Another European agency shifts off US Tech as digital sovereignty gains steam

Translation: "Some of us in Europe are ready to drop drop bread in favor of eating cake, whatever the cost."

Easy for you to write cheques that others have to cash. Be careful with such suicidal empathy, as that has second order effects that back-fire in spectacular fashion. That's why you're supposed to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others.

>It's just russian backed populists are ready to rile the crowds for any price increase whatsoever..

TIL that if you aren't gonna sacrifice yourself for Ukraine and prioritize your family's survival, wanting to have a job, a roof over your head and food on the table, somehow makes you a "Russian populist" now. Interesting logic.

You'd think much differently if you or your family would face unemployment, homelessness or malnourishment due to the economic damages caused by a surge in energy costs across the board. Half my immediate friend circle have lost their jobs in the last ~2 years due to the economic situation, my grandma can't afford her bills from her pension without financial support from us, while access public services like healthcare and childcare has only gotten worse, despite us paying more for everything. Not exactly the environment people feel like gutting themselves even further for a foreign country, whichever that may be.

I don't know where you're from, but at least Germany's problems run way deeper than their idiotic energy policies. Lack of investment in infrastructure, lack of innovation and all that. Even with cheap energy there's no way German car makers would compete, when Chinese make better EV's for less money. Laziness and lack of innovation is the problem, just like in European IT sector, which just buys everything from America.

Also, let's not forget the huge impact Covid spending had on inflation, and in turn interest rates & people's purchasing power. Ukraine war and sanctions against Russia are completely insignificant compared to that blunder. We're living the recession that was supposed to happen in 2020.

Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. The current proposal is to stop buying Russian gas by 2028. EVERY year since 2014 the EU bought more Russian gas than the year before until 2023, and it has not yet halved from the peak (measured in money), despite constant grand claims.

Russia funds both leftist and rightist parties, in fact, for obvious reasons, they used to only fund leftists not that long ago, before a certain desperation seems to have set in. But now if they are extreme or disruptive in some way, or anti-Nato (like in the recent Irish election) they get Russian cash. The ideology does not matter to Russia anymore, illegal German openly Nazi parties have gotten Russian money (which was new not 10 years ago, as I said they were exclusively leftist before that), they are funding islamist parties, and every Marxist party in Europe gets their money. Also, Russia is still funding international socialist associations for example. Russia's goal is not one ideology above another, but to use democracy as a weapon.

And yes, cheaper gas deliveries to countries have been weaponized by Russia in addition to direct corruption, especially in the Balkans.

Because in the last ~10-15 years or so, media and politics in countries like Germany(and US and most of Europe) have made sure to erase national identity and social cohesion, in favor of capitalistic globalism and mass migration, leading to a decline in the middle class standard of living and societal trust, and dividing people against each other instead of against the government/wealthy elite pulling the strings.

So when people are divided, they're not gonna want to play ball as a united team in face of adversity, but they vote less and more extreme, get less involved in politics, engage in more tribalistic behavior, etc and now that lack of national cohesion the leaders created, is exploited by Russia and other foreign actors too in their favor.

Would you have preferred the only other choice: a rapidly dropping population that would have killed the economy? I mean that's coming anyway, just 20 years later, so I guess we'll all have an excellent basis for comparison.

That mythical "the economy" that's just the stock market and the top 10% wealthy business owners and has no trickle down to working class people who still suffer financially but now have to deal with the second order effects of that like expensive housing and safety on the streets?

How long must this gaslighting go on? That people must tolerate unpopular policies with negative consequences, all for the sake of "the economy"?

If governments actually cared about solving declining birthrates they would have tackled that, but they don't. Population replacement with conflicting cultures is much better solution for governments who then sell you the solution to that problem they created: privacy invasive chat control, digital-Euro, digital-ID, police-state, surveillance-state etc. and now also have a new voter base loyal to the government for citizenship and benefits, unlike anti-government local gen-pop, kind of like the mercenaries during Rome's collapse.

Plus, even if you were to somehow "solve birth rates", infinite population growth is unsustainable since resources on the planet are finite, and nobody in the west wants to live in places with high population growth like India, so why not build a society that can function on stagnating population instead?

Building a financial system with expectations of constant growth till infinity plus the expectation that every future generation will get to have the same prosperity boomers had, was the real mistake here from the start, which is unsalvable unless we go through another world war that kills tens/hundreds of millions and resets the monopoly board for the generation of the survivors' kids.