WikiLeaks Inspired 'New Media Haven' Proposal Passes In Icelandic Parliament

The WikiLeaks advised proposal to build an international "new media haven" in Iceland, with the world's strongest press and whistleblower protection laws, and a "Nobel" prize for
for Freedom of Expression, has unanimously passed the Icelandic Parliament.

50 votes were cast in favor, zero against, one abstained. Twelve members of parliament were not present.'

Read more...

Yet Another Day of Iceland Banking Arrests

Ingolfur Helgason, the former Director of Kaupthing Iceland, and Steingrimur Karason, former CEO of the bank’s risk management department, were both arrested today upon arriving back in Iceland. They went straight to interrogation with the Special Prosecutor and are being held in police cells.'

Read more...

Airlines to Get £2 Billion of Taxpayers Money for and Ash Cloud That Didn't Exist

Airlines could share in a £ 2billion taxpayer-funded compensation bonanza in the wake of the volcanic ash chaos which turned Europe into a six-day no-fly zone.

The European Union has agreed to allow state help for airlines which have complained bitterly that the flight ban has cost them millions.

They will be offered emergency loans and allowed to postpone payments of charges.'

Read more...

Deadly Fluoride Threatens Iceland Animals

On Sunday, farmers banded together to drive around searching for hundreds of shaggy Icelandic horses, who panicked and got lost in a downpour of ash that turned day into night.

Icelandic President Olaf Ragnar Grimsson: "It's an important lesson for all of us"
"The risk is of fluoride poisoning if they breathe or eat too much," Berglind Hilmarsdottir, a dairy farmer from Nupur, told the AP news agency through a protective white dust mask.

The fluoride in the ash creates acid in the animals' stomachs, corroding the intestines and causing haemorrhages.

It also binds with calcium in the blood stream and after heavy exposure over a period of days makes bones frail, even causing teeth to crumble.'

Read more...

And this is the stuff they want you to brush your teeth with and put into your drinking water - WAKE UP PEOPLE!!

Knee-Jerk No Fly Ban Discredits Global Warming Alarmists

With European governments coming under increasing pressure from airline groups to re-open airspace following dozens of successful test flights directly through the volcano ash cloud, it appears as if the infamous UK MET Office, which relies on similar voodoo science in proliferating its fearmongering about global warming, has once again been completely discredited at a cost of widespread chaos on top of hundreds of millions of dollars a day in lost revenue.'

Read more...

Ash May Hover for Days Over Uncertain Europe

In Iceland, winds dragged the ashes over new farmland, to the southwest of the glacier, causing farmers to scramble to secure their cattle and board up windows.

With the sky blackened out and the wind driving a fine, sticky dust, dairy farmer Berglind Hilmarsdottir teamed up with neighbors to round her animals and get them to shelter. The ash is toxic — the fluoride causes long-term bone damage that makes teeth fall out and bones break.

"This is bad. There are no words for it," said Hilmarsdottir, whose pastures near the town of Skogar were already covered in a gray paste of ash.'

Read more...

Europe Air Travel Chaos Enters Fourth Day

Millions of air travelers are stranded across Europe as airspace restrictions remain in place due to a cloud of ash released from the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland.

This unprecedented shut down of air travel is estimated to be costing the airlines 200 million dollars a day, reported a Press TV correspondent on Sunday.

Several countries including Britain, Ireland, Belgium, and Germany have completely shut down their air space.

Britain further extended a ban on most flights until at least 1800 GMT Sunday.'

Read more...

Private Army Sets Sights on Iceland

A private company offering military support has expressed interest in working with the Icelandic government. Many Icelanders are strongly opposed to the idea.

The company in question is known as ECA Program. They are a private company that works in military training and support for governments around the world, and have most recently worked with India. Their interest in Iceland is apparently strong enough to warrant the use of images from Keflavík - where the NATO base used to be located until it closed in 2006 - on their website. They have already asked the Icelandic government if they can utilize the base for their private air force, and are willing to pay 200 billion ISK to do so.'

Read more...

First Iceland, Then the World

Who cleans up the mess when ignorant, greedy bankers rack up massive debt then go broke? The people of Iceland made a strong statement Saturday. The sins of big bankers and government regulators shouldn't fall on the citizens. By a 93% to 2% margin, they voted down a proposal requiring them to cover bad debt incurred by one of the nation's oldest and largest banks. Covering the debt would have cost Iceland's 317,000 citizens around $17,000 each.

Iceland's national referendum was the first opportunity for the people of any nation to vote directly on who pays when the financial elite fail.

As citizens voted, Iceland's Prime Minister was dismissing the importance of the vote and promising to negotiate a payment scheme obligating citizen subsidies for bad debt created by Iceland's beyond-bad bankers.'

Read more...

Icelandic Voters Say 'No' to Neoliberal Debt Payback Deal

Partial results from a referendum in Iceland suggest voters have given a resounding "no" to a deal in which Iceland would have paid Britain and the Netherlands billions of euros.

This would have been to cover the compensation the two countries paid to their citizens who lost money due to the collapse of the Icesave bank.

However, with nearly a third of the votes counted, more than 90 percent of Icelandic voters have rejected the deal.'

Read more...

Iceland's Voters About to Tell Global Banksters to Shove It

A vote is set for Saturday in Iceland on a referendum that would require Iceland to pay funds to the U.K. and the Netherlands based on U.K. and Netherlands investors who lost money because of the collapse of an Icelandic bank.

A Capacent Gallup survey conducted over the last weeks of February showed 74% of those who had decided to vote planned to vote "no", reports WSJ.'

Read more...

The IMF Destroys Iceland and Latvia

For the past decade Iceland has been a kind of controlled experiment, an extreme test case of neoliberal free-market ideology. ... Is there a limit, a point at which government will draw a line against taking on public responsibility for private debts beyond any reasonable capacity to pay without drastically slashing public spending on education, health care and other basic services? ...

The European Union and International Monetary Fund have told them to replace private debts with public obligations, and to pay by raising taxes, slashing public spending and obliging citizens to deplete their savings. Resentment is growing not only toward those who ran up these debts -- Iceland's bankrupt Kaupthing and Landsbanki with its Icesave accounts, and heavily debt-leveraged property owners and privatizers in the Baltics and Central Europe -- but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders.'

Read more...

Iceland President Accuses England, Holland of Financial 'Bullying'

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson said the two countries had been "using their influence within the International Monetary Fund" to stop it lending Iceland billions of dollars needed to rebuild the country's debt-ridden economy.

"We are being bullied. The British and the Dutch are using their influence within the IMF to prevent the IMF program from going forward," Grimsson told CNN's Richard Quest.

"We have a situation, where a small nation is in fact ready to shoulder part of this burden but doesn't want to be put in a corner where the very survival of its economy in the next 10 years would be at stake."

The comments came after the UK expressed anger at the highly controversial decision by Iceland's president's to veto a bill that would pay back billions of dollars Iceland owes the UK and Netherlands. Britain was forced to spend $3.69 billion last year to cover the losses that British savers incurred when Icelandic banks collapsed.'

Read more...

Save the People of Iceland - the Official Petition

Iceland may be the first Western democracy to be forced into South-American style debt-slavery. The IMF, in concert with the UK and the Netherlands, has attempted to strongarm the recently impoverished Island of 317,000 into paying over 3.6 billion pounds ($6.3bn) -- $86,000 per Icelandic family -- at 5.5% interest for the next generation. The money is not conventional government debt, but arises from the collapse of a private multi-national bank during the financial crisis.

The issue is so serious that the entire nation will vote on the issue towards the end of February 2010.

Sign the petition here...

Icelandic Parliament Member Leads Revolt Against Banksters

We're All Icelanders Now

If voters in the US or the UK had been given a vote on whether their governments should inject trillions of dollars into their banks (in the form of loans, guarantees and investments), it is pretty likely that those referenda would have been lost.

Most opinion polls indicated that citizens were furious with their banks - and were not persuaded that letting them fail would wreak the kind of economic havoc that would impoverish all of us.

So most economists, central bankers and finance ministers would probably say that we should be grateful that in America and Britain the people aren't quite as sovereign (if that makes sense) as in Iceland.'

Read more...

Call To The People Of The World To Support Iceland Against The Financial Blackmail Of The British And Dutch Governments And The IMF

Let's also put this debt into perspective: 320.000 people live in Iceland, each and every person on the island, including children and the elderly, the disabled and the poor, would have to pay around $30,000 under the bill. The danger if Icelanders will accept this enormous burden is that the entire welfare system would simply collapse with no money to run it. On January 5th the Icelandic president had the courage, backed up by his nation, to place the interest of the people before that of the banks.'

Read more...

Iceland Seeks to Start EU Accession Talks

Iceland hopes to start accession talks with the European Union by July, although the island’s government and its 320,000 people remain deeply divided over whether to join the bloc.

Prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir, leader of the Social Democrats, announced late on Sunday that she had finally reached a compromise on EU accession with the Left-Greens, who oppose membership, that would enable the two leftwing parties to form a new coalition after their election victory two weeks ago.

The Social Democrats are the only Icelandic party that strongly backs EU membership, while most Left-Green deputies oppose even opening talks with the EU.

Popular support for accession has risen following the island’s financial crisis last autumn, with many voters hoping that adoption of the euro would prevent future economic turbulence. Last year the Icelandic krona lost 85 per cent of its value against the euro, pushing up inflation and increasing the burden of foreign currency-denominated mortgages.

Read more...

PROBLEM - REACTION - SOLUTION

Engineer a economical crisis, get the public screaming for a way out and then give them the solution - THE EU!!!

Iceland To Be Fast-tracked Into The EU

Iceland will be put on a fast track to joining the European Union to rescue the small Arctic state from financial collapse amid rising expectations that it will apply for membership within months, senior policy-makers in Brussels and Reykjavik have told the Guardian.

"The krona is dead. We need a new currency. The only serious option is the euro," said a senior Icelandic official.

Read more...

Classic Problem - Reaction - Solution, Destroy the nations economy and currency, get the country screaming and offer the solution "The Euro" and Eu Membership! Wankers!

Iceland Kicks Out Their Government - Be Warned Gordon Brown

Iceland's government was last night scrambling to avoid becoming the first administration to be ousted by the global financial crisis, as ministers huddled to try and hold together a coalition in the face of some of the biggest protests the country has seen for 60 years.

Protesters who have mounted vocal demonstrations in recent weeks against the collapse of the economy squared up to police, spattered parliament with eggs and paint, and at one point surrounded the prime minister's car as he tried to leave his office.

They pelted Geir Haarde's car with eggs and banged on the windows, shouting "resign", in a sign of mounting exasperation at the government's failure to prevent the economy from imploding under a mountain of billions of dollars of debt.

"These men bankrupted Iceland. It's ridiculous that they continue as if nothing happened," the writer Hallgrimur Helgason said. "I want the government to resign and an emergency government to be proclaimed, preferably made up of women. They can't do worse than men."