The thing about Europe: it’s the actual land of the free now
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Nice article, I like how it is basically a list of things about Europe that aren't that great but then ends with "But in their own plodding way, Europeans have created a place where they are guaranteed rights to what others yearn for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
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Chat control and any similar proposal should be killed once and for all before such big statements are made.
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Chat control and any similar proposal should be killed once and for all before such big statements are made.
In the land of the blind, the one eye is king.
Sure, it could be better, but it isn't better anywhere else.
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Stares at chat control, anti-end to end encryption stuff and crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protesters I think Europe has a bit of a way to go before claiming that title.
No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza; news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians.
Immigrants are getting deported for those wrong views, though, so... yeah.
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Always is a stretch. Lol
You can drink an open container of alcohol outside. You can legally be outside without Money on you, you can be safe outside without worrying of being shot. All basic necessities of Life are cared for. You don't have to worry of starving, being homeless, or having a health condition that doesn't get cared for.
Modern Europe has always been free
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System shared this topic
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Stares at chat control, anti-end to end encryption stuff and crackdowns on pro-Palestinian protesters I think Europe has a bit of a way to go before claiming that title.
No detention centres await foreign students who hold the wrong views on Gaza; news outfits are not sued for interviewing opposition politicians.
Immigrants are getting deported for those wrong views, though, so... yeah.
Those Immigrants are being deported for being part in a violent occupation of a university where staff was threatened with axes and crowbars, property damage of 100.000€, and trying to liberate people arrested by the police.
The only thing criticworthy about this, is that the authorities didn't waited for the legal proceedings to finish. Otherwise if found guilty, that will get you a prison sentence and/or deported in most countries as a foreigner.
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You can drink an open container of alcohol outside. You can legally be outside without Money on you, you can be safe outside without worrying of being shot. All basic necessities of Life are cared for. You don't have to worry of starving, being homeless, or having a health condition that doesn't get cared for.
Modern Europe has always been free
Modern day Europe for sure. No argument there. Europe was also the stage for some of the most oppressive regimes and largest wars in history.
I’m not a delusional American who thinks highly of his nation either. We’ve had systemic oppression and elitist corruption since our inception. The only reason they allow us the “freedom” to use hate speech is to fuel the machine that powers our social division.
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Those Immigrants are being deported for being part in a violent occupation of a university where staff was threatened with axes and crowbars, property damage of 100.000€, and trying to liberate people arrested by the police.
The only thing criticworthy about this, is that the authorities didn't waited for the legal proceedings to finish. Otherwise if found guilty, that will get you a prison sentence and/or deported in most countries as a foreigner.
Those 4 people which are very loud in the media right now are being deported for being part in a violent occupation of a university where staff was threatened with axes and crowbars, property damage of 100.000€, and trying to liberate people arrested by the police.
Yeah that's not a crime unless they did these things themselves, which isn't the case; they were just peacefully taking part in the protest where these things happened, but they're not even accused of taking part in these actions. Here's the same event by the Intercept.
None of the protesters are accused of any particular acts of vandalism or the de-arrest at the university. Instead, the deportation order cites the suspicion that they took part in a coordinated group action.
And from the (machine translated version of the) article you linked:
These only contain brief descriptions of the crime and with regard to what happened at the FU, the contributions to the crime are not individually assigned to the people affected.
To repeat: These students are not even accused of committing the crime for which they're being deported.
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Those 4 people which are very loud in the media right now are being deported for being part in a violent occupation of a university where staff was threatened with axes and crowbars, property damage of 100.000€, and trying to liberate people arrested by the police.
Yeah that's not a crime unless they did these things themselves, which isn't the case; they were just peacefully taking part in the protest where these things happened, but they're not even accused of taking part in these actions. Here's the same event by the Intercept.
None of the protesters are accused of any particular acts of vandalism or the de-arrest at the university. Instead, the deportation order cites the suspicion that they took part in a coordinated group action.
And from the (machine translated version of the) article you linked:
These only contain brief descriptions of the crime and with regard to what happened at the FU, the contributions to the crime are not individually assigned to the people affected.
To repeat: These students are not even accused of committing the crime for which they're being deported.
To repeat: These students are not even accused of committing the crime for which they're being deported.
That's just plainly wrong. In my linked LTO-Article you can see that the LKA accused them of being part in the crimes and send their evidence and investigation documents to the Berlin State Prosecution Service which then decides if they will prosecute them. That this hasn't happened yet, is just a result of Berlin State Prosecution Service being chronically underfunded and overworked. The same with the courts and other parts of Berlin Public Service
The LKA's descriptions in the expulsion notices read less brutal, but still threatening. They speak of 20 people who had gained access to the building, graffitied the walls and destroyed the technical equipment. They are said to have carried crowbars or “cow feet” with them. They are said to have used these to try to break down a door to a room in which a very frightened FU employee had barricaded himself. Axes, saws and clubs are not mentioned. Following the occupation, arrests were made. Ten suspects - including the four activists - are said to have tried to prevent this.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
And here the part with the Prosecution Service
However, the case is now with the Berlin public prosecutor's office, a spokesperson confirmed in response to an inquiry from LTO.** However, the investigation is still ongoing**. “It is not yet possible to predict when these will be completed and what the conclusion will look like.”
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System shared this topic
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To repeat: These students are not even accused of committing the crime for which they're being deported.
That's just plainly wrong. In my linked LTO-Article you can see that the LKA accused them of being part in the crimes and send their evidence and investigation documents to the Berlin State Prosecution Service which then decides if they will prosecute them. That this hasn't happened yet, is just a result of Berlin State Prosecution Service being chronically underfunded and overworked. The same with the courts and other parts of Berlin Public Service
The LKA's descriptions in the expulsion notices read less brutal, but still threatening. They speak of 20 people who had gained access to the building, graffitied the walls and destroyed the technical equipment. They are said to have carried crowbars or “cow feet” with them. They are said to have used these to try to break down a door to a room in which a very frightened FU employee had barricaded himself. Axes, saws and clubs are not mentioned. Following the occupation, arrests were made. Ten suspects - including the four activists - are said to have tried to prevent this.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
And here the part with the Prosecution Service
However, the case is now with the Berlin public prosecutor's office, a spokesperson confirmed in response to an inquiry from LTO.** However, the investigation is still ongoing**. “It is not yet possible to predict when these will be completed and what the conclusion will look like.”
So they're trying to deport them before/without any semblance of due process. That's... fucking ridiculous, to say the least, and speaks to the extent of either anti-Palestinian crackdowns or the lack of respect for the rule of law in general in Germany. Neither is exactly a good thing.
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So they're trying to deport them before/without any semblance of due process. That's... fucking ridiculous, to say the least, and speaks to the extent of either anti-Palestinian crackdowns or the lack of respect for the rule of law in general in Germany. Neither is exactly a good thing.
Well, the Irish Chap filed an injunction and got a temporary relief, until the lawsuit from them against the Berlin Migration Department is finished.
But according to German Law, they don't need to wait for a conviction in the court proceedings related to the alleged violent behaviour. But they would have needed to conduct at least their own investigation into this matter, which they apparently didn't sufficiently.
The barrier of deportation for EU Citizens is also higher, than for the one accused US Citizen
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You can drink an open container of alcohol outside. You can legally be outside without Money on you, you can be safe outside without worrying of being shot. All basic necessities of Life are cared for. You don't have to worry of starving, being homeless, or having a health condition that doesn't get cared for.
Modern Europe has always been free
Sorry, what do you mean when you say "legally be outside withot money?" Is that really illegal somewhere?
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Paywall? https://archive.is/Tq3KD
The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region. Oddly, surveys show people in countries both rich and poor value such leisure time; somehow Europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it. Even as they were depressing GDP by wasting time playing with their kids, the denizens of Europe also managed to keep inequality relatively low while it ballooned elsewhere in the past 20 years. Nobody in Europe has spent the past week looking at their stock portfolio, wondering if they could still afford to send their kids to university. Europeans have no idea what “medical bankruptcy” is. Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.
This whole paragraph had me on edge, a little unsure of whether The Economist, an American publication, legitimately thought these were good things or not.
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Paywall? https://archive.is/Tq3KD
You can express a controversial view on any European campus (outside Hungary, at least) without fear of losing your tenure or your grant.
You can freely express any controversial view on Hungarian campuses, nobody cares at all. Most people in Hungary don't care about the whole Gaza situation one way or another, with a slight exaggeration if you asked the average university student in Hungary where Gaza is, they would think you're looking for some nightclub.
The only people who care about Palestine in Hungary are the far-right, Orbán's far right being pro-Israel because kleptocrats stick together, while the extreme far right is pro-Palestine because they hate Jews. They usually won't be university educated either.
As faculty, you can also express whatever views, a lot of people were straight up protesting the government at one point, but there is not much they can do with them legally and Orbán's gang didn't care enough to alter the laws for that.
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The thing about Europe is its economy is permanently stuck in the doldrums, a global cautionary tale. And no wonder. Europeans enjoy August off, retire in their prime and spend more time eating and socialising with their families than inhabitants of any other region. Oddly, surveys show people in countries both rich and poor value such leisure time; somehow Europeans managed to squeeze their employers into giving them more of it. Even as they were depressing GDP by wasting time playing with their kids, the denizens of Europe also managed to keep inequality relatively low while it ballooned elsewhere in the past 20 years. Nobody in Europe has spent the past week looking at their stock portfolio, wondering if they could still afford to send their kids to university. Europeans have no idea what “medical bankruptcy” is. Oh, and no EU leader has ever launched their own cryptocurrency.
This whole paragraph had me on edge, a little unsure of whether The Economist, an American publication, legitimately thought these were good things or not.
an American publication
According to Wikipedia, its mostly written and edited in London, and was started in Britain in the 1800s (to raise support for abolishing import tariffs in fact)
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Sorry, what do you mean when you say "legally be outside withot money?" Is that really illegal somewhere?
In the US it’s usually euphemised under ‘loitering’ or ‘vagrancy’ or some such rubbish
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Nice article, I like how it is basically a list of things about Europe that aren't that great but then ends with "But in their own plodding way, Europeans have created a place where they are guaranteed rights to what others yearn for: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Yeah... For now. It's a fatal mistake to think what's going on here in the US hasn't already been spreading.
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In the land of the blind, the one eye is king.
Sure, it could be better, but it isn't better anywhere else.
"The best in the world" but with a footnote describing how low that bar actually is.
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Yeah... For now. It's a fatal mistake to think what's going on here in the US hasn't already been spreading.
As an American it's wild to me that there are people in other countries who have seen what he did in his last term, are seeing what he's doing now, seeing the effects of that, and thinking to themselves "I want that in MY country!"
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You can drink an open container of alcohol outside. You can legally be outside without Money on you, you can be safe outside without worrying of being shot. All basic necessities of Life are cared for. You don't have to worry of starving, being homeless, or having a health condition that doesn't get cared for.
Modern Europe has always been free
I'm not really arguing that we have a lot of freedom here.
A small counterpoint would be that in a few countries they're pretty strict about having to carry personal identification at all times in public.
