With all the dismal news about America lately, my home, I’m starting to seriously look at where else to move.
Putting aside for now the difficulty of actually immigrating to some countries, I’m curious on the opinions of others (especially people living outside the U.S) on this.
What I’m looking for in a country is, I imagine, similar to many people. I’m trying to find somewhere that will exhibit:
- Low racism
- Low sexism
- Low LGBTQ-phobia
- Strong laws around food quality and safety
- Strong laws about environmental protection
- Strong laws against unethical corporate practices (monopoly, corruption, lobbying, etc)
- Strong laws for privacy
- Good treatment of mentally ill, homeless, and impoverished people
Those are the real important things. Of course the nice-to-haves are almost too obvious to be worth listing, low cost of living, strong art and cultural scene, nice environment, and so on.
My actual constraints that might really matter are that I only speak English (and maybe like A1-2 level German). It seems incredibly intimidating to try to find employment somewhere when I can hardly speak the language.
I know nowhere on Earth is perfect, just curious what people may have to suggest. I hope this question isn’t too selfish to ask here.
For real, where do you get that the President of Spain wants to ban encryption?! That debate has been held in Germany, France and UK but not precisely in Spain… like nothing at all. In that talk President Sanchez just talked about the massive and pernicious powers social media have in the society (true) and that he supports the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), at highly misguided and bad thing, but not spearheaded by Spain. None of that is wanting to ban encryption… letś no mention almost impossible to enforce properly too. If digital freedom is your aim, options like Australia is a bit off, you are good until you touch sensitive things for the US.
Where did I get it? I literally said where, there is a Davos presentation he did. Didn’t I say that? I did not say that it was debate, it was something that he was pushing for in his speech. Find the video.
With that said, it is not like this is new. You are just unaware. Example:
https://www.wired.com/story/europe-break-encryption-leaked-document-csa-law/
"The source of the document declined to comment and requested anonymity because they were not authorized to share it.
“It is shocking to me to see Spain state outright that there should be legislation prohibiting EU-based service providers from implementing end-to-end encryption,” says Riana Pfefferkorn, a research scholar at Stanford University’s Internet Observatory in California who reviewed the document at WIRED’s request. “This document has many of the hallmarks of the eternal debate over encryption.”__**"
Also you are right, he also want so remove anonymity… for your protection, of course.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/pedro-sanchez-calls-for-measures-against-social-media-threats-to-democracy-at-davos/
Thanks for that wired link. Was not aware of it. It is 2 years old but important still. Now, that is not from the president of Spain, but its minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, a extremist and, I would say, a compromised guy that works more for foreign entities than Spain’s interest and should have been fired long ago. For instance, last week he signed a contract with a Israelś company to purchase munition… the outrage in the coalition government was such that Sanchez had to step in and canceled the already signed contract.
On wanting to stop anonymity, 100% with you, but hard to find any leader is not on board with that.
Yeah, I find this drive towards a 1984 dystopia concerning. Given that it comes equally from both, Right-wing and Left-wing governments. The UK is going insane and they lean right, and so is Germany and they lean very Left. Spain leans very left and look at what they are doing. Also, I sit corrected and it is not the president of Spain but the Prime Minister of Spain --which is worse-- as per my Telesur link regarding the WEF, people can still find the clip of his speech if they are interested.
I will update my previous post and correct myself, either way, he is a literal Socialist and he is the one that wants to eliminate online anonymity… For your protection, of course. ;-) LOL
Up here in Canada, the Liberal government passed amendments to 2 Laws during the pandemic, when they pushed for bogus Emergency Powers, just for a couple of days in which they sneaked these changes, that allows them to freeze people’s banks accounts on almost a whim, some people got their bank accounts frozen because they donated to a group that the Liberals did not like, despite not doing anything illegal. It was due to just wrong think.
It is insane but still most Canadians are not aware of these changes because the news media barely covered it. I happen to follow politics closely and read Bills and law for fun, so I know about them but I have yet to meet an average Canadian who is aware of this, unless they are into politics or study political science or something akin to it.
I mean, I have lived in 3rd world countries with better legal protections than what Canada is turning into under the Liberal party. I say that as someone who leans Left.
Ad someone who goes to Canada every two months in the last 15yrs, I had witnessed the regression not only in the liberties, but also mood of the people. No one would have guessed a decade ago how a country with so much potential and human capital would had become in this state! I would not only blame the Liberal party though… it is something bigger than them, same in the US… and most of the West.
As a Canadian I can tell you that politically everything wrong, or almost all wrong with the country is literally the Liberal Party’s fault. They have been in power for a decade, already.
All, or almost all of their policies have made the country worse. It is easy for idealogues out there to blame the conservatives but in reality the Libs pushed for all the things that broke the country.
From extreme immigration that increased crime, El Salvador is now safer than Toronto, to the price of housing, to making drugs more accessible via their Safe Supply program. That sounds good in make believe land but horrible in practice.
Which saved more “users’ lives” at the cost of increasing the number of overall drug addicts, everywhere. Same happened in Seattle and Cali, as well as in Portugal where this whole scheme was copied from.
You can tell by seeing the ratio increase of users and deaths in the provinces that pushed for this policy over the ones that didn’t.
Can’t even really blame the conservatives as the Libs and the NDP --which was Lefty but devolved to being Lib-Lite- created a collation as to bypass their vote in most cases. So they passed a lot of stuff easily and mostly on their own.
It is a mistake to not blame the Liberal party only because they have the word “Liberal” in their name. Trudeau alone was found guilty of 4 ethic violations, one including his family, so just straight up corruption. So, yes, we could blame the bad Covid handling and the NDP as well, if we want to nickpick. With the later now a shadow of its former self. The NDP leader sold out the party and the government, so he could be eligible for his fat government pension. He announced his retirement immediately after and lost his riding just after that. They got destroyed in the recent election, too.
Carney has already been got caught lying, a few times, saying one thing to English speakers and the 180° opposite to French speakers regarding infrastructure projects because he needed their votes and he just recycled a ton of the same people in government. There are other examples.
He ran as being an outsider when anyone with eyes knows that he is not. He is even the godfather of one of the kids of Freeland, the previous Deputy PM AND Finance Minister (who is now the Transportation Minister under him) who quit the job, the morning she was supposed to table their budget that was over $20 Billion over the number they had stated before, because she is a coward and was looking after her career first, along with 0 sense of real accountability. She quitting put us in a constitutional crisis and we went through not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 Finance ministers in 14-16 hours, including her. Then she ran for the leader of the Liberal party before losing to Carney, but as stated she is in the new Cabinet anyway.
We literally applauded an ex-Nazi SS soldier in parliament because the Libs wanted PR points and come off as pro-Ukraine but did 0 vetting on the guy. This was supposed to be done by the office of the PM. They are that incompetent and threw another guy, the Speaker of the House under the bus and forced him to quit, as to save face. Fucking embarrassing.
Their biggest selling point was, “we are not Conservatives.” Which is funny as the Libs literally copied a bunch of Con campaign/platform promises, rebranded them, and sold them as theirs. I am not a conservative but holy shit the Libs are so incompetent. Not really positive about the new guy, either. Once you get past the new paint job, it is just more of the same. He became the Leader of the Libs by decree of the party and paid about $250,000 to run, as he was never elected by anyone in the public or held a riding. Which is a first in our system.
He just got inserted. That is not very Liberal nor democratic.
The loss of Liberties was all Liberal policy too. They fear monger people and then remove liberties for “our” protection, of course. It is sad to see the country go down this fast.
I see your pain. You know better, but from outside to someone that goes frequently to Canada, yes, the Canadian downfall happened in the last 10 years. But I also travel to other countries and no matter what parties rules, all had a similar fate… UK, Germany, Netherlands, France, Australia… That tells me one thing, or our democracies are an illusion and nothing changes with the major parties or so there is like a virus in the air that affected the West.