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Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

bbc.com

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Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#291

Post by [deleted] »

testing22321 wrote: post #168
ekidd wrote: post #7

> The No campaign fears losing control over Iceland's prized fishing grounds under the EU's Common Fisheries Policy and has vowed never to share the country's waters with anyone. Brussels has indicated Iceland could earn some kind of exemption, but it is considered potentially the biggest obstacle to any agreement. As noted in the article, Iceland's fishing industry makes up something like 40% of their exports. Which…

> and membership in the fraying NATO military alliance That framing is.. strange. One member of NATO has lost the plot. For everyone else, it’s stronger than ever. If the US tries to attack a NATO member they’re going to find out just how serious the alliance is. For example, Maersk shipping line in Danish, and carries 15% of the world’s shipping containers. If the US were to invade Greenland it would be illegal for…

[deleted]

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#292

Post by runarberg »

GlacierFox wrote: post #278
runarberg wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

"Another problem is border fascism. Europe has open borders internally, but very closed borders externally. The external borders are being militarized and increasingly hostile towards immigrants and asylum seekers. European politicians are showing increasingly fascistic behavior towards the borders. It is bad, and inhumane, and it is braking Europe apart." What planet are you living on? Border fascism? What? 70,000 '…

What I have experienced is being in an international relationship and having to have to go through the (legal) immigration process twice. First by my married spouse immigrating to Iceland, and then again by me, and Icelandic citizen moving to the USA.

What I have heard are people being deported from Europe, immigrants unable to move to the place they want to seek better life, asylum seekers sent back to the dangerous situations they were fleeing, or worse to third countries they have no relations with, exile being used as punishment against some criminals based on their country of origin, etc. etc.

Europe is increasingly becoming a surveillance hellhole, personal rights are being stripped away, privacy is being abolished under the guise of “protecting our borders”. This is border fascism, and Europe is better off without it. Immigrants, no matter how many millions, can never cause the same harm to a fellow working European as a politician who stripes away your human rights.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#293

Post by bluegatty »

ngruhn wrote: post #269
bluegatty wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'roaming fees' :) That's my point: that's the most marginal thing imaginable, it's borderline tabloid populism - even though yes, admittedly over a lot of issues, it' beneficial obviously. The 'common market' is pretty valuable and it's what the focus should be. Literally nobody is against that - it's what everyone agrees on. As far as travel and roaming fees - you don't need a centralized government for any of that.…

Yeah you're probably right. I see everything through my little consumer perspective and don't really understand the macroeconomics. But if the euro is so obviously bad, why are Greece, Spain, etc not ditching it? Surely there are some macroeconomic benefits after all.

It's Hotel California - nary impossible to leave.

The 'good countries' that are effectively managed and where the citizens trust their own gov. more than European gov. - maybe.

But Europe will threaten to existentially punish those that leave.

Greece ... citizens would not trust their own government, and would dump national currency for flight to EU.

There would be a run on Greek banks to move their money to European banks.

In this case, the 'German straighjacket' may be preferrable.

And of course switching costs - it's massive, takes 5 years of planning and 10 years to implement.

What might work is a 'Greek Euro' - where there are some central controls and oversight but it's a national currency.

Very easily exchanged for other national Euros etc.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#294

Post by hmry »

quantummagic wrote: post #285
hmry wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Advocating open national borders means you must let random strangers live in your house" a truly reasonable and not at all disingenuous argument. On par with "advocating socialism means you must let random strangers use your toothbrush".

Misrepresenting the argument is not a good look. The argument is that everyone believes in borders. And that borders aren't racist. The only question is where we personally accept them being drawn. But NOBODY believes they're inherently all bad. Not even the people who pretend to do so, and are all too happy to throw around accusations of fascism and racism, to appeal to base emotion rather than logical and practical…

But the person you are responding to didn't say "any and all borders are racist, including borders in your own home". You are the one misrepresenting their argument.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#295

Post by somenameforme »

OKRainbowKid wrote: post #66
apples_oranges wrote: post #23

The arguments that some put forward against the eu are as educated as the people declaring fiat money a scam back in the Bitcoin hype phase. While there are reasons not to join, most commenters against it have no clue what they are talking about.

> The arguments that some put forward against the eu are as educated as the people declaring fiat money a scam back in the Bitcoin hype phase. > > While there are reasons not to join, most commenters against it have no clue what they are talking about. Indeed! As I just learned in this comment, the EU is about to collapse and Iceland would be stupid to board an already sinking. Makes me wonder where these commenters…

Why do you think you're not biased towards the EU? The EU's share of the global economy has fallen from something like 30% to around 13% (PPP). Not all that long ago they even had a larger economy than the US. They've already had the third largest economy within the EU leave, approved overthrowing the results of an election that would have viably set another [strategically critical] country on its way out, and now the EU's largest economy is having an anti-EU party gradually come to be the top party in the country.

Here's another interesting datum. In 2004, 3 of the top 5 economies in the world were part of the EU. [1] Today? 0. [2] So you have sharp decreases in global relevance paired with significant increases in internal issues and pressures. Perhaps you think the EU will overcome this, but to me at least - that's the view that doesn't align, at least not in an 'obvious' fashion, with the data.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_countries...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#296

Post by northernsausage »

bluegatty wrote: post #108

These debates are hard to watch. 'Loss of sovereignty' for some reason is perfectly fine for Iceland, Switzerland and Norway, but not UK or others wanting to leave. 'Fisheries' was a small but founding and perennial concern before and during Brexit but they were labelled 'ugly nationalists'. The EU has benefits obviously but it's been failing Europe in critical ways for about 20 yeas now, and the crazy paradox is tha…

The mood is very much for re-joining in the UK.BREXIT was supposed to be the first domino that killed the EU but it very much didn't work because the average European likes a lot of what the EU has done for them. There are critiques sure but its not a dead system.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#297

Post by ExoticPearTree »

amunozo wrote: post #275
087532379864 wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Do you understand that a massive project like the EU has pros and cons, and things are not unidimensional? I am against chat control, but there is more to the EU than that.

Again, it was a nice dream 20-30 years ago. Today the EU is just a massive bureaucracy with nothing to show for.

The single market is a joke, regulations on top of regulations and so on. Why would any sane country join?

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#298

Post by quantummagic »

hmry wrote: post #294
quantummagic wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Misrepresenting the argument is not a good look. The argument is that everyone believes in borders. And that borders aren't racist. The only question is where we personally accept them being drawn. But NOBODY believes they're inherently all bad. Not even the people who pretend to do so, and are all too happy to throw around accusations of fascism and racism, to appeal to base emotion rather than logical and practical…

But the person you are responding to didn't say "any and all borders are racist, including borders in your own home". You are the one misrepresenting their argument.

I don't know if you're being intentionally obtuse, or you genuinely believe what you're saying. I was the one saying that a border is a border, and you had better have a good explanation as to why the national border is fundamentally different from your home. If it's okay to protect your home, why is it WRONG to protect your country? See? I was putting the OP to the test: why is one just fine, but the other reprehensible? Instead, the OP responded with accusations of racism.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#299

Post by ben_w »

boxed wrote: post #32
lukan wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iceland doesn't even have a military at all.

And yet they defeated the UK navy several times :P

IIRC this was done by threatening to leave NATO, which put pressure on the USA who really didn't want to lose a perfect base location to help monitor/contain the USSR, who in turn put pressure on the UK.

But this is from memory; and given the sources I read may have been politicised (I'm British by birth), take with a pinch of salt.

Re: Iceland votes on whether to restart talks on joining EU

#300

Post by snarf21 »

saevarom wrote: post #181

I run the count at one of the constituencies. We have about 42.000 people on the electoral register and we'll probably see about 75-80% turnout, so we're going to be counting about 33.000 votes with about 30-35 people on staff, 24 of them doing the actual counting. For the interest of the HN crowd, here is the technical report: You'll find that the Icelandic voting system is very low tech. The electoral registry for…

We should never allow digital voting ever. Machines should only be allowed to help count with the ability to hand count the paper. There are so many exploits and leverage for software/hardware in any system (even closed ones) that has to be updated every year. It becomes very very hard to create a million "passable" paper votes out of thin air. It is trivial to do with a digital system.
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