22) do need to submit more evidence, but this just becomes a problem of "partisanship" and bias. This basically means you can report someone for illegal activity, provide unnecessary evidence(in the legal sense), and the content is taken down, with the "battle" starting afterwards.
YouTube's system of DMCA takedown(the copyright issue being way more serious legally than what DSA is supposed to protect against) is not perfect and cannot be perfect (proven by the fact that content is unjustly taken down all the time). DSA is just the same, except more vague, more complicated and (imo) ultimately worse.
DSA has an appeal mechanism, with an option for out-of-court settlements, which means you can employ independent fact-checkers (certified by Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs)); the list of certified bodies is, of course, maintained by the European Commission. The problem is that these DSCs are appointed by each country's gov., which means there's potential room for conflict of interests not only at a national level(I find hard to believe appointed DSCs are completely impartial to the gov. that appointed them) but also at an EU-wide level(certified fact-checking bodies who are supposedly not influenced by EC when judging cases pertaining to EU in international cases).
It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically. Brusselocrats are career politicians caring more about their CV than the spirit of their actions. They do populist flashy things, it's not like they'd lose an election or anything. Ban them all you want, you re just buttering their bread , it's another bullet in their CV, a badge of honor.
Then again, Trump has to win the election, and the Bell curve is symmetrical. Sanctioning EU politicians is less like sanctioning elected national politicians, and more like sanctioning artists. No nation was offended
See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system. But tbh, Europeans deserve it, for they use and abuse of sanctions themselves, as some of Swiss citizens can attest.
> Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?
When it stops being a disagreement over policy and becomes a paid job for a foreign government to spread as much malicious FUD as possible.
The former commander of Russian ground forces recently gave a long interview in which he said that the Russian army was on the verge of total collapse in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were pushing them back during the highly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. Mearsheimer, Sachs, et al played a vital role in spreading FUD and unfounded fears that led to less military support for Ukraine than was needed. As a result, hundreds of thousands more people are dead than might have been had Ukraine been supported properly.
Mearsheimer alone has done more to deny modern weapons to Ukraine than the entire Russian air force could. In terms of ROI, he has been a spectacularly cost-effective propaganda asset. He has the blood of countless people on his hands and deserves to be hanged. But instead, he will kick the bucket due to natural causes in old age, a luxury not afforded to the children who died in their bedrooms under Russian missile attacks that Mearsheimer twisted himself into a pretzel to enable and justify.
Blaming a YouTube analyst for the slow pace of weapons transfers and not the EU and NATO officials who were actually responsible for said transfers is a spectacular cope. If NATO is getting marching orders from random 3rd parties on YouTube and TV networks then there are a million problems more urgent to address than Mearscheimer's analysis here.
No, the reason for the slow trickle of weapons was because the West got high on their own supply after the successful 2022 offensives and actually thought they could break the Russian line without advanced weaponry. In that way Mearscheimer's message of caution was bang on - Ukraine should have negotiated peace when they had the upper hand, hundreds of thousands of good Ukranian and Russian men would be alive today.
What kind of "peace" would that be? Russia is not interested in peace, or do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?
The peace of Ukraine being neutral? Ukraine was officially neutral in 2014 (law from 2010, pushed by Russia), and see how that went.
So again, what kind of peace are you talking about?
Edit: Let me make the problem very clear:
- Ukraine wants a peace deal where Russia can't invaded again. After their experience with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the want hard security guarantees, not just Russian words on a piece of paper.
- Russia wants a peace deal where Ukraine's army is limited, and that doesn't allow foreign troops in Ukraine. Something else is unacceptable for them. In other words, a peace deal that is the perfect setup to invade again.
So again, what kind of peace deal are you talking about?
I’ve seen his interviews on YouTube and I’m not sure if he is a Russian asset or just says things contrary to the western narrative. There is a propaganda war.
So what hard evidence that he is working for the Russians?
Jaques Baud is not a "mouthpiece". He has never appeared on Russian state TV and has taken great pains to avoid citing Russian sources in his analysis. The problem is that what he has been saying about the Ukraine war (that the war is not winnable and peace should be negotiated as soon as possible) is dangerous as to European leadership.
It's not remotely dangerous to the European leadership.
It is dangerous to EU citizens who are on the receiving end of a campaign to radicalise national governments with far-right Russian-funded puppet regimes which will - clearly, as we can see in the US - be absolutely hostile to existing freedoms.
Honestly I feel like people won't care and the sanctioning helps less and less if it doesn't do the opposite.
They feel like repeatedly the baby was thrown out with the bathwater wrt migration and the like despite popular opinion being very much against those.
Often getting no genuine choice of opposition that wasn't fringe right.
Now I know so many people who will in turn throw out the bathwater containing their national or supranational interests, rule of law (that limited their options), etc.
People who one will struggle to reach across the isle... and it was utterly predictable.
If they don't want far-right Russian puppets to win then they should actually respond to the wants and needs of their voters instead of scolding anyone who goes against their neoliberal warmonger groupthink as "pro-Russian", whatever that means. They're only digging their own graves if they think denying reality will save them.
Or maybe we should stop the propaganda arm of the US fascists distorting the reality around here and inventing needs that our population doesn't actually need so that they are pushed towards far right parties?
Or how about making sure the corrupted US society do something about them messing up the world economy because rich people want to be richer and so they bought their governments through once again their propaganda arms of all the social media and news corporations they bought?
What about the parts where the US would bomb constantly the ME thus making the people living there want to move out. But of course they won't go to the place that bombed them, especially since there's a whole ocean between them so instead they come to us in the Europe. Oh and if it's not bombs, it's global warming anyway, another thing the current US government pushes hard for.
> See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.
You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.
From the thread, "If you want an explainer on why the EU’s DSA Fine Against X is Not About Speech or Censorship read this article:" https://www.techpolicy.press/the-eus-fine-against-x-is-not-a...
Really abhorrent how the current US government is spinning this into their tried and true "free speech" crusade despite it being mostly irrelevant. The DSA's core goal is transparency, shown clearly in the X ruling.
> The ‘blue checks’ charge is about consumer deception. X changed the rules about how it does verification in a way that allowed impersonation and scams to flourish. [...] As the Commission put it, the DSA “clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.”
> The ‘ads transparency’ charge stems from the DSA’s requirement that platforms must maintain a public archive showing what ads the platform ran, who paid for them, and other information. X fell drastically short of meeting this requirement
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
It's clear why the tech monopolies want to keep their secrets in the dark. There is a democratic consensus that what they're pulling either is illegal - or should be illegal. E.g. Scam advertisements, overt editorial practices by selective (de)amplification and/or monetization and looking the other way about bots and third-parties leveraging their systems for spreading political propaganda.
Transparency is their enemy. Free speech is their irrelevant but emotion-laden argument. Europeans see straight through it - the questions is, do the Americans?
https://x.com/ThierryBreton/status/1823033048109367549 Are we supposed to think these prior public threats are unrelated and X is really fined for changing a design on their website?
> The third thing the EU penalized X for is not giving researchers better access to public data. This enforcement is not about the DSA’s more famous and controversial requirement for platforms to hand over internal data. It’s just about information that was already publicly available on X’s site and app.
The EU commission has no right to let researchers perform studies on users of the platform without the explicit consent of each user whose content is included in the study, so kudos for upholding their rights. There is also precedent that this 'research' loophole has in the past been abused to massively scrape data off Twitter.
Additionally, this whole thing isn't just about X, but also about "N"GOs like "Hat aid" who sue individual citizens for stating their opinion on the internet.
I find it deeply cynical that representatives of a federalized union call upon another union to disband in favor of national identity. It is a transparent ploy to sow division within another competing union for geopolitical gain.
Imagine the response to the EU calling for Texas leaving the US via that weird defunct line in their constitution.
Maybe breaking up the US would be a good idea. The blue states are funding the American government which is led by the people mostly popular in the red states. But you won't see EU politicians set up a well-funded plan to actually do it.
America has turned into a ridiculous cartoon of itself in such a short time frame.
Reminds me of this comic: https://www.viruscomix.com/page528.html
See the fourth row.
You are really on to something. Imagine if the EU ran ads in the US encouraging US states to join the EU. Advertise the benefits of membership: NATO protection, socialized medicine, less gun violence, worker protections, a higher average standard of living...
competing of what?
the entire EU couldn't even defect Russia that has a GDP smaller than a single state of the US.
The Rusia that can't even conquer Ukraine? Yes, really scary...
The world hegemon caught doing cynical thing, news at 11.
Is the idea here to normalize what the Trump administration is doing as “what any hegemon would do”? As far as I’m aware, the US largely avoided using its power to directly prosecute one man’s personal vendettas?
The idea here is that all hegemonic power will eventually be abused, unless there's a system of checks on it. The same thing prevents "benevolent dictatorships" from existing.
The US has a system of checks, but 2.5 of the three of them are seriously compromised. A system of checks alone isn’t enough to prevent any abuse of power, and abuse of power isn’t limited to global hegemons. What really makes abuse of power dangerous is normalizing it. The more people expect power to be abused, the more likely it becomes that power will be abused.
The world hegemon is currently throwing away its hegemonial power in a series of unforced errors, that's the real news here.
Yeah, but geopolitics is a chaotic system and the US foreign policy has failed at pretty much everything for decades now - these are the people who managed to cement Taliban control of Afghanistan and appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe. If it is coming from the US State Department they are so bad at international politics that there is a pretty good chance that the path to thwarting them is following their plan. The most powerful era of Europe was literally when they had lots of small but technically and socially advanced countries competing with each other. It was literally a world-conquering combination that put them centuries ahead of everyone else. In some sense the reason the EU exists is to try and hold the Germans back; talking about breaking it up is one of those careful-what-you-wish-for requests.
> If they're saying this to undermine Europe, their track record suggests that it might strengthen Europe.
The main problem with US international politics is that they are looking on the problem through American lenses, i.e. why would Afghans refuse liberal values and either choose or tolerate theocracy? Does not make any sense from view of an average American.
Same like it makes no sense for average American why states in EU are banding together and slowly shedding its nationalistic values? What if same would be done by Latin America? Wow scary, need to throw a spanner into the things!
> appear to be losing the economic race of the 21st century to a literal communist party.
Not surprising at all considering that socialism and centrally planned economies are inherently more efficient than liberal free markets - by removing the constant pressure for quarterly profit and removing or severely limiting the bourgeoise who only exist to take the value generated by companies for themselves, you have a system that does a much better job of allocating labour and resources. For example, imagine how much better Windows 11 would be if Satya Nadella wasn't taking home a $100m salary and that money was spent hiring or paying developers.
Frankly, American capitalists got so high on their own supply after the dissolution of the Soviet Union that they thought they didn't need to keep the boot on the necks of the communists any longer. As soon as the pressure came off the superiority of the Chinese communist system became evident and is virtually impossible to stop now.
Sanctions in this context mean visa restrictions (travel ban to US). So not financial sanctions. Just thought it would be a good thing to clarify.
Like a petulant rich kid running to his parents after being told No for the first time in their lives.
If anyone still doubts whether the Americans are serious about going solo in geopolitics this should be nail #192873 in your Trans-Atlantic coffin.
Thank you EU government officials for standing up to US big tech interests.
As far as I can tell these people are not on the SDN list (which would defacto deny them a bank account anywhere in the west plus kill their azure ad login) but merely on a travel ban.
Funny how time and time again, users of this forum mix obvious fiction and facts about Europe and the EU. I guess it's too difficult to read up on these things before posting an opinion reflecting rightwing US politicians
Presumably the US wants the EU to permit more Far-right 'conservativism'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S-WJN3L5eo 1 Progressive vs 20 Far-Right Conservatives (ft. Mehdi Hasan)
This is apparently representative of what that means at this moment in time.
I think it's pretty extreme too, but on searching, none of the participants' positions seem to have been disowned by their own side. One of them actually fundraised $30000 afterwards.
[dupe] Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46370787
For a country that actively bans school books on "gender ideology", fires federal workers that show any support for all things "WOKE", it is absolutely hilarious that they're also seeing themselves as the last bastion of free speech.
They are not serious people. Plain and simple.
The day these clowns are kicked out can't come soon enough.
Unfortunately, they're very serious about their racism and dividing up the country between themselves and their billionaire pals.
The digital Euro and dedollarization can't come quickly enough.
Our Overlords in America will never allow it
The US is essentially demolishing itself.
At the level it existed before the 2nd Trump admin, it had supply chains of intelligence, capability, and the ability to project actual force and support.
It has deleted institutional knowledge.
The degree of self own here, is historic.
I think this trajectory precedes Trump. No Empire lasts forever.
- for you.
Europe is struggling with an energy crisis because of its sanctions against Russia. I'm sure those Iranian and Venezuelan oil fields willook awfully enticing after the Americans break down more and more American-European trade ties. Who knows, maybe a sizable oil investment might convince the Iranians to stop contributing to the Ukrainian invasion.
This just isn't really true any more. The Scandinavian countries have become net green energy exporters including over winter (lots of wind power and biogas in municipal heating networks) and the block as a whole is banning Russian gas imports from next year. (https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20251211IP...)
The price per kWh has dropped sharply in recent years compared to the invasion peak, though they are about double what they were before COVID (not inflation adjusted) - see https://skilky-skilky.info/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Househ.... It's the UK that's up the shitter but that's far from uncommon....
The day will come when we ban Steve Bannon, Elon Musk and JD Vance from the UK, and I think for the first two at least, the day is getting closer.
(I personally expect Vance to be banned from the UK - along with Denmark and Greenland - as soon as he is no longer VP. But then I suspect his days of international travel will end then more generally.)
But since diplomacy requires proportionality, maybe we start with Bannon, or Nick Fuentes, or Andrew Auernheimer. (They really should be banned from travel here like Matthew Heimbach, Richard Spencer, Don Black and Mark Weber already are.)
I don't think Dubya has been in Europe since his presidency, in 2011 he famously cancelled a speech in Switzerland because a human right groups called for his arrest for war crimes..
It'd be awkward to ban Vance as he's the Vice President so covered by the Vienna Convention. The others, I'm quite surprised they haven't been banned already, especially after Elon Musk quite literally attempted to incite violence on the streets of the UK.
Your suggestion should it materialize would certainly be in line with the general atmosphere which has been developing in the UK.
Overreach in some areas does not conflict with proportional and appropriate action in others.
A general atmosphere that we sometimes ban white nationalists and neo-nazis when they actively provoke violence or hatred or illegally interfere in our politics to destabilise the country?
Oh no, I'm sorry if this is upsetting or surprising to anyone!
Seriously: Vance will be persona non grata when this is over. The list of countries that should ban him is longer than the one I made (Germany should, for example). The list of countries he won't risk visiting is probably longer still. But then I think he won't risk leaving the USA at all after this is all over. And nor should he.
And as others have observed, Musk has actively attempted to foment violence in the UK; people get banned from other countries (including the USA) for that all the time.
Your country is being 'destabilized' by your own government refusing to address popular concerns. No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own. Instead of addressing the underlying issues causing societal destabilization, just as countless failed governments have before, your government is focused on doubling down and making people shut up about it.
Yes, a lot of these people are bigots or cranks. But people living in well-run countries don't listen to bigots and cranks. They aren't a problem. People start listening to bigots and cranks when nobody else will listen to them. Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms. Silencing people to maintain public order and harmony is the siren song of every failing authoritarian government there's ever been.
> Instead of curing the disease you're treating the symptoms.
Banning criminals and neonazis who act against our nation's interests is a simple matter of sovereignty and I hope we continue to do it despite your and JD Vance's opinions; it's a right the nation reserves.
> No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
This is pie-in-the-sky fantasy. It's just not true at all.
The tiniest, most meaningless, most temporary grievance can be exploited by demagogues and everyone knows it. Including the American president.
> No amount of bad speech can make people extremist on its own.
This is pretty much how extremism and cult recruitment work. Wording this as a disprovable statement was of utility.
People in well run companies listen to bigots and cranks. People listen to entertaining bigots and cranks all the time.
I mean, you are talking about the country which listened to the Brexit crowd.
Their current situation is also another massive self own, which happened because they listened to cranks!
Most of the west has been unprepared for how the information economy they grew up with from the 1940s onwards, has been taken over.
——-
I get the argument you are trying to make, that seeds only sprout when the conditions are right.
The supporting argument is adulterated since the advent of cable television and mass media. Rupert Murdoch has single handedly been able to decide what agendas survive for decades.
> This is pretty much how extremism and cult recruitment work. Wording this as a disprovable statement was of utility.
"On it's own" is the key hinge in that statement. They impact people the social system has already failed. The type of extremism is really irrelevant; the fact of extremism is a signal that something is going wrong. Suppressing the signal doesn't actually help anything. You or I could watch 200 hours of Nazi programming without feeling the slightest bit of inclination to start harming Jewish people. You have to be already screwed up to be seriously threatened by extremist content.
> I mean, you are talking about the country which listened to the Brexit crowd.
This is a great example. Remain had nearly unanimous elite support. Despite a massive state propaganda campaign, the Brexit campaign won the referendum. This should have been a huge flashing red light with air raid sirens to the UK elite class that something had gone horribly wrong with their management of the country. Instead, all that's happened is sneering contempt toward the stupid proles who voted at the behest of shadowy puppet masters against their own interests. Even the Brexiteer politicians themselves were obviously none too concerned about popular opinion, as Brexit was obviously in part driven by immigration fears, which they did less than nothing about - vote what you will, the UK politicians of either side know better than you. Indeed instead of addressing this at all, UK politicians have cracked down with increasing harshness on criminal opinions and speech, culminating in kafkaesque absurdities like Greta Thurberg being arrested for expressing support for the wrong side in a foreign conflict that should have nothing to do with the UK, or the laughable pretense that the UK government is utterly helpless to do anything about small boat landings other than put them up in hotels.
> Most of the west has been unprepared for how the information economy they grew up with from the 1940s onwards, has been taken over.
"Since the 1940s" is an important caveat. Broadcast media, in particular state control of broadcast media, really change the way the elite classes perceived the world. By installing their own people to control the media apparatus, they began to only see the world through their own lens and to believe that popular opinion could be largely controlled via the media, because that's all they saw. (In the US, for example, FDR used the FCC as a weapon to suppress dissent in radio.) Even print media was subject to enormous consolidation and unprecedented state control. What we're seeing now is something much more closely resembling the pre-war media environment, where the "wrong people" often got very large audiences, and false rumors and misinformation ran rampant. But all these sentiments and problems still existed postwar, they just stopped being visible to the political and intellectual elites.
I don't understand how Trump was ever allowed back into the UK on the basis of his criminality (e.g. a persistent offender who shows particular disregard for the law).
What purpose would a travel ban on those people serve? The UK is totally unable to police its own border nor remove violent predators. They've been reduced to paying perpetrators of sex offences to leave.
Bannon is a convicted criminal money-launderer and fraudster; we ban such people all the time (and so do other countries). But he's also agitating against UK interests (and interfered in our politics before).
Musk has literally called for violence on our streets; we ban people who do that too. We should consider banning foreigners who appear to be funding political activity here.
Vance is actively acting against the interests of the UK and EU (actively agitating against political union) in a way that benefits our adversaries, and he lionises neo-nazis.
In the last electoral cycle I've seen firsthand censorship applied to remote acquaintances because of the newly added EU DSA (this in and of itself would not be a huge disaster [by EU standards] if it wasn't accompanied by arrests), which was used as justification over some posts on TikTok and X; therefore I don't really care who hurts the pro-censorship faction within the EU. People have been arrested in WE for speech online for more than a decade now, but now it also happens in EE, where I live, bringing back communist-era "vibes". You would excuse me if the anti-Trump or anti-US (because of the current administration) rhetoric doesn't move me regarding this.
Or let me guess, "Trump bad and therefore we should accept DSA/Chat control 2.0/3.0/etc."? Sorry, I don't care. And people who think this is only about the recent X fine are also wrong (this started last year when Thierry Breton started influencing european elections while also boasting about how he can annul such elections without repercussions; you can deduce what I'm talking about by asking an LLM). This is in part US gov. protecting private companies (and thus itself) from fines, sure, but the broader point about censorship within the west applies. Everything that hurts the people making legislation regarding the Internet (or software in general) within the EU should be welcomed with open arms.
EU apologists would rather change the subject and talk about Trump and the polarizing social environment in the US rather than acknowledge that within the EU, there's not even a chance for discourse to be had about any policy(especially the nonexistent free speech) due to the aforementioned laws. The same people will act surprised when extreme positions regarding the EU are adopted by an ever-increasing number of people "until morale improves".
The EU does far too little to prevent election influencing. From Cambridge Analytica, proof of foreign bribery, algorithmic promotion of bot content by X and Meta specifically intended to undermine democracies, there's plenty of election fixing happening, and the EU should be much more aggressive about preventing it.
Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Everybody knows about Cambridge Analytica being used in the US/UK, but, for example, little to no one knows that Cambridge Analytica was also used by political parties within the EU (I won't give specific names [for now], but parties [from Italy, Malta, CZ, and Romania], members of the euro-parliamentary groups EPP/RE/SD, in the 2014-2016 period). Why did nothing happen back then? Those mentioned parties were usually pro-EU, so it's not really surprising no such "scandal" was being discovered until later on, when Cambridge Analytica was being used by the UK/US.
And the Cambridge Analytica "phenomenon" is not really something you can realistically prevent. I'm sure it happens now with some other better firm (Palantir probably), but this is really beside the point. The point is that normal citizens, like you and me, are effectively censored upon suspicion before any burden of proof is provided. Nothing says "protecting democracy" like deleting posts from social media and then finding out the context.
> Individual free speech is not - of course - ethically or politically identical to "free speech" produced by weaponised industrial content farms funded by corporations and foreign actors.
Sure, nobody likes bots/paid shills. But of course, in a normal society, you have to prove those posts are made by actual bots/content farms before taking any action. Otherwise it's just censorship. Election interference always happens, without exceptions, but degrees vary. This is not to say we shouldn't point out when it happens, but to not do censorship against our own citizens because "the models indicate a pattern akin to foreign entities." Patterns are not burdens of proof, and thus employing a "crowdfunded" fact-checking system like Community Notes or the one from YouTube is at least partly the actual solution instead of directly removing content. Under DSA, you can effectively remove content without providing burden of proof regarding the identity of the poster. Platforms must provide a "statement of reasons" (Article 17) to affected users for any removal, including appeal rights, but this does not impose pre-removal identity checks on posters.
Cambridge Analytica was also caught interfering in elections here in India.
"Interference" in elections, even foreign interference, is not a new problem. It has been a problem for at least 2500 years. The nice thing about a democracy, though, is you still have to convince masses of people to vote a certain way, rather than simply influencing a few bureaucrats/aristocrats. And well, if masses of people can be convinced to vote for something you don't like, in a democracy it's your responsibility to show them why they're wrong, rather than treating them like dummies without the intellectual capacity to make their own responsible decisions. If you think people are too stupid to make decisions in the face of the wrong propaganda, you are conceding that you don't believe in democracy at all - at best you believe in stage-managed popular support to make your non-democratic government appear legitimate.
The EU doesn't want to accept that millions of people don't share the EU elite consensus on several issues - usually still a minority of people, but a substantial minority. Instead of recognizing their responsibility to steer the ship of state with the winds of the times, they are simply declaring all bad political opinions to be the result of the Russians, the Americans, or the corporations, or some combination of the three. Countries in which serious conversations are had about banning one of the most popular political parties for wrongthink can only ironically be considered democratic.
The only arrest (including jail time) I've heard of over internet shit was someone named Tate, and I'm pretty sure it was over suspicion of online pimping/hustling (not sure how it ended up), so I would love to know who was arrested because of the DSA, to see if it match.
it is perfectly legitimate to want to regulate foreign (and domestic) media companies
I disagree in principle, but let's say the people decide to do so. Not only in US (under section 230) those are not media companies, but in EU too, social networks like Facebook/Instagram/etc. are treated legally as "public squares" and not media companies like BBC/etc. When you defame somebody on Instagram, you're the one being held legally responsible, not Meta. Why would social networks be responsible for DSA violations made by the users? This is beyond the fact that implementing an "instant-takedowns" censorship mechanism is draconian. DSA's Articles 16-17 do not require the person (who can also be anonymous, which is ironic) who is reporting the content to provide >legally sufficient< evidence for the takedown. Which goes directly against what I would consider "normal" in a society where you're innocent until proven guilty. The "trusted flaggers" (article 22) do need to submit more evidence, but this just becomes a problem of "partisanship" and bias. This basically means you can report someone for illegal activity, provide unnecessary evidence(in the legal sense), and the content is taken down, with the "battle" starting afterwards.
YouTube's system of DMCA takedown(the copyright issue being way more serious legally than what DSA is supposed to protect against) is not perfect and cannot be perfect (proven by the fact that content is unjustly taken down all the time). DSA is just the same, except more vague, more complicated and (imo) ultimately worse.
DSA has an appeal mechanism, with an option for out-of-court settlements, which means you can employ independent fact-checkers (certified by Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs)); the list of certified bodies is, of course, maintained by the European Commission. The problem is that these DSCs are appointed by each country's gov., which means there's potential room for conflict of interests not only at a national level(I find hard to believe appointed DSCs are completely impartial to the gov. that appointed them) but also at an EU-wide level(certified fact-checking bodies who are supposedly not influenced by EC when judging cases pertaining to EU in international cases).
> Why would social networks be responsible for DSA violations made by the users?
because we don't want some to suffer the same fate as the US?
a demented proto-dictator co-opting our political systems because facebook decided it's good for engagement
if that makes their business non-viable, well, what a shame
not as if we'd be losing any tax revenue as a result
You obiously have no idea hoe the EU or Europe works. Go read something other than social media
It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically. Brusselocrats are career politicians caring more about their CV than the spirit of their actions. They do populist flashy things, it's not like they'd lose an election or anything. Ban them all you want, you re just buttering their bread , it's another bullet in their CV, a badge of honor.
Then again, Trump has to win the election, and the Bell curve is symmetrical. Sanctioning EU politicians is less like sanctioning elected national politicians, and more like sanctioning artists. No nation was offended
Breton is 70 so he will probably do a soft retirement now.
He has had a fantastic career in business, academia, and (French) politics. Less than 5 years of that career was spent in Bruxelles.
> It's funny how the US administration thinks people like Breton acted ideologically.
It's odd anyone paying attention to what Breton says could possibly think otherwise.
See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system. But tbh, Europeans deserve it, for they use and abuse of sanctions themselves, as some of Swiss citizens can attest.
Are you referring to Jacques Baud who has been sanctioned recently because he has been working as a mouthpiece of the russian government?
In the same way John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs are mouthpieces of the Russian govt?
Since when is it OK for governments to sanction people when they are lawfully expressing disagreement with Govt policies or views?
The former commander of Russian ground forces recently gave a long interview in which he said that the Russian army was on the verge of total collapse in the fall of 2022, when Ukrainian forces were pushing them back during the highly successful Kharkiv counteroffensive. Mearsheimer, Sachs, et al played a vital role in spreading FUD and unfounded fears that led to less military support for Ukraine than was needed. As a result, hundreds of thousands more people are dead than might have been had Ukraine been supported properly.
Mearsheimer alone has done more to deny modern weapons to Ukraine than the entire Russian air force could. In terms of ROI, he has been a spectacularly cost-effective propaganda asset. He has the blood of countless people on his hands and deserves to be hanged. But instead, he will kick the bucket due to natural causes in old age, a luxury not afforded to the children who died in their bedrooms under Russian missile attacks that Mearsheimer twisted himself into a pretzel to enable and justify.
Do you remember the name of that Russian commander, by any chance?
Gen. Oleg Salyukov is/was the ground commander.
I don't believe he's made this statement ever.
Blaming a YouTube analyst for the slow pace of weapons transfers and not the EU and NATO officials who were actually responsible for said transfers is a spectacular cope. If NATO is getting marching orders from random 3rd parties on YouTube and TV networks then there are a million problems more urgent to address than Mearscheimer's analysis here.
No, the reason for the slow trickle of weapons was because the West got high on their own supply after the successful 2022 offensives and actually thought they could break the Russian line without advanced weaponry. In that way Mearscheimer's message of caution was bang on - Ukraine should have negotiated peace when they had the upper hand, hundreds of thousands of good Ukranian and Russian men would be alive today.
What kind of "peace" would that be? Russia is not interested in peace, or do you have evidence that suggests otherwise?
The peace of Ukraine being neutral? Ukraine was officially neutral in 2014 (law from 2010, pushed by Russia), and see how that went.
So again, what kind of peace are you talking about?
Edit: Let me make the problem very clear:
- Ukraine wants a peace deal where Russia can't invaded again. After their experience with the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, the want hard security guarantees, not just Russian words on a piece of paper.
- Russia wants a peace deal where Ukraine's army is limited, and that doesn't allow foreign troops in Ukraine. Something else is unacceptable for them. In other words, a peace deal that is the perfect setup to invade again.
So again, what kind of peace deal are you talking about?
I’ve seen his interviews on YouTube and I’m not sure if he is a Russian asset or just says things contrary to the western narrative. There is a propaganda war.
So what hard evidence that he is working for the Russians?
Jaques Baud is not a "mouthpiece". He has never appeared on Russian state TV and has taken great pains to avoid citing Russian sources in his analysis. The problem is that what he has been saying about the Ukraine war (that the war is not winnable and peace should be negotiated as soon as possible) is dangerous as to European leadership.
It's not remotely dangerous to the European leadership.
It is dangerous to EU citizens who are on the receiving end of a campaign to radicalise national governments with far-right Russian-funded puppet regimes which will - clearly, as we can see in the US - be absolutely hostile to existing freedoms.
Honestly I feel like people won't care and the sanctioning helps less and less if it doesn't do the opposite.
They feel like repeatedly the baby was thrown out with the bathwater wrt migration and the like despite popular opinion being very much against those. Often getting no genuine choice of opposition that wasn't fringe right.
Now I know so many people who will in turn throw out the bathwater containing their national or supranational interests, rule of law (that limited their options), etc. People who one will struggle to reach across the isle... and it was utterly predictable.
If they don't want far-right Russian puppets to win then they should actually respond to the wants and needs of their voters instead of scolding anyone who goes against their neoliberal warmonger groupthink as "pro-Russian", whatever that means. They're only digging their own graves if they think denying reality will save them.
Or maybe we should stop the propaganda arm of the US fascists distorting the reality around here and inventing needs that our population doesn't actually need so that they are pushed towards far right parties?
Or how about making sure the corrupted US society do something about them messing up the world economy because rich people want to be richer and so they bought their governments through once again their propaganda arms of all the social media and news corporations they bought?
What about the parts where the US would bomb constantly the ME thus making the people living there want to move out. But of course they won't go to the place that bombed them, especially since there's a whole ocean between them so instead they come to us in the Europe. Oh and if it's not bombs, it's global warming anyway, another thing the current US government pushes hard for.
> See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.
You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.
SWIFT is belgian...
Aren't all SWIFT transactions over a certain amount routed to the US for approval?
Can you explain what sanctions impact swiss citizens?
Straight from the horse's mouth: https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/foreign-affairs/former-swiss-in...
Sanctions on Jacques Baud for anti-war activism: https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/1802...
Sanctions on Nathalie Camp for of anti-colonialist speech: https://data.europa.eu/apps/eusanctionstracker/subjects/1764...