Highly recommend House of Huawei by Eva Dou, I didn’t know much about the history or background of this monolithic and demonized company so I picked it up and I have to say I found it fascinating.
If you’re interested in recent history or telecommunication development over the last 50 years it’s a great read. It’s not a technical deep dive nor a political hit piece, the author wrote for the Washington Post and it really reads like a long and in-depth article. Which is actually nice despite sometimes leaving me wanting for more, definitely made it a quick read.
Meta note: FTM (Follow The Money) is a small Dutch investigative journalism outfit which has exposed a far amount of bad shit in the Netherlands, and probably had the biggest per-staffer impact of any publication here (if you could somehow quantify that).
I wasn't actually aware they had an English-language .eu version but great for them! I found their "about us" page to be a bit obtuse (no names, no locations, making it very similar to the "about" pages of fake news sites and extreme-left/right associated magazines), so figured it might be nice to add this bit of context: In NL, FTM is generally considered a respected news organization and they're not particularly associated with any political angle.
Basically how it goes in NL is:
- FTM writes something
- A few nerds pick it up
- A day later, bigger news sites write the same story worse, sometimes even crediting FTM
- Scandal ensues
Corruption at European parliament should be highly and serverly punished by Enforced Works for the rest of their life with abduction of all there good of all their family that have get ane Euro from corruption.
Surely you joke about avoiding corruption within the EU. Ursula von der Leyen negotiated privately with CEO's of vaccine companies, while her husband worked for a US supplier of said vaccine companies and her SMS data disappeared.
The current European Council president, took such a job directly after being forced to resign as Portuguese prime minister due a corruption scandal, where the Portuguese police found thousands of Euros in hard cash in the office of his assistants.
Even more ironic, Portugal got a new prime minister, who two days ago, had to resign due to a....yes...new corruption scandal. So I expect him to get an EU job also soon.
Yes. But it's a lost cause. It's structural, since EU jobs are compensation roles for failed politicians. If you ever been into inside politics as more than just an elector, you will know this is how lists pre-election are built.
My fear is that similar dynamics were at play when the AI act was shaped and approved, with the three European biggest countries unhappy of the content of the act (France, Italy, Germany).
> Are you sure? Publically criticize the American government, then do the same with the Chinese government. Now, did your opinion change?
Personally I'm less bothered by China. I need to do business in the US, I don't need to do business in China. The US government has a lot of leverage to fuck up my life, I would not care about the reach of the Chinese.
I would rather someone sitting in China wants to persecute me than someone in my own country / town / neighbourhood / home - who can actually persecute me.
Likewise if I lived in China, and I had to pick between being spied on by my state or someone half way around the world - I would welcome the CIA to listen in all day long.
The thought police already arrived, see Columbia grant cancellations and Mahmoud Khalil [1].
[1] "Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” said the official." https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ice-detention-of-a-columbia-stud...
I don't think absolutes make too much sense. When in China I use US hardware. When I'm in the US I use Chinese hardware. Europe is much more closely aligned with the US than China, so I'd generally use Chinese hardware there as well.
China doesn't give a damn if I criticize them from the EU. Even our politicians are free to criticize them, in contrast to US leaders/oligarchs especially nowadays.
You're never going to get rid of bribery and corruption entirely, unfortunately. Greed is way too strong a motivator. Hopefully people actually getting arrested and charged for it makes people think twice though.
Greed is NOT the ultimate problem. With over 21 trillion undocumented adjustments in US GOV. It is too much for just greed. People who are taking that much money is about control.
Humans just love control and predict future and not good at uncertainty that's how we ended up here.
I bet you need lesson on corruption from EU court then, for exampl.
Von der Leyen Commission loses COVID vaccine transparency case ahead of crucial vote
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMub-tzrKmk
I'm very aware of the corruption in the EU, corruption will always happen because greed will always happen, the questions are: what is the level and degree of said corruption? What do institutions do to fight it?
Living in this black-and-white world where you expect absolutely no corruption is not helpful, von der Leyen has plenty to answer on the Pfizer case and as far as I know the case is still being looked upon so institutions are working, they might not be as fast as we would like to see a conclusion but that's how it works as of now.
I'd suggest you to play less into the shitstorming, it just creates even poorer discourse on the internet, the effects of such poor discourse can be seen on the political environment of the USA at the moment. I believe we can all agree that's not a path we would like to go to.
A major problem in EU is that it is at least in practice very opaque. EU politics are not followed by the media or the citizens, and it is surrounded by a gigantic lobbying machine, and run by democratically unaccountable officials.
E.g. US corruption is at least mostly in plain sight, with EU who knows what's going on.
> Why is the police of a single country authorized to investigate EU parliament members just because of the geographical location?
The EU is not a nation. It doesn't have a police. Crimes do not take place on its territory, because it has none. So then it'll fall onto the Belgium (or French) police.
Europol is more like Interpol than FBI in that it has no executive power, it's primary purpose is coordination among national police forces which will conduct actual raids and arrests.
Europol doesn't have its own enforcement agents, it's an organisation relying on national police forces to enforce its actions. It's a coordinator, not a full blown police force...
>> Authorities suspect that Huawei lobbyists have paid bribes to MEPs in return for backing their cause in the European Union.
> Isn’t that the cost of doing business in the EU?
No, it's not. If you represent a business there is an official way to express your stance and lobby for your cause but bribing MEPs is a criminal offence (both for the perpetrator and those who receive personal benefits).
Its how all telco hardware companies operate - google "Ericsson/Nortel/Seimens bribe".
The only reason the EU has to depend on Huawei is because EU telco hardware which once ran most of China telco can't compete anymore. So they have to play this game until local players get their act together.
... I mean, if this were the case, Huawei would have a monopoly, and no reason to bribe anybody. Like, put a _bit_ of thought into this stuff; your claim cannot possibly be correct.
For what it's worth, the UK, having banned Huawei stuff, is currently ripping out their Huawei 5G gear and replacing it with largely equipment from Ericsson.
They were bribing officials to try to get them to not ban them in the great Huawei wars of the late 2010's / early 2020's - which led to the UK banning Huawei at the behest of the US for political reasons.
Huawei clearly doesn't and didn't have a monopoly; in 2022 before the bans really got going it had about a 30% market share, vs Ericsson 25% and Nokia 20%.
I do not know if it's a joke that i'm too european to understand or you're serious, but at least in europe there are some rules regarding lobby and transparency[1]. Bribes are of course something that doesn't follow the rules and thus are not lobbying.
Without judgment: I've started noticing how a different culture cannot imagine some phenomenon (e.g. some problem) not occuring in another culture. It's leading me to question what things I consider as universal constant that aren't.
Plenty of companies have Public Affairs departments that work essentially as lobbyist, but no bribery neither to the MEP nor the Political Party is involved.
Many lobbyists work "simply" by producing reports and collecting data that works in favor or their proposals, publishing them to opinion pieces in newspapers etc.
There is no explicit bribery, but there are plenty of examples where a government bureaucrat leaves to join a company they were "regulating" on a fat pay cheque.
Some questions from your side of the Atlantic (I’m Dutch): how is Europe in good shape while Germany is in a recession for years now? And while our governments are becoming as polarized as the US? And while electricity prices are so high that it’s cheaper to stick to fossil fuels? It all makes no sense. I don’t think it’s all hopeless in Europe. But pretending we are in good shape is also not the way to go.
>how is Europe in good shape while Germany is in a recession for years now?
It's in a better shape because unlike the US leaders, European leaders are much better at pandering, being politically correct and saying the right socially acceptable things in public that get universal appraisal on the world stage, without them actually doing anything concrete or solving any of the issues. Basically, they win on optics. At least I'm sure that's what he meant with that virtue signaling attack.
Because if we look objectively at how the EU politics handled the economy, defense, illegal immigration, AI & tech innovation, domestic EV industry, rise of China, Russia's invasion of Crimea, etc. over the years, they're definitely not worth their salt.
Case in point, EU had the same GDP as the US 20 years ago. Now it's only half of that the US. So not only they've left us poorer, but also militarily weak and exposed to influence of China, Russia, and of course the Trump's new US policies.
IMHO, 20 years ago Trump wouldn't have the balls to try to boss the EU around like that but he can today because we're no longer peers but pushovers with no leverage, no military leverage, no economic leverage, no tech leverage, no natural resource leverage, nothing other than telling him he's being mean, because our useless politicians were asleep at the wheel and left us vulnerable to such bullies.
In other comments you talked about how eu spending money to defend eu[1] and the romanian candidate being arrested for violating the law weren't the right things to do[2], or at least complained about how they were done.
To my eyes, these things show that in fact, eu is actually doing something about defense and protecting democracy, and to your eyes you see this as more taxes and the death of democracy and an evidence of romania's corruption. What actions would you expect eu to take in regard to ukraine, defense, and protecting democracy?
I showed some things that you do not see as the right course of action for the eu, i'm not moving the discussion. I'm genuinely interested in the path you would take regarding defense in europe
> It's in a better shape because unlike the US leaders, European leaders are better at pandering, being politically correct and saying the right socially acceptable things in public
I couldn't agree more. What I keep wondering though is whether this is new? Have politicians always focused on saying they fix things instead of actually fixing things? Many historians consider Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the best presidents since his optimism and New Deal got the United States out of the Great Depression (which is a weird name because nobody thinks it was very great). Are presidents like Roosevelt the exception? Should we expect that most presidents will achieve nothing more than a scandal like Watergate? I don't know.
If EU countries ran a deficit as large as the US did for the past 20 years...
We'd have even more GDP growth than America :-)
As well, the Euro would be worthless. US could print the 2008 crisis without massive currency debasement because of its reserve currency status, which in 10 years could not be the case anymore.
This means that the US has this huge deficit problem to fix, where most of it is because of Medicaid and Social Security entitlements (which will also grow faster in the next years).
The US is in a terrible fiscal shape right now, the next 10 years will be a rough ride for the average American.
TBO, I've heard of cases where some European politicians were sentenced for bribery, but I rarely hear about such cases in the US.
I don't know, perhaps it's because American politicians have higher moral standards, or maybe it's because bribery is not illegal in the United States.
Being in better shape doesn't mean perfect. While not being perfect, i don't think equating the corruption in EU organization is even remotely comparable to whatever the hell Trump is doing by buying teslas at the white house. The most important man of the world manages to be now seen as a con man, which is not exactly what you're looking for in a leader (And yes, i do blame von der leyen for some of her scandals as well).
I do give that the comment you're answering to is unnecessary rude
I believe people fundamentally misunderstand what the EU is and how it works.
Here is what I have learned from people who know the system very well and after working with it myself:
- The EU is designed to be influenced and run by lobbies. And it is in the open and assumed.
- The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there, because they know it is joke.
- It used to be that corruption was not a thing in the EU. Just because none of those Commission people would risk their career and benefits, and it was severely punished. So they wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee from you.
Now it does seem things got out of control, at least in the Parliament.
This does not make sense to me. I question how much you have worked for the EU.
1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
2. Being a candidate to run for Member of European Parliament is considered to be available only to the Member of National Parliaments with the most personal votes and/or most influential. It is definitely not a job given to the low-performers, particularly because only a few seats are available per country.
I don't know where you are from, but at least in Slovenia if you see someone running for EU parliament you know he is basically retiring from politics.
EU parliament has no actual power, EU is basically ran by EC and ECB.
There has been plenty of movement between the EU parliament and the national parliament in Finland.
As an institution, the EU parliament has real power. It's just that citizens are not particularly interested in what it does, and the media consequently does not report that much about it.
The core issue is that being a MEP looks like a career dead end to an invididual politician. While national MPs have less power, they enjoy more media attention. And if you are an MP for a major party, you have a real chance of becoming a minister. The same pathway does not work in the EU parliament, because commissioners are nominated by national governments rather than selected from MEPs.
> 1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
The problem is in practice those big law and regulations end up benefiting the biggest actors with "Star Destroyers" type legal departments and lobbying.
I have witnessed it, 10 years ago GDPR pushed most European companies in one of the hyperscaler cloud. Exactly the opposite of what we were naively expecting.
The EU Cyber resilience act is finishing up the job.
Funny how now just because Trump was elected, some European are waking up wondering why they are in this mess and welcome more EU regulation to get them out of there...
In the UK, before we (sadly) left, being an MEP was a bit of a joke, where being an MP was a much bigger deal. Maybe other countries are different, but nobody who wanted to rise through the ranks in the UK would opt to be an MEP over an MP, and I suspect that’s very similar in many other member countries.
> The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there
The European Parliament is not made of countries, nor it is meant to represent national interests.
National governments don't "send their best there", because it is the doing of each party in each nation. Sometimes parties that are represented in the EU Parliament are not represented in a member country's parliament.
Actually my comment was not really negative (apart calling the Parliament a "Joke").
I would invite you to see for yourself because those EU institutions are quite open, you can actually lobby them yourself.
Lobbying by the way is not reserved to corporations, you can and should lobby as an individual/private citizen.
You can send emails to those people they will usually answer you.
In general I'd agree that whataboutism is a logical fallacy, since it is basically a form of ad hominem, but it can also demonstrate that an attack itself is unjustified. For instance imagine if a farm was attacked for having laborers pick fruit for pennies per pound.
If one doesn't know much about the industry that would indeed sound potentially abusive - especially with sufficiently leading framing, yet it's also the global standard. That doesn't mean it's right, but it also means that allegations against one specific entity for such are, at the minimum, misleading.
Highly recommend House of Huawei by Eva Dou, I didn’t know much about the history or background of this monolithic and demonized company so I picked it up and I have to say I found it fascinating.
If you’re interested in recent history or telecommunication development over the last 50 years it’s a great read. It’s not a technical deep dive nor a political hit piece, the author wrote for the Washington Post and it really reads like a long and in-depth article. Which is actually nice despite sometimes leaving me wanting for more, definitely made it a quick read.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/721789/house-of-hua...
Edit: Washington Post, not New York Times
Europe needs to read this article if they want to do something constructive.
https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/how-tech-loses-out/
Meta note: FTM (Follow The Money) is a small Dutch investigative journalism outfit which has exposed a far amount of bad shit in the Netherlands, and probably had the biggest per-staffer impact of any publication here (if you could somehow quantify that).
I wasn't actually aware they had an English-language .eu version but great for them! I found their "about us" page to be a bit obtuse (no names, no locations, making it very similar to the "about" pages of fake news sites and extreme-left/right associated magazines), so figured it might be nice to add this bit of context: In NL, FTM is generally considered a respected news organization and they're not particularly associated with any political angle.
Basically how it goes in NL is:
https://archive.md/jRglK
Corruption at European parliament should be highly and serverly punished by Enforced Works for the rest of their life with abduction of all there good of all their family that have get ane Euro from corruption.
Surely you joke about avoiding corruption within the EU. Ursula von der Leyen negotiated privately with CEO's of vaccine companies, while her husband worked for a US supplier of said vaccine companies and her SMS data disappeared.
The current European Council president, took such a job directly after being forced to resign as Portuguese prime minister due a corruption scandal, where the Portuguese police found thousands of Euros in hard cash in the office of his assistants.
Even more ironic, Portugal got a new prime minister, who two days ago, had to resign due to a....yes...new corruption scandal. So I expect him to get an EU job also soon.
He is just saying that if there is corruption there should be harsh consequences not that corruption isn't present already in the EU.
Yes. But it's a lost cause. It's structural, since EU jobs are compensation roles for failed politicians. If you ever been into inside politics as more than just an elector, you will know this is how lists pre-election are built.
What about Huawei home internet (fiber) modems / routers? Many large telcos in the EU use them.
They have rebranded them as Soyealink
They have a significant DSLAM markeshare too
There are other vendors? They are on Huawei because of price...
Mine is Zyxel (Taiwan). There are others like Sagemcom (French), Fritzbox (German), not sure if microtik (Latvia) does end user stuff?
Not sure about the cost, but Telemach in Slovenia uses hardware from Genexis for FTTH, which is EU-based.
My fear is that similar dynamics were at play when the AI act was shaped and approved, with the three European biggest countries unhappy of the content of the act (France, Italy, Germany).
Good. Huawei is a Chinese state run enterprise passing all info to their masters.
I'm more comfortable with Chinese than US masters.
Are you sure? Publically criticize the American government, then do the same with the Chinese government. Now, did your opinion change?
Although I agree that with latest guys it won't be long before they also get a thought police.
> Are you sure? Publically criticize the American government, then do the same with the Chinese government. Now, did your opinion change?
Personally I'm less bothered by China. I need to do business in the US, I don't need to do business in China. The US government has a lot of leverage to fuck up my life, I would not care about the reach of the Chinese.
I would rather someone sitting in China wants to persecute me than someone in my own country / town / neighbourhood / home - who can actually persecute me.
Likewise if I lived in China, and I had to pick between being spied on by my state or someone half way around the world - I would welcome the CIA to listen in all day long.
The thought police already arrived, see Columbia grant cancellations and Mahmoud Khalil [1].
[1] "Khalil is a “threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States,” said the official, noting that this calculation was the driving force behind the arrest. “The allegation here is not that he was breaking the law,” said the official." https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ice-detention-of-a-columbia-stud...
I don't think absolutes make too much sense. When in China I use US hardware. When I'm in the US I use Chinese hardware. Europe is much more closely aligned with the US than China, so I'd generally use Chinese hardware there as well.
China doesn't give a damn if I criticize them from the EU. Even our politicians are free to criticize them, in contrast to US leaders/oligarchs especially nowadays.
Ok. Then we are different. And Europe is too. Europe has already shown we do not want Huawei in our 5G core networks. And now this.
Are we clear?
Now do google, apple, facebook, twitter, cloudflare, etc....
Eva "Cash" Kaili. Part two.
You're never going to get rid of bribery and corruption entirely, unfortunately. Greed is way too strong a motivator. Hopefully people actually getting arrested and charged for it makes people think twice though.
Greed is NOT the ultimate problem. With over 21 trillion undocumented adjustments in US GOV. It is too much for just greed. People who are taking that much money is about control.
Humans just love control and predict future and not good at uncertainty that's how we ended up here.
Hopefully life in prison is a stronger one.
Europe is now spending new billions in security. My guess is just new Political drama, a theatre to cover up corrupt spending.
You can have that opinion but until it's founded in reality it's just that: a baseless opinion.
Will there be issues? Of course, whenever money is involved there are issues but as usual: level and degree matter. It's not binary black-and-white.
I bet you need lesson on corruption from EU court then, for exampl. Von der Leyen Commission loses COVID vaccine transparency case ahead of crucial vote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMub-tzrKmk
Your n=1 sample with a case of insufficient transparency provided to the public isn't really enough to make a generalization about corrupt spending.
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I'm very aware of the corruption in the EU, corruption will always happen because greed will always happen, the questions are: what is the level and degree of said corruption? What do institutions do to fight it?
Living in this black-and-white world where you expect absolutely no corruption is not helpful, von der Leyen has plenty to answer on the Pfizer case and as far as I know the case is still being looked upon so institutions are working, they might not be as fast as we would like to see a conclusion but that's how it works as of now.
I'd suggest you to play less into the shitstorming, it just creates even poorer discourse on the internet, the effects of such poor discourse can be seen on the political environment of the USA at the moment. I believe we can all agree that's not a path we would like to go to.
A major problem in EU is that it is at least in practice very opaque. EU politics are not followed by the media or the citizens, and it is surrounded by a gigantic lobbying machine, and run by democratically unaccountable officials.
E.g. US corruption is at least mostly in plain sight, with EU who knows what's going on.
Don't teach me how to think. I have very grey opinion of unelected bureaucrat seized control of the European Union. https://frontline.thehindu.com/columns/ursula-von-der-leyen-...
Ok then, goodbye.
this is in reference to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_...
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> Why is the police of a single country authorized to investigate EU parliament members just because of the geographical location?
The EU is not a nation. It doesn't have a police. Crimes do not take place on its territory, because it has none. So then it'll fall onto the Belgium (or French) police.
Wrt to the rest: just asking questions, right?
> It doesn't have a police
It does, Europol. For this case, considering there were raids in multiple different countries within Europe, they probably were involved.
Europol is more like Interpol than FBI in that it has no executive power, it's primary purpose is coordination among national police forces which will conduct actual raids and arrests.
Europol doesn't have its own enforcement agents, it's an organisation relying on national police forces to enforce its actions. It's a coordinator, not a full blown police force...
Why should Belgium not have jurisdiction over EU citizens living and working in their country? Why do you think this was not initiated via Europol?
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20221210-belgium-makes-eu...
1) Because the crimes are alleged to have occurred in Belgium. That's how jurisdiction works.
2) This is the opposite of convenient. EU would prefer a good working relationship with China given the issues with the US.
3) It was started because there are allegations of corruption.
4) Because no crimes have been committed.
5) Why not ? BlackRock is a global investment bank. It's going to have employees.
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In what way is Bellingcat a "spook-run operation"?
See link below): https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371139794_Unveiling...
If you'd like to make a point against Bellingcat, you should probably avoid citing poorly generated slop.
In what definition is Huawei a "smaller dog"?
If anything that just adds more credibility to the story.
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>> Authorities suspect that Huawei lobbyists have paid bribes to MEPs in return for backing their cause in the European Union.
> Isn’t that the cost of doing business in the EU?
No, it's not. If you represent a business there is an official way to express your stance and lobby for your cause but bribing MEPs is a criminal offence (both for the perpetrator and those who receive personal benefits).
Its how all telco hardware companies operate - google "Ericsson/Nortel/Seimens bribe".
The only reason the EU has to depend on Huawei is because EU telco hardware which once ran most of China telco can't compete anymore. So they have to play this game until local players get their act together.
... I mean, if this were the case, Huawei would have a monopoly, and no reason to bribe anybody. Like, put a _bit_ of thought into this stuff; your claim cannot possibly be correct.
For what it's worth, the UK, having banned Huawei stuff, is currently ripping out their Huawei 5G gear and replacing it with largely equipment from Ericsson.
Huawei did have a monopoly.
They were bribing officials to try to get them to not ban them in the great Huawei wars of the late 2010's / early 2020's - which led to the UK banning Huawei at the behest of the US for political reasons.
Huawei clearly doesn't and didn't have a monopoly; in 2022 before the bans really got going it had about a 30% market share, vs Ericsson 25% and Nokia 20%.
>The only reason the EU has to depend on Huawei is because EU telco hardware which once ran most of China telco can't compete anymore.
Cant compete on what?
Features?
Price?
Do tell, you seem to have information.
Have them sue you for something, reach a settlement and pay them "damages".
Please do tell how lobbying without bribery is supposed to operate.
I do not know if it's a joke that i'm too european to understand or you're serious, but at least in europe there are some rules regarding lobby and transparency[1]. Bribes are of course something that doesn't follow the rules and thus are not lobbying.
[1] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/en/transparen...
I am also European and your way of thinking is completely alien to me.
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Without judgment: I've started noticing how a different culture cannot imagine some phenomenon (e.g. some problem) not occuring in another culture. It's leading me to question what things I consider as universal constant that aren't.
Same way as advertising, just much more personal. There are ways to change people's opinions without paying them.
Plenty of companies have Public Affairs departments that work essentially as lobbyist, but no bribery neither to the MEP nor the Political Party is involved.
Many lobbyists work "simply" by producing reports and collecting data that works in favor or their proposals, publishing them to opinion pieces in newspapers etc.
There is no explicit bribery, but there are plenty of examples where a government bureaucrat leaves to join a company they were "regulating" on a fat pay cheque.
The EU is not unique in this though.
Bribery becomes lobbying when bribery is legalized. Also especially enforcement depends on who does the favors for the reps and officials.
Being an MEP is an absolute gravy train. They should not need bribes to make ends meet.
I think he cancelled that law because other nations weren't applying similar laws.
Anti-corruption is OK, but you lose out if you're the only one complying.
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Some questions from your side of the Atlantic (I’m Dutch): how is Europe in good shape while Germany is in a recession for years now? And while our governments are becoming as polarized as the US? And while electricity prices are so high that it’s cheaper to stick to fossil fuels? It all makes no sense. I don’t think it’s all hopeless in Europe. But pretending we are in good shape is also not the way to go.
The question was about bribes being legal. And while Europe is not perfect, overall it is not is a destructive mode USA is in.
And in order for that to not happen, arguing against spread of knee jerk lies is a good thing.
>how is Europe in good shape while Germany is in a recession for years now?
It's in a better shape because unlike the US leaders, European leaders are much better at pandering, being politically correct and saying the right socially acceptable things in public that get universal appraisal on the world stage, without them actually doing anything concrete or solving any of the issues. Basically, they win on optics. At least I'm sure that's what he meant with that virtue signaling attack.
Because if we look objectively at how the EU politics handled the economy, defense, illegal immigration, AI & tech innovation, domestic EV industry, rise of China, Russia's invasion of Crimea, etc. over the years, they're definitely not worth their salt.
Case in point, EU had the same GDP as the US 20 years ago. Now it's only half of that the US. So not only they've left us poorer, but also militarily weak and exposed to influence of China, Russia, and of course the Trump's new US policies.
IMHO, 20 years ago Trump wouldn't have the balls to try to boss the EU around like that but he can today because we're no longer peers but pushovers with no leverage, no military leverage, no economic leverage, no tech leverage, no natural resource leverage, nothing other than telling him he's being mean, because our useless politicians were asleep at the wheel and left us vulnerable to such bullies.
In other comments you talked about how eu spending money to defend eu[1] and the romanian candidate being arrested for violating the law weren't the right things to do[2], or at least complained about how they were done.
To my eyes, these things show that in fact, eu is actually doing something about defense and protecting democracy, and to your eyes you see this as more taxes and the death of democracy and an evidence of romania's corruption. What actions would you expect eu to take in regard to ukraine, defense, and protecting democracy?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43287963#43288810
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43278705#43278894 (not just the first comment, the chain of answers is needed to be read as well)
What's you point by moving the discussion to something else by bringing up tangential but unrelated comments I made a while ago?
Sorry, I'm not gonna bite and feed the trolls..
I showed some things that you do not see as the right course of action for the eu, i'm not moving the discussion. I'm genuinely interested in the path you would take regarding defense in europe
> It's in a better shape because unlike the US leaders, European leaders are better at pandering, being politically correct and saying the right socially acceptable things in public
I couldn't agree more. What I keep wondering though is whether this is new? Have politicians always focused on saying they fix things instead of actually fixing things? Many historians consider Franklin D. Roosevelt as one of the best presidents since his optimism and New Deal got the United States out of the Great Depression (which is a weird name because nobody thinks it was very great). Are presidents like Roosevelt the exception? Should we expect that most presidents will achieve nothing more than a scandal like Watergate? I don't know.
If EU countries ran a deficit as large as the US did for the past 20 years...
We'd have even more GDP growth than America :-)
As well, the Euro would be worthless. US could print the 2008 crisis without massive currency debasement because of its reserve currency status, which in 10 years could not be the case anymore.
This means that the US has this huge deficit problem to fix, where most of it is because of Medicaid and Social Security entitlements (which will also grow faster in the next years).
The US is in a terrible fiscal shape right now, the next 10 years will be a rough ride for the average American.
Is it now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qatar_corruption_scandal_at_th...
You’ll notice that in one of the cases, it is creating felons, and in the other, it’s elevating felons to high office. Pretty key difference.
Whataboutism
It's only whataboutism if it's from the nonsequitur region of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling comparison.
TBO, I've heard of cases where some European politicians were sentenced for bribery, but I rarely hear about such cases in the US.
I don't know, perhaps it's because American politicians have higher moral standards, or maybe it's because bribery is not illegal in the United States.
Here's a recent one:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-us-senator-rober...
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-loosen-enforcement-us...
Americans elect Trump who openly supports a company of his biggest donor. Also, pork.
Americans just don't have a problem with it.
That's a weird attitude. Ignoring real problem and burying one's head into the sand until its too late is what got US into the mess it is in now.
Are you implying that nobody should be able to criticize anything before its too late?
European politicians are superhuman and are way above bribes and such inferior, unsophisticated things.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/feb/10/i-aske...
Being in better shape doesn't mean perfect. While not being perfect, i don't think equating the corruption in EU organization is even remotely comparable to whatever the hell Trump is doing by buying teslas at the white house. The most important man of the world manages to be now seen as a con man, which is not exactly what you're looking for in a leader (And yes, i do blame von der leyen for some of her scandals as well).
I do give that the comment you're answering to is unnecessary rude
I believe people fundamentally misunderstand what the EU is and how it works.
Here is what I have learned from people who know the system very well and after working with it myself:
- The EU is designed to be influenced and run by lobbies. And it is in the open and assumed.
- The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there, because they know it is joke.
- It used to be that corruption was not a thing in the EU. Just because none of those Commission people would risk their career and benefits, and it was severely punished. So they wouldn't even accept a cup of coffee from you.
Now it does seem things got out of control, at least in the Parliament.
This does not make sense to me. I question how much you have worked for the EU.
1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
2. Being a candidate to run for Member of European Parliament is considered to be available only to the Member of National Parliaments with the most personal votes and/or most influential. It is definitely not a job given to the low-performers, particularly because only a few seats are available per country.
I don't know where you are from, but at least in Slovenia if you see someone running for EU parliament you know he is basically retiring from politics.
EU parliament has no actual power, EU is basically ran by EC and ECB.
There has been plenty of movement between the EU parliament and the national parliament in Finland.
As an institution, the EU parliament has real power. It's just that citizens are not particularly interested in what it does, and the media consequently does not report that much about it.
The core issue is that being a MEP looks like a career dead end to an invididual politician. While national MPs have less power, they enjoy more media attention. And if you are an MP for a major party, you have a real chance of becoming a minister. The same pathway does not work in the EU parliament, because commissioners are nominated by national governments rather than selected from MEPs.
> 1. EU is the most aggressive when it comes to legislation far exceeding the US in terms of privacy law, competition law and setting strict minimums for labor conditions etc.
The problem is in practice those big law and regulations end up benefiting the biggest actors with "Star Destroyers" type legal departments and lobbying.
I have witnessed it, 10 years ago GDPR pushed most European companies in one of the hyperscaler cloud. Exactly the opposite of what we were naively expecting. The EU Cyber resilience act is finishing up the job.
Funny how now just because Trump was elected, some European are waking up wondering why they are in this mess and welcome more EU regulation to get them out of there...
In the UK, before we (sadly) left, being an MEP was a bit of a joke, where being an MP was a much bigger deal. Maybe other countries are different, but nobody who wanted to rise through the ranks in the UK would opt to be an MEP over an MP, and I suspect that’s very similar in many other member countries.
> The Parliament is a joke. And you can partially blame the member countries who really do not send their best there
The European Parliament is not made of countries, nor it is meant to represent national interests. National governments don't "send their best there", because it is the doing of each party in each nation. Sometimes parties that are represented in the EU Parliament are not represented in a member country's parliament.
You know the bots are out in full force, when the first comment on a China-critical post is what-about-posts about how bad EU is.
You can see how threatened they must feel by the amount of trolling they do
Actually my comment was not really negative (apart calling the Parliament a "Joke").
I would invite you to see for yourself because those EU institutions are quite open, you can actually lobby them yourself.
Lobbying by the way is not reserved to corporations, you can and should lobby as an individual/private citizen. You can send emails to those people they will usually answer you.
I tire of this internet trend of calling someone who disagrees with you a bot.
I also agree with you that whataboutism posters come out in droves whenever there is negative-sentiment news about a non-Western aligned entity.
In general I'd agree that whataboutism is a logical fallacy, since it is basically a form of ad hominem, but it can also demonstrate that an attack itself is unjustified. For instance imagine if a farm was attacked for having laborers pick fruit for pennies per pound.
If one doesn't know much about the industry that would indeed sound potentially abusive - especially with sufficiently leading framing, yet it's also the global standard. That doesn't mean it's right, but it also means that allegations against one specific entity for such are, at the minimum, misleading.