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Comment by kartan | Hacker News Reader

> that pose money-laundering and terrorism financing threats

So, Uk is fine with a country that finances terrorism in the UK itself as long as the elite gets a good chunk of money. At the same time, the UK wants to leave the European Union because immigration is "bad".

What about letting immigrants in, but keeping state-sponsored terrorism out?

All discussions have become so monetary centric that politicians publicly support the vilest of actions if there is money to gain (see Khashoggi torture and murder). The public should bring back some idealism and fight for a better world, not just for money. Otherwise, one day, we will wake up in the Middle Ages.

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Let’s not forget that the UK put Iceland on the state-sponsored terror list in order to freeze assets and strongarm them into agreeing to a bad financial deal. With that act, they completely threw out the notion that it actually had anything to do with terrorism.

The people who want to leave the EU and not necessarily the same people pushing for this.

Actually they are very unlikely to be the same people.

They are the same people. The Brexit they sold to the working class and the Brexit the Brexiteer elite is dreaming of are 2 entirely different beasts.

Since the vote has been thrown, the local population has largely been ignored. Their need at best a second thought in a grand political and cynical battle for power.

> The people who want to leave the EU and not necessarily the same people pushing for this.

I think that you are right. But, why is not these kinds of topics part of the political discourse?

It is elected officials the ones pushing for helping Saudis without first asking them to change their methods. Why is not the same people that do not want to be in the European Union because they are afraid of immigrants being more critical to this real threat to their country?

So, citizens have removed "I am worried about inequality" and "I am worried about terrorism" that will make Saudis intervention part of the concerning trends from their thoughts. And they think just about "I am worried about immigration". Without realizing that ending immigration was never a goal. That racism and xenophobia were packaged for them as an easy solution that problems that nobody talks about.

In engineering is important to state the problem to solve before discussing the solutions. Citizens of the UK talk about solutions, that are not real ones, without realizing that they miss the problem.

People see the world through eyes blinded by nationalism. You can justify all kind of contradictory policy. If foreigners are all bad then it makes no difference if you support them not. And there is a natural respect for brutal power like you see in Saudi. And there is support for a brutal foreign policy for the same nationalist reason. If you dont like foreigners then why would you care about foreigners?

Exactly. Brexit was decided by a popular vote, not a few political elite.

You are unfairly conflating the people who voted for brexit with the anti-brexit elites.

I doubt the people who voted for brexit are fine with saudi money.

> I doubt the people who voted for brexit are fine with saudi money.

Not the ordinary Leave voter, sure. But there are links between the upper echelons of the Leave campaign and the upper echelons of Saudi royalty, suggesting that those who pushed for Brexit are happy to deal with the Saudis.

>> that pose money-laundering and terrorism financing threats

> So, Uk is fine with a country that finances terrorism in the UK itself as long as the elite gets a good chunk of money. At the same time, the UK wants to leave the European Union because immigration is "bad".

UK is itself no stranger for that. London hosts god knows how much laundered money from badlands of the world.

It hosts Altaf Hussain, and god know how many other ex and acting warlords from Africa and Middle East, shielded by UK spy establishments.

honestly the backlash is on the whole idea of using state resources to whitelist transactions

its not about whether a country or participants in a country fulfills the criteria set forth in "are they circumventing capital controls to also fund terrorism" guideline

its about the capital controls at all. banks obviously aren't playing ball and the state can only leverage the financial institution's relationship with their central bank to enforce this anyway, parallel non-bank payment systems make it more apparent that all of this a moot point anyway, and the costs to enforce this ideal are extremely high.

obviously no senator can say "maybe we shouldn't try attempt to police terrorism financing", but a 28 country bloc that requires unanimous consent can easily bring sanity back into public resource use, and thats what is happening here.

> because immigration is "bad".

The malicious simplification of argument.

Immigration will continue after Brexit, just like it does today for Canadians or Thais or Ukrainians or whomever non-EU moving is to the UK. No-one pretends otherwise except sneering anti-Brexiters.

Look, we're going into this together. It's time to stop being dickish and work out what we're going to do in the new reality whether we like it or not. Ridiculing half the population as uneducated xenophobes isn't going to achieve anything.

Half the reason we are in this mess is because politicians are too stupid to properly discuss this without resorting to straw men and personal attacks.

Free movement is not without consequence, address it honestly, attempt to solve real issues and maybe people come around.

Well reasoned argument.

I don't think politicians are too stupid to discuss without straw men, it's just that straw men work with the general public, and get them support.

> Free movement is not without consequence, address it honestly, attempt to solve real issues and maybe people come around.

The problem is that unrestricted movement disrupts culture and lowers a lot of social statistics all at once - in a way that can be really disruptive to the host culture.

Similarly, no matter how you explain it, the deal in practice is "We'll take a lot of money from the middle class and give it to the globally impoverished."

Understandably, the people who are just being taken from don't seem to like that deal very much; and cultures which are rapidly disrupted by low-class migrants don't seem to do well.

Never mind that "free movement" is usually just political cover for people looking to import more workers after their leadership and the society they built is so toxic, it's killing the indigenous population. Naturally, the people being fed into the meat grinder and replaced aren't particularly fond of paying for their replacements to be imported.

Talking about "free movement" in that context has about the same tone as "right sizing" your business, while off-shoring.

But Brexit probably won't reduce immigration - it might well increase total numbers. All that will change is where people are coming from.

I didn't mean to imply Brexit was a solution to anything - just that people can understand what the deal with free movement is, but be against it for perfectly rational reasons.

> The problem is that unrestricted movement disrupts culture and lowers a lot of social statistics all at once - in a way that can be really disruptive to the host culture.

So, free movement inside the UK should be restricted? The UK should be divided by countries and block free movement? And what happens if two cities have different cultures? I'm different from my neighbors and I feel I have more in common with people from other countries, how to done that? My country is Christian, but I'm an atheist. I am disruptiny the country culture. I'd that bad?

Global communications and exchange of people and ideas has brought riches to the world that were impossible to think of one century ago.

Tribalism has a romantic appealing, but it's based in the falacy of the Noble Savage.

You are right that there is people that will abuse the system. But, that is true for any system. So, is better to try to improve it instead of throwing it away without an alternative.

People should be concerned about losing their jobs, losing wealth, etc. And look for the causes instead of using a straw man.

Fear mongering around immigration was definitely one of the top "arguments" of the brexit proponents during the referendum campaign. So clearly it's not something made up by "sneering anti-Brexiters".

> It's time to stop being dickish and work out what we're going to do in the new reality whether we like it or not. Ridiculing half the population as uneducated xenophobes isn't going to achieve anything.

In the interest of stopping being dickish, you could start by admitting that brexiters are not, in fact, "half of the population". Around 1/4 of the population voted for brexit on the Referendum [1]. Since then, it's likely that some amongst those have changed their opinion, now that more information about how (and how not) the process would (or will not) take place.

> Look, we're going into this together.

I, as a non-UK European, agree on that. UK should have a second referendum, for its shake as well as Europe's.

[1] https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-leave-remain-52-48-pe...

Otikik, as a Brit who voted remain, I’ll be proud to vote exit EU if we ever get faced with a ghastly anti-democratic second referendum.

The fact that new information is available now that when the Referendum took place is incontestable. In the light of this, not voting again is the anti-democratic option, from where I stand.

> work out what we're going to do in the new reality whether we like it or not.

The reality in question is being denied, ignored or lied about.

> Ridiculing half the population as uneducated xenophobes isn't going to achieve anything.

Agreed - ridiculing won't do anything. But if half of the population are uneducated xenophobes, these problems will persist with/without/before/after leaving the EU. And this shouldn't be ignored.

> It's time to stop being dickish

> sneering anti-Brexiters.

...uh-huh

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