I love the EU.

There just isn't a better place to live (having lived in other places like the UK, US and CH, and visited many countries).

For example, when I meet European researchers, each has some things to bitch about their own governments, but we all agree the unity of the EU is very valuable, and that we are very grateful for what it has given us (democratic stability, freedom of movement, a vision for living together respecting and celebrating our cultural differences yet sharing key values).

In the media, in particularly in the UK, people had not much good to say about the "European beaurocrats". In contrast, I work with some very committed officers in Brussels that administer the Horizon Europe research programme, and they are doing a job as well as possible given legal and political constraints. How they work is too little known by the general public, which makes the EU bashing easy but not quite fair.

It was priceless when Farage explained this was just a campaign slogan.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PropagandaPosters/comments/x0vicd/v...

It was intended as just an example of what one could do with all that delicious tax money.

The stuff they did in this particular case is likely a violation of all laws involved, just like the other recent case with the US Secret Service in New York City. In both cases they are seizing someone's business equipment, on the assumption that because it is an unusual business and sometimes it is used for spam, the business itself is spam.

Actually, it's probably legal in the USA, but completely illegal in the EU where the Digital Services Act regulation very specifically says that a mere conduit of data transmissions cannot be held liable for data transmissions passing through it which it didn't originate. I only know anything about the law in Germany (and I am not a lawyer) so let's pretend this happened in Germany - then the business operator - presuming that they're running a relay business and not spammers themselves - would win back all the money this police action deprived them of, including lost revenue, equipment costs, lawyer fees, and repairs for any damages incurred during the raid. Their cellphone provider is probably allowed to terminate their contract however, and could sue them if they had any meaningful damages. The civil court system here is very algorithmic as far as I'm aware: if(you broke the law) you.transfer(victim, victim.money_if_you_hadnt_broken_the_law - victim.money);

> We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it.

Modern US variant: we will say whatever we must to amass donations to pay for the election campaign, but you'd be a fool to bet on our doing what we should once elected.