If a global set of "Don't be an asshole" values could be defined, put into words, shared and progressed, it would have much greater value to a consumer and the world than merely going back to nationalism and protectionism.
Being a cynic, I expect the speeches to start with that then smoothly translate into "and therefore we have to spend more money on waging war in foreign countries". The US is exemplifying some of the best international values right now of trying to find a sharp end to all the meaningless dying we've been seeing for the last few years.
If it takes nationalism to make people serious about avoiding WWIII, so be it. Vote nationalist.
It's not rape if you agree to it.
I can’t speak for Russia because I have no data, but most Americans don’t carry the opinion of this government.
Almost every state is winner take all in electoral votes.
I suspect there are a lot of discouraged voters who don’t vote, because they live in states where their opinion is overrun by the political slant of the state’s majority.
In a direct popular vote, their vote counts a lot more.
But the US doesn’t have direct presidential elections. It has an archaic, anti-democratic system called the Electoral College, which grants land in Wyoming greater relative weight than people in Texas.
They didn't physically vote, but by not-voting, they are literally saying "I'm OK with whoever wins."
That's not what people voted for (agreeing with the government). They were given choices and to pick what they felt they preferred.
This assumes they even know what the truth is. We have discovered that a lot of people don't know how tariffs work for example.
I've seen this countless times, I'm from eastern Poland, we had our own MAGA ruling for 8 years, and eastern Poland is where most of their voters come from.
When it benefits these people - they understand enough to know what the mainstream opinion is and they don't oppose it.
When it does not support their worldview - they suddenly stop believing the experts or forget what the expert opinion is.
Ignorance is not the root cause. It's a protection mechanism.
It's fascinating to watch at first, but after 8 years of this I'm just tired.
Again, you assume or are you god? Did you mind read everyone? Otherwise there's no way to really tell. Are the votes public? What people say might not be what they vote for.
> I've seen this countless times
As in you've looked at everyone in existence?
> Ignorance is not the root cause. It's a protection mechanism.
Again how do you draw this conclusion that 100% or at least >70% are like this. It's like you decide for them. So even if they're ignorant you're going to rule otherwise.
> It's fascinating to watch at first
This is worse than stereotyping. What's fascinating is listening to your reply.
> That's not what people voted for (agreeing with the government)
I could play your game (asking at every point how do you know). And we will get to the point that we both agree it's just our interpretations of facts.
Now that we established that - can we return to a regular discussion?
I live among such people. They are my family and my neighbors. We talk about this. My uncle has a company distributing pig feed. He's doing it for 20 years. He pays taxes. When our Polish MAGA introduced a tax reform that they reverted next month (becuse it was self-contradictory) - he defended them and argued his taxes will be lower when it was mathematically false.
He's not stupid. He have choosen no to understand something he's good at - because he wanted to preserve his political beliefs.
My father is a teacher. He argued previous government "never raised teachers' salaries" and that his beloved MAGA government did. In reality (and I know that because my wife also was a teacher at the time) - it was the other way around. I've googled the data on the official government website. He did not changed his mind.
These are 2 examples out of dozens.
It's like talking with flat-earthers. It's not that they never encountered anybody to teach them science. They did, and they actively choose to ignore it. In fact they have to know the mainstream position at least well enough to know what not to believe.
You're trying to prove something with a much higher requirement than mine. Where are the facts to begin with?
I'm saying it's "not" what they voted for, the equivalent of trying to prove "not guilty". So as long as there are suspicions that's easily done.
What you're trying to prove is that everyone is "guilty", which is a lot harder, e.g. you'd need a high majority in court.
> I live among such people. > These are 2 examples out of dozens.
i.e. your reply is you live potentially in a bubble that might not even be statistically enough to prove any point and because of that you've concluded.
So if my friends at school all buy the same game, somewhere this game is popular in my country or even the world? For all I know it could only be my school or my state. E.g. many US states swing differently.
But also, people can change their minds between elections: https://eu.providencejournal.com/story/news/politics/2025/03...
It's egoism, simple as that.
Those things are naturally closer to them which then means they generate stronger emotions. Just intuitively, emotions fuel pretty much all decisions. I mean, if heroin didn’t feel good people wouldn’t do it. If fast food didn’t taste good people wouldn’t eat it. Conversely, negative emotion create patterns of behavior.
Our behavior is complex and choice is a spectrum. I don’t really choose to brush my teeth, it just kind of happens. I can stop, but I don’t. I look around me and nobody stops brushing their teeth. Perhaps brushing our teeth is so popular because it creates positive emotions. Less shame, less worries, more comfort.
I think, those in power harness this quite effectively.!
Besides taking ethical actions, how do you signal that that you share a certain set of political values with your consumers and shareholders, instead of your "somewhat arbitrary" law makers. It is a big shift, and not always an option, to move physical factories, workplaces, etc.
X and Meta are most obvious, and I don't know about google's involvement, but have been trying to convince people to move away from it for years. It's a similar situation with streaming services.
Same thing with Russia. Or Syria. Or North Korea. In foreign affairs, all the citizens of a nation are collectively held responsible for the action of that state.
Which is to say: stop hedging. This is your government. You cannot wash your hands of this mess because you voted for Kodos. It's your mess, admit it, and see what you can do to fix it. The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing.
Their taxes still support their governments and so do your purchases if you buy there.
The history of "rights" is what you're looking for, and this would come in the form of a list of rights.
You would probably get a lot out of reading The Declaration of the Rights of Man (https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp), as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...).
Thomas Paine wrote about the philosophy of rights as well, and you would probably get a lot out of reading his works such as The Rights of Man (https://www.ushistory.org/paine/rights/c1-013.htm)
Something being a right means that law does not grant it. If law granted it, it would be a privilege rather than a right. Governments exist to protect rights, but they don't grant rights. That's the solution to the bootstrapping problem for non authoritarian forms of government and why it is always OK to defend your rights, even if they are illegal under a specific form of government. America's founding document, the declaration of independence, is explicit about this idea.
> shared and progressed
No, this is where you are wrong, you didn't use the word defend, and that's really where the problem with liberal ideas starts and ends. They must be defended, at personal cost, with force.
Defending an idea that can't reward or punish you will not be as profitable or safe as defending a man who can reward or punish you. It is much easier for a man to build an army than for an idea to build an army. It will always be painful to defend your rights in the short term, but if you don't you will never have rights in the long term.
Solidarity, risking your own safety and well being for the benefit of someone else, is the only way to achieve a world you want to live in, but some of the builders of that world won't get to experience it, and that's a hard sell to people who just want to see their kids smile.
As do many Europeans...
I could install it from sources but I do not have any guarantee my message sent to my friend is not eye-picked by PRISM on his phone.
Open-source + marketing copy != final product
Just a regular reminder, guys.
Wikipedia says [0] it was started 10 years ago. I wonder what's the hold up?
what would you say about simplex's UX? https://simplex.chat/docs/guide/readme.html
Local circulation and tax payment does make a big and positive difference for many things (e.g., less transport for physical goods). Doesn't require the first recipient to be aligned with your values to have an effect.
It's just unfortunate that it had to be forced for stupid reasons, especially as it doesn't necessarily make sense for everything. This timeline sucks.
The philosophy here (as I understand it) is to list companies that operate under the EU rule of law.
We accept that each European country people are equal, we agree to collaborate and not screw each others for land.
Also we in majority are against fascism,racism and discrimination though social media managed to make a portion of idiots to hate LGBTQs and wokes so they want they adopted fascist values. We as citizens we re doing our best to fight aginst this fascists groups.
And before some MAGA will calim that right wing extemists are not fascists, I remind you that supporting assassinations, deportations, killings while at the same time pretending to be Christian is fascist (at least in my country, in USA might be labeled different)
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38543155
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39445976, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39414322, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32248062
It's not necessarily the perfect end goal, but for those who are at an earlier phase of their privacy journey, GrapheneOS + Molly-FOSS is a massive improvement over stock Android + stock Signal, while maintaining a relatively minimal disruption to their ordinary workflows with e2ee messaging on an android-based smartphone.
What even are "European values"? Is there such thing? Every EU country I know has varying values to the other members, that's why we have separate borders, languages, religions, cultures and laws with autonomy over them.
The EU is not one-nation one-culture like the US, but an org that doesn't impose any kind of universal values across the different diverse members except some laws that ease trade, labor movement and cooperation and that's it, but every country, and even every citizen has wildly different things they value based on culture, economy, history, social class and upbringing.
Well, one might say that we sell weapons to dictatorships (and they would be correct), but at least on paper there are some shared values we more or less share throughout European union. Full list here: https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...
Edit Wikipedia page as well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_values
Yes, protecting democracy and peace also includes punishing those who put at risk the existence of peace and democracy.
For the war part, it kinda tickles your butt having a war on your neighbor's garden, I see nothing wrong with supporting such a war (on Ukraine side's, of course)
You mean just like politicians from Austria and Germany who were Putin's lobbying arm in Europe, then took jobs at Russian oil and gas companies when their political careers ended? Why didn't they get arrested too?
>Yes, protecting democracy and peace also includes punishing those who put at risk the existence of peace and democracy.
And who gets to decides who are those "violators of democracy" when they're popular with the voters? The current corrupt Romanian government with vested interest to stay in power and keep competitors away from challenging the status quo? Because in the case of Georgescu the intelligence agencies making the claims about his connections to Russia have not provided no such evidence to the public. So how do you know that their assessment is truthful? Because the government would never ever lie to you right? Right? Sorry, but "trust me bro, he's guilty" from the Romanian authorities doesn't fly with me. Otherwise JD Vance wouldn't have pointed it out if he were a Russian trojan horse.
>For the war part, it kinda tickles your butt having a war on your neighbor's garden, I see nothing wrong with supporting such a war (on Ukraine side's, of course)
I have a problem when the war gets too expensive and no progress gets made. Biden and EU kept doing this for 3 years already. We're just funneling endless taxpayer money into a black hole at this point while more Ukrainians keep dying. Ending this conflict peacefully ASAP through negotiations and concessions is the way to go. This isn't fighting Gaza or Iraq. You can't win a conflict against a nuclear superpower via conventional means.
I do not believe for an instant than the roman salute making roman candidate isn't a Russian asset, given his salute shows support for other Russian friendly politicians currently sitting at the white house.
Regarding the war, AFAIK Ukrainians would rather be in the conditions to continue fighting than to surrender and sign an unfair peace agreement. I would have no issues with rearming Europe if it meant that, as proposed, we would get a better pipeline for European weapons procurement. Having basically stopped the advance of Russia is a huge win on its own, given that it was supposed to be one of the most powerful armies in the world. Shrugging this off as "no progress" is unjust to the taxpayers as well to the Ukrainians
Pro-tip: if your democracy doesn't support changing course on foreign policy engagements, you're not a democracy
The Romanian candidate said he had spent nothing for the campaign, but that is not true given the recent developments, and these donations were part of the decision to abort the election results
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/12/04/declassified-r...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusations_of_Russian_inter...
Also, not European wars. In particular, only two European countries participated in Iraq.
EU security == Ukraine security.
But would you like your president to make that decision for you? Would it be okay with it you if they asked you to sacrifice like 60% of your pay towards this cause, that too indefinitely?
Not without a discussion, of course, and I may disagree with the decision after the discussion, but on the whole I have been happy enough with the parliamentary systems where I have lived within Europe that I can say yes to this.
What would upset me and concern me to no end would be if the premiere went rogue and made these decisions unilaterally while ignoring all other branches of the government.
So what I am trying to say is that may be some people are acting from this point of view (which makes a lot of sense to me, if you are realistic), and is actually not unsympathetic to Ukraine.
60% is excessive though, and would make it impossible for people to pay bills. That's detrimental for the future of Europe :)
Would you still support to fund this and make this conflict go on and on, possibly until someone becomes so desperate that they do something stupid?
With that kind of argument sewers are also clearly unconscionable, after all they cost money you didn't donate. In that hyperbolic case where the EU throws 60% of it's productivity for the war effort, Ukraine would win in 6 months. That's an absurd amount of equipment, and more importantly with that kind of money you can set up a foreign legion that would vacuum every half-decent soldier without better prospects from Ethiopia to Perú. This will not happen of course, a wartime economy is not necessary to retake the invaded territories. The "WW3 totally gonna happen guys!!!11" is also exasperating, no, nothing is gonna be nuked unless someone attacks Moscow, which also will not happen.
I don't. Unfortunately I don't get a voice.
Also human rights, democracy, anti-corruption stuff. Now, as we've seen with Orban, Europe's mechanism for actually _enforcing_ this is basically defective.
And peace. Like, the original stated intent of the Coal and Steel Treaty (the EU's ultimate predecessor) was to prevent another European war (largely by making it economically impracticable).
And has a war broken out amongst ECSC/EU countries?
By size, they provide a lot of both European and Asian values.
How is this measured actually? By what the media and public institutions say?
Is there poll targeted at the common working man that says the same? I highly doubts so.
Of course, there are AfD and Fidesz, but they occupy the minority position even within that spectrum.
No no, that is not what is being said here. To match with it, the poll should ask if they would like someone like Trump to be their leader, not if Trump in US would be bad for their country.
Should we dig up USa stupid proposals? Or dig up actual laws like the USA laws for snooping on people that were revealed by Snowden?
A bit offtopic , is it a lw or rule that you are not allowed to call Trump a felon ? And is that constitutional?
I'm well aware, as I was involved in the effort to block it (on four separate occasions now, and undoubtedly will again).
> Should we dig up USa stupid proposals? Or dig up actual laws like the USA laws for snooping on people that were revealed by Snowden?
The topic of this thread is European values and whether Signal embodies them or not. It's hopefully obvious to anyone interested that the prioritisation of individual freedoms that Signal embodies is not reflective of current European values, given the ever increasing levels of State surveillance across the continent.
That these are also not US values, even though their populace and politicians endlessly claim they are, is not relevant to this discussion.
extreme free speech with ZERO consequences is not such a value
my initial comment was clear, but some USAians will try to add that free speech is more important then any of our values, we can disagree on that and I will keep my opinion that kissing up to fascists is a good value to have, having them in leadership role is a disaster but USA will learn it the hard way.
And let’s not forget — the actual consequences for genocide were delivered by the Americans, Brits, and Russians, not by internal bans or laws.
Reminder for USAians that in USA free speech has limits and you can also get fined for your speech. USA decided that the public needs to be protected by boobs and Europeans decided that nazis cause much more damage then boobs.