I don’t think the EU has the ability to break up American companies. I guess they could try to ban them from operating in the EU, but that would pretty much nuke diplomatic relations with the US so it’s hard for me to see it happening.
Anti-American company sentiments are high across Europe, especially when it comes to big tech companies. Our people are sick of US companies playing wild west and stomping all over regulations - AirBnB and Uber caused the most public backlash here (AirBnB because of people complaining that they were priced out of their homes and illegal hotel-style operations disrupting their lives, Uber because taxi drivers have pretty good lobby connections), followed by Facebook (which was mostly a topic for privacy nerds). Also, we have not forgotten who caused the 2008 financial crisis and who keeps dodging tax and labor laws while the taxpayers are left to deal with the followup costs.
Pay up and behave or get kicked out, GDPR was just the beginning (and once we get the Irish authorities to behave, your companies are done). The EU bureaucracy is like a big tanker ship, slow as molasses, but once it is moving it is not stoppable other than by going out of its way.
The ones really affected by the sanctions are us Europeans.
[1] https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/russia...
The cold war has already gone hot thanks to "Fuck the EU" US interference in Ukraine [0] by now having escalated into a full blown open war, just like there is no "LNG pipeline from the US" to Europe.
> not sure they’re even able to without mass protests
Do you mean mass protests like they we had over the invasion of Iraq? That didn't lead to anything and thus has crippled the global peace movement to this day.
That's why the idea that European people will "take to the streets" to protest for "American gas", is pretty out there and quite fantastical.
Before that happens you will see people take to the streets to protest the sanctions that are mainly responsible for this economic hardship, sanctions pushed for by Washington.
The Cold War got hot cause of Russia, no one else. Russia is the one who decided to invade Ukraine, Russia is the one who decides to bomb children, Russia is the one who decides to commit genocide against the Ukrainians, Russia is solely responsible for this war.
No amount of “Ukrainian bio weapons” or “Ukrainian witch battalions” or “Ukrainian inhuman super soldiers” stories pushed by the kremlin will change this fact.
Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia [1], just completely normal and not at all an escalation. Nobody ever warned about any of this, it just came completely out of nowhere [2].
While the US would have no issue with Russia holding military exercises in Mexico, and couping the Mexican government. It wouldn't react in any way, most certainly not with the military, it's not like we have a precedent like the Cuban missile crisis, and the US military illegally occupying parts of Cuba to this day, in a very similar way to what Russia has done to Crimea.
> Russia is solely responsible for this war.
Sure, as long as you just wholesale ignore and deny what actually led to the war and how it was an active choice by US officials to undermine a diplomatic and peaceful solution, brokered by the EU, because "Fuck the EU".
In that context most online debates about this topic are similarly dishonest and toxic as war on terror debates in the early 2000s were; Anybody who doesn't join in with the blatant jingoism shall be declared an "enemy supporter", back then it was "terrorist supporter" nowadays it's "Putin supporter" and allegedly the only way out of this is more conflict, more weapons, any diplomatic solution shall be considered "pro Russia propaganda" because the forever war can't stop.
In that context you might as well tell me about WMD in Iraq, that's the level of argument you can bring that solely rests on ignoring a coup and insisting how a civil war, resulting from that coup, is totally not a civil war.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-jul-07-me-10464...
[1] https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/us-army-to-...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/13/international/bush-pulls-...
Putin has told the world many times that the Ukrainians (and other former Warsaw Pact countries) aren't real countries and destined to be colonies at best. All his actions align with these sentiments. For example, Belarus never threatened to join NATO, but they were invaded and subjugated all the same. This is 100% on Putin and Russia.
Ukraine is free to lick whatever alliances it wishes to join.
> Because decades of NATO expansion have nothing to do with this [0], having literal NATO exercises at the border of Russia [1], just completely normal and not at all an escalation. Nobody ever warned about any of this, it just came completely out of nowhere [2].
Decades of NATO are literally driven by the current actions of Russia and the past actions of the USSR. To view this in a vacuum is disingenuous at best, and malicious at worst.
Those NATO exercises where in Ukraine in 2014. In what world is that on the border with Russia?. In it’s a _country_ that borders Russia far far away from the actual border, in Lviv on the border with _Poland_.
> While the US would have no issue with Russia holding military exercises in Mexico, and couping the Mexican government. It wouldn't react in any way, most certainly not with the military, it's not like we have a precedent like the Cuban missile crisis, and the US military illegally occupying parts of Cuba to this day, in a very similar way to what Russia has done to Crimea.
The worlds changed (at least outside of Russia). Since Cuba, if this is your best comparison maybe it’s a bet of a stretch. This comparison would also require Ukraine to plan to host US nukes to be comparable.
> Sure, as long as you just wholesale ignore and deny what actually led to the war and how it was an active choice by US officials to undermine a diplomatic and peaceful solution, brokered by the EU, because "Fuck the EU".
Sounds like your suggesting that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine and murder there citizens.
You need to remember that Russia has the ability to not invade and subjugate countries, although given their history this may be hard to believe.
Russia is solely responsible, no one else. Ukraines also had 3 elections since the revolution and different people got elected each time, amazing isn’t it.
Your source for [0] is from the 50s the world was a very different place back then.
To hear Russia tell it, Ukraine has bombed a lot of children in the last 8 years and was committing genocide in East Ukraine. Ukraine also got couped.
Note: I personally have no ability to determine the truth of the Russian side beyond reading the wikipedia page and noting it plausible. I wonder if you have some extra information on things like how many civilian causalties occurred in the Donbas before 2022 or what the real support for Crimea joining Russia was?
Russia likes to tell a lot of lies and half truths to muddy the waters of everything I wouldn't trust what they they also generally don't provide any solid evidence of any of there claims either, just take these examples.
"Russian State Media Claims to Discover Militarized Ukrainian Witches".
https://www.vice.com/en/article/dypmpk/russian-state-media-c...
"Russian lawmakers baselessly claim their army is up against biologically modified Ukrainian super soldiers"
https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-lawmakers-tout-basel...
"U.S. Ramps Up Ukraine Warnings as Russia Denies Invasion Plans"
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-17/russia-te...
Russian state media just cannot be trusted to tell the truth, I wouldn't believe a single word they say.
> Note: I personally have no ability to determine the truth of the Russian side beyond reading the wikipedia page and noting it plausible.
This would be a mistake, the "firehose of falsehood" is a well known Russian tactic, they lie constantly just to muddy the water. All you need to do is look at MH70 (the civilian airliner that Russian troops pretending to be separatists shot down) to see it in action, before it was publicly revealed to be a airliner they where posing with pictures of the wreckage and bragging about downing a Ukrainian military plane then when it was revealed what happened a whole bunch of Russian pushed conspiracy theories started popping up regarding it.
> I wonder if you have some extra information on things like how many civilian causalties occurred in the Donbas before 2022.
Because of the way that Russia lies and muddies the water, the real numbers will never be known just look at how little casualties they are claiming on their side for the current war.
> or what the real support for Crimea joining Russia was?
Again because of the tactics the Russians use this will never be actually known. But maybe once Ukraine retakes Crimea we may know more.
Except that's not how Russia tells it, that's what actually happened.
On February 21 then acting Ukrainian president Yanukovych signed a transition deal with the Ukrainian opposition, brokered by the EU and Russia [0].
That should have been the end of most of it, but it wasn't, later that day Yatsenyuk, aka "Yats our guy" from the Nuland tape, and Tyahnybok, who both agreed and signed to the deal, went on stage on Euromaidan and then declared how "That's not enough" riling up the protesters to demand more.
Klitschko, who was constantly trying to keep the peace [1], and was Merkel's aka the EU's choice [2] was completely left out of that. More context on that in the leaked Nuland call, where she rates Klitschko's governmental experience not high enough for such a position, thus their go ahead with "Yats is our guy" and "Fuck the EU".
That situation escalated then so much, that by the early morning of February 22 the leader of Right Sector announced how they had taken over, and secured, the parliament and several other local government buildings [3].
It's exactly that part the current "Russia lies" narrative always leaves out, by claiming Yanukovych just randomly fled from a completely peaceful protest.
After Yanukovych fled, Yatsenyuk announced their new post-coup government to rather frosty reception on Euromaidan [4].
As a German I was actively following the situation back then, that's why I still have most of these sources. But since then so much information was straight up "deleted" from the web. It used to be extremely easy to find violent footage from Euromaidan on Twitter and YouTube, not anymore, all deleted as "Russian propaganda" so the "peaceful revolution, there was never a civil war" narrative can keep getting pushed without too much of an factual opposition.
Another, rather concrete, example is Yatsenyuk's "Open Ukraine Foundation", that went online shortly after the coup, it's partners page had all the usual US regime change actors bluntly spelled out [5]. First the foundation changed from his name, to his wives, and ultimately that partners page vanished completely, too blatantly incriminating.
[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/yanukovych-signs-transition-...
[1] https://youtu.be/5bPKFto1AFY
[2] https://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/ukraine-merkel-will-k...
[3] https://www.unian.net/politics/888104-verhovnaya-rada-admini...
[4] https://youtu.be/wegtWNIFX1Y
[5] https://web.archive.org/web/20140302111543/http://openukrain...
Alleged Nuland tape, it hasn't been in anyway shape or form authenticated and we know from this war that Russia is more then happy to use deep fakes to control the narrative.
> It's exactly that part the current "Russia lies" narrative always leaves out, by claiming Yanukovych just randomly fled from a completely peaceful protest.
It's not a narrative, unless you seriously believe in Ukrainian weaponised witches/black magic and Ukrainian bio engineered super soldiers.
Its funny you paint a very different picture to the wikipedia article.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
> The following day, police withdrew from central Kyiv, which came under effective control of the protesters. Yanukovych fled the city.[33] That day, the Ukrainian parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from office by 328 to 0 (72.8% of the parliament's 450 members).
Looks like Yanukovych ran away after he got ousted by the parliament themselves.
Except the USG officially apologized for the "undiplomatic language" on the tape [0]
Do you think the USG is in the habit of apologizing for Russian fakes or what happened there?
> It's not a narrative
Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]
> unless you seriously believe in Ukrainian weaponised witches/black magic and Ukrainian bio engineered super soldiers.
Can you please stop the bad faith arguing and strawmanning? I didn't write a single thing about anything like that.
> Its funny you paint a very different picture to the wikipedia article
Lets take a look at the actual TIMES article that's the citation for that [2];
"Ukraine’s beleaguered President Viktor Yanukovych fled Kiev Saturday as protestors took full control of Ukraine’s capital"
Beleaguered president fled after protesters took control of the capital, which also involved taking control of the parliament and the local security authorities, Right Sector announced it very much themselves in the very early morning of 22 February [3];
"“The Seventh Hundred is located inside the Verkhovna Rada. Also there is a division of the "Right Sector". Protected by the Cabinet. The nineteenth and third hundreds are guarding the Presidential Administration. The Fifteenth Hundred guards the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Parubiy said."
Right Sector had control over who they let enter the parliament and who not. Want to guess who they let in, and who don't? That's also why the Wikipedia article has several different numbers for that how many actually participated in those parliamental votes. Sometimes it talks about 328 attending, then it's 386 and then it's suddenly "450 members voted 332-0", the Wikipedia article is all over the place on that.
Additionally; Did Russia also fake McCain shaking all the right hands [4]? Was it Russia who then made an American investment banker the new minister of finance for Ukraine, complete with fast-tracked citizenship? [5]
The evidence is overwhelming and blatant, that's also why all you can do is deny, even trying to strawman the discussion by talking about "weaponized witches".
Very much the same as back in the early 2000s when everybody knew the USG was lying about Saddam being responsible for 9/11 and the WMD, yet everybody played along for appearances and not wanting to get called a "terrorist supporter". But unlike back then, this time the stakes actually involve nuclear weapons.
This might or might not be the reason US authorities have lately been very active in educating their population about the proper response to a "radiation event" [6] [7] [8].
Mostly unnoticed in the US, yet to those who was alive during the cold war, particularly in central Europe, that's just quite scary, particularly in combination with the even worse than war on terror levels of information distortion.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/06/us-ukraine-rus...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity#/media/F...
[3] https://www.unian.net/politics/888104-verhovnaya-rada-admini...
[4] https://www.businessinsider.com/john-mccain-meets-oleh-tyahn...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalie_Jaresko#Citizenship
[6] https://youtu.be/N-5d7V4Sbqk
[7] https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/emergencies/index.htm
[8] https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlyterrifying/comments/ufbx40/the...
What has lately been up with the voting system on HN? Apparently people I reply to, with much newer accounts, can just instantly downvote my comments.
Yet most of the time I don't even get a downvote option, and pretty much never to any of the replies to my comments.
Feels like the system is being gamed by people with alt accounts.
> Except the USG officially apologized for the "undiplomatic language" on the tape [0]
>> Victoria Nuland reportedly said ‘Fuck the EU’ speaking of Ukraine crisis, though department didn’t confirm it was her voice on tape
There’s no confirmation whos voice is on that tape although the tape itself is reportedly said to be authentic
> Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]
The Russians often lie _is not a narrative_ the Russian government nearly never tells the truth. All you need to look at is there state media during this war to see many examples of it, from downing civilian aircraft to weaponised witches, the firehose of falsehood is well and alive.
> Yes, the "peaceful revolution" is very much a manufactured narrative, you should check out your own link [1]
The only person on that page that suggests this is a coup is the former president who got deposed and ran away back to his masters in Russia. No amount of images will change the fact it wasn’t a coupe, no amount of walls of text from you will either.
> The evidence is overwhelming and blatant, that's also why all you can do is deny, even trying to strawman the discussion by talking about "weaponized witches"
Do you think the Russians lie?.
I went for 2 weeks abroad with a week vacation and other week working remotely. There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.
So I don’t necessarily see those services and companies behind as pure evil. I would say the government running behind and reactively setting limitations rather than proactively thinking about the way to move forward is an issue here.
A taxi may be more expensive at "idle" times - but ever tried to grab an Uber at a big event like a concert, a soccer game or Saturday night out drinking? You'll pay triple or more. Regulated taxis are more expensive, but always consistent which is a value on its own. Also, you can be sure that the driver doesn't live in poverty [1] or works ridiculous hours.
> and if I imagine a foreigner catching one on the street without the meter - that could get even worse.
I can't speak for countries other than Germany, but at least here this is simply not a thing.
What is a pain point with German cabs (and other German services) is that the acceptance of credit and especially debit cards is still a bit lackluster, but the situation has massively improved during covid.
> There was no hotel in the area to provide me with the proper accommodation. But Airbnb did that just fine.
Yeah, because wherever you were is most likely zoned residential, meaning no hotels and the associated noise from partygoers, vehicles and the likes. Are the neighbors of your AirBnB fine with someone renting out a room to randoms? Most likely not.
[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/He-drives-60-ho...
You absolutely can't. Taxi drivers are independent contractors in most european countries too, with no minimum wage protections or enforcement of hours worked.
The prior here is simply not having enough taxis available. Fixed cost and capacity versus incentives that increase capacity when needed.
The 2008 financial crisis might have started in the US, but outcomes in European countries varied greatly depending on local policies and debt levels. It's hardly Americas fault that some European countries had taken on very high levels of government debt.
AirBnB and Uber seems pretty easy to regulate on a local level and in many places in Europe they are.
Not "especially" but exactly those. Almost no other american companies are known here. Of course there are McDonalds and Coca-Cola, but their bad reputation is for their unhealthy products, not the companies themselves.
But we have apparently forgotten about this [0], nearly a decade later and it still remains a completely ignored issue that pretty much nobody was held accountable for except the people who drew attention to it.
[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/document/activities/cont/2014...
Even Linux is more an American product at this point than a European one with Intel being iirc the biggest contributor. I just think it's a bit of a joke that the EU strategy is to regulate American companies to this extent without having any coherent vision on developing genuinely viable alternatives and providing incentives to stay in the EU.
oh no anything but that
Speak for yourself. Most users don't hate the GDPR, they hate the way companies tried to game it (very incompetently, I might add) by adding obtuse banners and modal dialogs.
As for companies: mostly US companies hated it because they previously got away with extremely abusive business models whereas EU companies were already facing similar regulations in individual EU member states.