In Sweden, we have Swish, thank God. We don't have Greenland either, so people aren't as worried about 'exogenous shocks'.
Canada will welcome you at thier clubhouse. Friends are enemies and enemies friends. And Putin is all smiles. (Let us not kid ourselves about who wants disharmony amongst arctic nations.)
The US uses its so-called SDN list which in general prevents the person having a bank account in any western country. It also caused Microsoft to kill off the email account (I believe the full azure services - ie. Active Directory - rendering his work computer useless) of a prosecutor at the international criminal court:
https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...
Microsoft didn’t cut services to International Criminal Court, its president says
Chief prosecutor’s email issues have spurred fears in Europe that Trump could trigger a “kill switch” through U.S. tech giants abroad.
...
A Microsoft spokesperson said that it had been in contact with the court since February “throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services.” The spokesperson added that “at no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC.”
To be fair, under US law Microsoft doesn’t have much choice either. Companies operating under US law inherit the untrustworthiness that comes with this.
There is a book "Autocracy Inc." about this curious, somewhat recent phenomenon of autocrats everywhere supporting each other. It's like autocracy itself is more important to them than their countries' interests.
Because I too am a Swede and in mine I don't think the normal attitude is one where we have any limit to our commitment to Danish territorial integrity.
We do as we have said we will. There's no reason to be afraid. We get what we get and if they come we'll fight.
But, meming-aside: you know we will.
We know that Russia still uses similarly subversive tactics internationally, especially in public messaging (popularizing multiple mutually contradictory narratives at the same time to compete with any attempt at "factual reporting", e.g. in its many justifications and descriptions during the early months of the invasion of Ukraine or following the infamous civilian plane crash during the "civil war" before that). There have also been credible accusations against China of employing disinformation campaigns to disrupt criticism. The first year of Israel's ongoing military campaign (initially in Gaza) also saw many people pointing out what they described as examples of Hasbara.
Under the first Trump presidency we saw the term "alternative facts" being used by US officials. Trump himself also popularized the term "fake news". Trump even bragged about "stopping Nord Stream 2", implying US involvement in the sabotage that so far has been considered to have been carried out by Ukranian nationals.
We also know (via Snowden and Wikileaks) that under the Bush and Obama governments the US actively used its intelligence apparatus even against its allies, at the very least for surveillance operations and infiltration (allegedly even industrial espionage). There's also the dissolved BND/CIA co-operation (via a Swiss proxy I think?) that came apart when the German BND was dissatisfied with the CIA's willingness to sell the faulty encryption technology they were disseminating to their shared allies to maintain cover for the operation.
During the Euromaidan protests (2014), the US diplomat was caught on tape exclaiming "Fuck the EU". During the Security Conference earlier this year, VP Vance explicitly promoted European far-right political movements and questioned the legitimacy of European countries' governments. Trump himself has repeatedly referred to the EU as an organization created for the specific purpose of screwing over the US.
In aggregate, the EU's nominal GDP right now is slightly higher than that of China. Germany alone has the third-highest nominal GDP in the world right now.
The US has for a long time at least engaged in hostile behavior against its own allies, including the EU. Trump has at several points been openly hostile against the EU. Trump has been promoting a policy of unilateral "peace through strength" over promoting cooperation and the pretense of mutual benefit and engaging in trade wars against all of its trading partners.
The US is acting as a hostile force against the EU and has redefined the EU as a hostile entity. It hasn't severed diplomatic nor economic ties to the EU but neither has it to China. Whatever you think the US might stomach to covertly do against China it therefore stands to reason they would have an interest in also doing against the EU. It's also worth considering that militarily China poses a much greater risk of retaliation and the EU is currently much more economically dependant on the US than China is (especially following the sanctions against Russia which previously acted as a major trading partner in the region and the rising tensions in the Middle East).
It seems extremely plausible to me that the US engages in activities intended to disrupt the integrity of the EU and consequentially the mutual trust and diplomatic relationships between EU member states. We know (with receipts) that Russia has been directly contributing to far-right nationalist anti-EU political movements throughout Europe prior to the invasion of Ukraine and even before Trump's first term and continues to support the anti-EU rhetoric of a "Europe of fatherlands" intended to fragment and individualize EU member states either as a "divide and conquer" tactic or at least to reduce their collective capability for actively opposing Russia's interests.
We don't know what the US has been doing or is doing beyond what it has been doing in the open. But given how much deeper the US's battle chest runs and how advanced its offensive technology (both from private industry and internally) that we know of is, it seems far more likely to me that this is not because it doesn't exist but because they've been better at not getting caught. Not to mention that European governments still refuse to treat the US with the same level of suspicion they treat China or Russia, thus making it far easier for the US to get away with actions even when they are caught. There's no need to worry about your covert operations becoming public when their target actively collaborates in supporting your operations against them.
sounds like Crypto AG[0]
(tldr Sweden is pretty cashless and a lot of shops don't accept cash)
I’m not even joking.
And, most companies don’t take cash, especially smaller ones.
Large companies (ICA the supermarket) takes cash but it’s like 1/200 who use cash and the cashier is often visibly flustered when cash is presented.
I happen to be in sweden in this very moment. And no, cashiers are not flustered and alarmed when they see cash, old people pay with cash every day.
Yes there is some restaurants that will not take cash.
Last april I was in a place where they did not take cards :)
There's more to sweden than what you personally experience.
I'm not Swedish but a lot of my family are, so I visit fairly often. In Gothenburg at least, it's pretty standard in my experience that small grocery stores won't accept cash. I won't pretend that generalises anywhere else.
I could write a huge diatribe of statistics and behaviours that back me up, it's quite public that even in 2022 across the entire country only 8% of transactions were made in cash- which is even lower in the cities. https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/betalni...
And it's also quite well known that many independent businesses do not accept cash (my Coffee Shop, the restaurants I frequent (Quan in Malmo, Marvin in Malmo)).
And yes I've visibly seen cashiers recoil after putting a transaction through to the payment terminal; only to have the person tell them that they'd rather pay in cash (leading to the cashier becoming flustered).
Yes, it's more common that old people use cash (from my observed experience) but increasingly they're using debit cards (not mobile payment methods like younger folks), but no: the country is pretty much cashless; and coming from the UK (where not accepting cash is definitely a more controversial decision outside of London): here it's seen as pretty normal to say "no cash" or "cash free".
Speaking for: Stockholm, Malmo, Gothenburg, Lund, Sundsvall, Oskarshamn and Umeå, and after being in the country for 11 years. I'm not sure what other representation I should be seeing.
Talking about my personal observed experience doesn't invalidate yours, but it feels like I can speak for the overwhelming majority of the population here.
And incidentally I'm also in Sweden right now (https://mrkoll.se/person/Jan-Martin-Harris-Harasym-Kattsunds...); if you'd like me to document a day trying to use only cash I'll let you know how it goes. But I won't be able to get to work (Malmo Busses do not take cash) and I won't be able to eat at any of the restaurants in Malmo (Saluhallen and the others I mentioned above are entirely cashless) so I'll have to use COOP, Willis or ICA exclusively.
I assure you that pressbyrån accepts cash and you can buy tickets there to get to work. Also having a long subscription for public transport on the phone is a bad idea, because if you drop your phone you'll also lose your subscription. And depending on how many days you had left and what phone you had, it could cost you more than the phone.
And handpicking restaurants that don't accept cash is no more a proof than if I were to do the same but handpicking restaurants that don't accept cards.
Anyway it was a place i went in april, i'll have to look it up, i don't really remember.