Europeans are free to quantify the threat which the US poses to European geopolitical concerns, and many European countries have decided to avoid AWS for such reasons.

The US, similarly, ought be free to feel that EU is not the same as China, and allow a different economic relationship with the EU than with China. The US is currently amicable with the EU and is thus willing to treat the EU very differently than with China.

> The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances.

Far from me to defend American imperialism, but this is not true, is it? The USA has a decent list of long standing alliances, that include a variety of countries: Japan, Australia, Canada, UK, South Korea, among others.

> America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/633024-america-has-no-perma...

From Henry Kissinger, US Secretary of State.

By that pessimistic definition, no country can really ever have allies.

The US has a number of nations with which its interests have long aligned with, and are likely to continue to, and are formalized via treaty. I’m ok with calling those alliances.

That might be a perspective, but it feels weird to say it the way Kissinger does if it doesn’t elude to something deeper.

For example: There could be war between Finland and Sweden, but it’s fair to call them allies, in this day and age, they are friends… friends can still fall out. I know he says permanent friends, but permanence in friendship is simply the act of not sabotaging it.

In the same way it might be fair to call the US and Canada allies, but given that the US has been considerably more hostile to the EU, even spying on politicians, I think the quote is more telling than you believe.

A man who is widely reviled by a decent chunk of American population. One of the few issues that both parties and independents agree on is how terrible and damaging this person was.

Am I missing where this is quoted from, or is it like many other quotes where it could be attributed to the person, but nobody really knows?

Edit: if I'm reading right, it seems to be a quote from Dinesh D'Souza's book "What's so great about America" quoted by Henry Kissinger in his book "The White House Years"

https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger (Quotes -> 1980's)

Aside from the aforementioned countries, I'd say Israel is quite a strong ally of the United States.

The US is actively NOT doing what Kissinger thinks, in current geopolitical affairs. He doesn't speak for the country and hasn't had an active role in its actions for 45 years.

You're right, and that list also includes European countries like France. You're just quoting a bad actor, no way that he ever opened a history book about the subject.

It may be true but if it's true it's true for all allyships.

Look at the history of Europe and observe the shifting trends of alliances.

America has been to war with Japan, Canada and the UK - which supports the fact that allies can always turn.

> allies can always turn.

But that's not what happened, is it?

Enemies turned into allies. That's quite the opposite of what you said.

Obviously, the reverse is also true (enemies to allies as in my examples). Ultimately it's the opposite of what you said.

The US interference and surveillance in the EU is well-documented and at a massive scale. The Chinese ditto is much smaller though the media attention much bigger.

Hopefully non-US tech finally will lead to reasonable regulation: Storage of citizen's data on national ground and protection against arbitrary surveillance by foreign governments whether perceived friend or for.

Unfortunately the push to simply ban anything Chinese is strong as it has massive commercial interest of old US-tech (Facebook, Google) behind it. But it is not in our (Europeans) interest and I hope our politicians can resist.

> The US interference and surveillance in the EU is well-documented and at a massive scale. The Chinese ditto is much smaller though the media attention much bigger.

Citation needed.

Yes, US/China relations are pretty distinct from US/EU relations.

Why do you think that's the case? Aside from the trade-war that's going on, which is pretty arbirary;

The US has routinely spied on Europe, allowed backdoored technology to make it's way into the continent including to spy on government officials from another sovereign (allegedly allied) nation.

It's hard for me not to draw direct comparisons, because other than the surface level of "everything's fine, we have a common culture and we're all white" - I don't see them as being much different.

Of course you're right, they're not the same, we don't see them the same. But China has arguably done less to the US than the US has done to the EU.

Can you explain it to me?

At enormous expense the US rebuilt Europe (Marshall plan), protected it from Soviet Encroachment (and is still doing so to this day, apparently), and is above all reciprocal with Europe in a way that China is not.

Facebook is not banned in Europe. Spotify is not banned in America. Both are banned in China. On that basis alone both entities have ample cause to limit China's influence in their own domestic spheres.

The rebuilding of Europe was all done with loans not gifts, so it was just a money making cheme

Well for one, there's this thing called NATO. For another there isn't constant saber rattling between the EU and US.

EU and US are both fundamentally liberal democracies and not adversarial. China is an authoritarian single party state which openly declares the US an enemy...

Because of course a two party system is fundamentally different from one party one :-D

... + the liberal institutions + the non-totalitarianism + the actual, real life democracy + historical and political context + ... :D

That’s correct, yes.

I'm assuming there is irony and you mean 2 is not enough. But it's still day and night compared to single party, irony is not an argument in itself.

No, two parties representing largely the same lobbyists and sharing largely the same views are not "night and day" compared to one party. I'd go as far as to say they are exactly the same, except for pretending there's some actual, working opposition.

This was an easier both sides-ism to get away a decade ago. It stretches credulity today.

Not really - they differ in rhetorics, but not in things that matter. Democrats hadn’t denounced any part of religious fundamentalism, for example.

> Democrats hadn’t denounced any part of religious fundamentalism

This is a baffling assertion that takes about ten seconds to debunk. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/at-prayer-breakfast-obama-conde...

That’s not denouncing fundamentalism, that’s just asking to tone it down.

Can you quote a single US senator who openly called “life from conception” what it is, like they called out antivaxers?

What is, according to you, the definition of "life from conception"?

I'm a supporter of abortion but this is going to be fun I think.

The definition doesn’t matter, what matters is what it is: a fringe theory reinvented in late XIX century as part of Catholic hate campaign.

Your point being? As a reminder, we’re talking about democrats failing to condemn extremist ideas.

I was just curious, you were drifting off.

To your point, I think democrats and republicans positions on climate are very different: https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/07/us-support-for-envir...

That would go against your point that they support "largely the same ideas".

> Why do you think that's the case?

The whole history of the XX century

US has the same stance on the Democratic world like the EU.

As it appears, China actually supported war in Europe. As long as it didn't happen during the games.

So yes, China should be under suspicion a lot more than the US from an European viewpoint.

Ps. I'm from Belgium

The Chinese government owns all of its businesses. In the US/EU, businesses are independently owned by private individuals.

You mean to say that the US government isn't spying on data held by large US companies?

We won't really find out until there's a big European social media platform or whatever - I agree with you it's weird, but the obvious response (and you've received it) is along the lines of conjecturing that they wouldn't worry about UK-Tok, Têtebook, or Deutschezon. Maybe that's right. It'd be fun to find out. (Also for other reasons, come on, what's going on that there isn't really even one to name?)

There have been international competitors in key US industries for decades. The most that’s occurred has been bailouts of US heavy industry such as cars. Examples include Toyota, Ericsson, Sony, Hyundai, VW etc.

When there are reciprocal markets between countries with similar approaches to government and law, there isn’t much of a problem. When one country adds tariffs, the other usually just matches them.

Of course but I'm talking about more consumer-facing (and.. 'interactive' in a way car manufacturers aren't) companies, social media, etc.

Closest I can think of are Ocado and Monzo, neither of which (especially the latter) are big enough to compare yet. Perhaps Just Eat (UberEats competitor) too which recently announced US partnership with Amazon. (Veering off-topic here but I've long been surprised that Deliveroo hasn't massively expanded globally? That's the dominant one in London at least, and very quickly ate Just Eat's lunch, which long predated it.)

The majority of the time something successful comes out of the EU, the US buys it wholesale.

Skype, Shazam, iZettle, Mojang etc

I’m not sure it would be different for social networks. (similar to how the match group owns practically all the dating sites and apps; interestingly I just found out that the match group refused to pull out of Russia.)

there is spotify which I think is winning in the us

>This might sound like a fallacious argument; but do you think the same about Europeans who consume almost exclusively US media and interact almost exclusively with US social media platforms?

i'm not OP, but yes.

>Is it different rules for us in Europe? or are you suggesting that we should never have allowed this to happen?

this should never have been allowed to happen.

the mass collection and storage of video, audio, location data, public and private messages, browsing history, topics of interest, sentiments and mood, social graphs, menstrual status, political leanings, and so on, is a travesty. it is an unprecedented and powerful invasion of personal privacy, and it's happening to every online adult and child around the world, and there is essentially no way to opt out, and no expectation that the collected data will ever be deleted.

if it only scares you when china does it, something's weird.

"The US (famously) does not have Allies, only temporary allegiances."

What? Are you a troll or just a cpp bot?

NATO is an alliance, and also the US has many other defense pacts. (AUS, and more). Those are not temporary allegiances (if you call 70 years 'temporary' then you are either trolling or just delusional).

It's roughly a Kissinger quote, so no, GP is not a troll. Note that a recent President was interested in possibly withdrawing from NATO.

The US feels too incompetent to try to manipulate other countries and it feels more like they have a bad culture and they export it to European countries (where kids in half broken and sad schools dream of partying in cool fraternities).

China, on the other hand, sounds perfectly capable and willing of manipulating our society to make it weak and broken, while at the same time forbidding the same content in their land.

I'd argue it even predates tiktok and it could explain why media and politicians are so much worse than 30 years ago. The other explanation is that we got complacent, and all great empires need generational weakness before collapsing.

Probably there's a bit of truth in both.

Not the person you are asking, but I think I have a point that can help shed some light on the matter. I'm going to be speaking from the Canadian side of things, and so I'll be saying 'We' a lot due to the US and Canada tending to trade alike in a lot of ways AFAIK.

Ultimately, it all boils down to known trajectories. The EU and other places in the general area such as the UK, are all known to have histories of their own no doubt. Not just good histories, but bad as well. We trade with Germany, despite WWII. We trade with middle eastern countries, despite having many beliefs and ideologies and laws that are not exactly loved by all to put it lightly. We trade with even out economic adversaries because why not. Cheap labor, etc.

In all of these cases where we trade with any one of these places that someone could make some argument or another that they would be undesirable trade partners for; the future trajectory of that nation is what is the key point of where the decision is based off of to keep trading, or go with sanctions, etc and so forth.

The key to understanding this as I do, is the basis of Canada still trading with China when USA decides not to, or to restrict trade, etc and so forth. This is because our government for the past while now has decided that they wanted to help China get out of its economic slump from the past decades. And so of course since America tends to be a bit hawkish around working with communism in any form, while Canada has more socialist roots established; we tend to be more willing to work with such nations than America tends to. (And this absolutely sometimes pisses them off, government wise so to speak. And the nationalist types...)

Now in the past, most of this would have been water under the bridge, and nothing to be concerned about. Trade is trade, nothing more, nothing less; usually.

But with the advent of all of this digital revolution we are going through, and politics being stuck into everything that has a usable screen; the end result is stuff like this where countries with histories of X thing that Y government doesn't like automatically get extra scrutinized.

Especially when those countries have active militaries that support that kind of regime in said country. Doubly so when that country is in support of those militaries. One might say militia instead, but I fail to see the difference once they own navy vessels. I think this should be a fair opinion on the matter.

Anyways, right or wrong on the military/militia part as I may be, the end point is that we are seeing a rise in more extreme behavior in that country, in this case China and Russia lately; and so it only makes sense to be even more scrutinizing of anything to do with them.

Literally anything, since again; politics is in everything now.

Even us in Canada are starting to pull back from China, even though we are doing it at a slower rate. Our government is trying very hard to basically only enact these kinds of retracting changes only when it is going to hurt their future election outlook the least; or hurts their opponents outlook the most.

As for an example of this in action; Huawei 5G networks are effectively banned in Canada now. It took a while to come into fruition, but it finally happened. Whether or not they were right or wrong to do so is not my hill to fight on right now, but it is a great example of them biding their time til the last moment.

You are asking whether sporadic US police abuses and a literal police state stack up comparably in terms of human rights?

They aren’t sporadic, they are systemic. You’re assuming it’s different because you’ve been conditioned to believe the “land of the free” myth.

what is a police state?

Huh, a single guy having all the power and changing the fundamental rules of the game (aka constitution or however it's called in China)? Not a red flag?

Except in China there is no “single guy” like this. China is “democratic” same way US is - they vote for something similar to electors.

You need to define what your quotes mean.

If it was democratic, disagreeing with the government wouldn't send you to jail. Try walking in Shanghai with a sign saying "the government is corrupt" and see how long you last.

Meanwhile in real world: https://m.thebl.tv/china/china-shanghai-citizens-break-block...

As for the quotes - according to Chinese their system is democratic. According to Americans theirs is. From my European point of view both are somewhat flawed democracies, China because despite advancing surprisingly quickly they are not there yet when it comes to transparency and human rights, and US because its political system is essentially just institutionalized corruption. That and indirect voting.

"armed police officers dressed in protective clothing came to the location to drive out the crowd"

"armed police officers dressed in protective clothing came to the location to drive out the crowd."

This is you making your point about China being democratic?

US being "institutionalised corruption": sources? How is Europe.less corrupt? Again, sources?

It’s not normal for police to protect demonstrations in your country? Which country is that, if I may ask?

As for corruption - in Europe corporations can’t just buy congressmen. In US it’s the norm.

Yes it's normal for the police to ensure a demonstration goes peacefully. It is a fundamental right in many countries to demonstrate. In China it is not. What country do _you_ leave in, where demonstrating is not allowed?