Privatization: in much of the (neo)liberal West, it is seen as better to use commercial providers. They're supposed to be cheaper and better, because they're not using (union) civil service staff.

Yes, this results in enshittification.

That's the most common approach globally. Like most countries, the Dutch Government use .gov.nl.

> America was supposed to be the next step of humanity, a new land stripped from the ills of the old wor

wat

This kind of sums up my sentiment.

All throughout my adult life the US (for all its apparent faults) was to me a shining example of progress and humanity. It was the best large scale implementation of human rights, laws, and democracy. Sure it was far from perfect but “as good as it gets, for now”

Became very disillusioned with that image of the US in the last couple of years. Maybe it’s always been like that - but the recent cronyism, the blatant openly displayed corruption and complete disregard for all the values it used to champion really destroyed the good image I had of the US.

In years to come they will realise what this loss of image (or “aura” as the kids would say) really means in a very practical and blunt sense.

This reminds me of a 1995 Norwegian song, freely translated by me and chatgtp:

    We dreamed of America
    where the soft wind lives.
    We dreamed of America
    where honey flowers grow,
    where the sky is vast and blue
    with stars and stripes upon it too.
    We dreamed of America,
    but not anymore,
    no, not anymore.

    I don't know when people first began dreaming of America.
    Long before Columbus, people dreamed of America, I think.
    A place of everlasting flowers where everyone was free and happy, and
    no one had to take off their hat for anyone unless they wanted to themselves.
    A smiling paradise where love lasts forever,
    and old age is beautiful, a place without any smell.

    In 1945—before that too, but certainly in 1945—I knew what I was going to be
    when I grew up.
    I was going to be an *American*.

    That spring, the first films from the Pacific War arrived,
    where the Americans stood with bent knees on jungle paths and shot Japanese soldiers with U.S. carbines.
    The Japanese were ugly, with protruding teeth and protruding ribs,
    while the Americans were brave, handsome, clean-cut, and immortal.
    And even if they did die, they died with a courageous smile and said:

    "Give this letter to my mother; she will understand."

    While the Japanese died like grubs and worms,
    and we felt no pity for them.

    Besides being ugly, they were portrayed as horribly stupid—so stupid that they spoke broken English even when talking to each other.

    I know that we dreamed of America well into the 1960s.
    A scentless land beyond the sea,
    where everyone had cars and white teeth.

    I don't know exactly when it stopped.

    But one day in the 1960s, we not only stopped loving America as a god;
    we began hating America as a fallen god.

    And nothing falls so heavily, so hard, and so deep
    as a fallen god
    who turns out not to be a god at all,
    but merely America.

    Then America was blamed not only for the Vietnam War and environmental disasters,
    but also, for example, for car culture.
    And the greatest share of the blame fell on the man who discovered America.

    Now, 487 years after his death, Christopher Columbus is blamed not only for the slave trade from West Africa,
    but also for the murder of Kennedy,
    and for all the worlds traffic accidents.

    Now they say Columbus was a bastard.

    Because it was he who discovered America in 1492.

Nobody is getting charged for this in any way.

Perhaps it originated from there. But EU Chat Control is brought up again and again and again for a vote. They'll continue until some version of it is passed. And then they'll go further with the next privacy infringing regulation to be building on top of it. It is really disheartening for privacy activists, but that is probably the strategy. Wear people out, and push the regulation through when resistance wanes. Note that the Netherlands is on the side of protecting privacy at this point in time. I think it does a great deal to erode trust of EU citizens in the European Union, in a time when that trust is perhaps more important than ever before. For information see: https://fightchatcontrol.eu

the danish were one of the strongest Chat Control promovers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chat_Control

"Europe's biggest problem (I do not mean just the EU, I mean everyone from the UK to Russia) is that it is in denial about its decline, weakness and irrelevance to the rest of the world."

I disagree on this broad statement.

The EU in just the past year has signed deals with Latin America and India in addition to the already existing ones with South Korea, Canada, Japan etc.

It has positioned itself at the center of the world's largest free trade zone.

It's managed to replace US contributions to Ukraine and looks like its in the process of bloodying Russia's nose.

Reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated.

We Europeans are very well aware that we need to strengthen our position in the world, both economically and militarily. I would say we are making progress on both. China is not happy with recent EU decision for example.

Let's see how far China and US will go when access to the European consumer market will be resticted.

Let's see how well China and US can adapt to modern drone warfare when Ukrainians have the expertise and can share it with the rest of Europe.

We have to step up our game for sure, and everyone in Europe knows it. But the race is definitely not lost yet.

Well, Russia is trying to do something about and I think we can all agree that there are wrong ways to go about it. Simply being incompetent, like the EU, is not the worst possible scenario.

Btw, say what you will about Russia, but it's light years ahead of the EU in digital sovereignty. One of the reasons it did not crumble under sanctions.

Chat Control is not law. Of course there are some people inside the EU pushing for privacy violation, just like there are everywhere else, but it's not law. For now, the law protects privacy, and Microsoft violated it. That is the issue at hand.

That's a separate problem.

And it's not "The EU", but really one EU commissioner. Many organs of the EU including the EU Legal Service have criticised CSAR (Chat Control) and the European Parliament has voted against it, effectively killing it.

Trump was elected. Twice. It was not a fluke, not a once in a lifetime event, he's a symptom of wider processes happening in the US. The world has changed and the old order is not coming back

Does it matter who is president? The US was spying on European leaders before Trump's first term:

"According to the investigation, which covered the period from 2012 to 2014, the NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbrück."

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-security-agency-spie...

I am speaking based on the response criteria of Korea's largest research institution.[1]

https://kbthink.com/news-list/view.html?newsId=2026011611543...

I don't follow. Are you saying that BigCorp would demand key escrow? They already deploy custom email solutions today so I don't see the issue.

Given that the cryptography would necessarily be asymmetric verifying the sender on a TOFU basis seems like a trivial addition (just sign something). I doubt you can do better than TOFU though unless you tie it to an external ID system (corporate or government or etc issued hardware tokens or similar).