Why Did The Media Keep The Recent Peaceful Icelandic Revolution Quiet?
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1. The "media" got together and said to each other, "We better not cover this story at all, because it will give too many people dangerous ideas"
or
2. Media outlets individually (particularly in the US) decided not to cover the actions of the Icelandic government because they think most of their viewers don't care much about Iceland and/or because "check out what has slowly been happening in Iceland over the past 5 years" isn't much of a breaking news story.
This story has been covered, but just because it isn't to the extent that you wish it was covered does not mean a conspiracy must exist.
NPR did a story on Iceland just two days ago: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/02/01/170867071/episode-...
It's highly relevant because of the stark contrast in the manner in which Iceland prosecuted the bankers like the criminals they are, versus the crazy manner in which bankers are treated in the US and Europe.
One law for the corrupt, rich, and connected bankers, and much harsher laws for ordinary people who are not connected, wealthy and powerful (e.g. individuals targeted for illegal downloads versus bankers blowing up the global economy causing untold economic hardship). This sends out a strong message from a government to it's electorate: fuck you, you miserable peasant. Not only will you go along with these bailouts, you'll cheer loudly for your bought candidate when he's re-elected.
I'm from Ireland, and we should have copied Iceland to the letter. The difference is we're in the EU and our government is happy to be Angela Merkel's little bitch, and take the pain (sovereign debt burden) to maintain the illusion that everything is rosy in the garden.
Iceland even had the balls to crowd-source it's new constitution, giving real, tangible power to it's people (you couldn't even imagine this in most countries). Talk about real democracy compared to crony capitalism:
http://gigaom.com/2012/10/22/icelanders-approve-their-crowds...
Great article on Iceland from Michael Lewis (Wall Street on the Tundra):
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland2...
And we didn't "crowd-source" our constitution (which hasn't been changed yet, btw). The committee of 25 people simply maintained a website where they could collect opinions. They had no significance other than being input to the work of that committee. But I suppose many Icelandic are happy to let this kind of misunderstanding propagate, rather than explaining how we messed up the election of those 25 people, how their suggestion for a new constitution is actually only "advice" for the parliament, and how nothing has happened yet as we still have the same old constitution.
We also don't like to mention that there is little wrong with our old constitution. It's pretty standard. The suggestions for the new one, as far as the banking crisis goes, are about more transparency in government. Other changes are about different things (such as ownership of natural resources, etc.)
There is a lot of misinformation and hype in the foreign media around how Iceland has handled the crisis. As an Icelander living abroad, talking about this topic mainly consists of telling people "actually, that's not what happened..".
I think Iceland (and other countries) could do well looking at Alaska and their oil fund for inspiration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund
Haven't read these in detail, but the look ok on a quick glance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008%E2%80%932012_Icelandic_fin...
Not to mention, parliamentary style governments are always being torn down and rebuilt as different blocs of power emerge. Things can change fast, especially if that country also does direct democracy referendums. That's a feature, not a bug and very different to the more stable and conservative style of government the US was built on.
Also, a screen blocking "join us on facebook" dhtml pop-up? Wow. Another example of the hostile web here.
They are a tiny country who nationalized their banks, stiffed creditors, implemented unnecessary austerity measures and devalued their currency. I'm not sure they're a model for US economic policy.
Creditors were left to deal with the mess that they were complicit in creating while ordinary people who just wanted a house to live in were freed from crushing debt. Some limited austerity measures were put in place that didn't cut into core social spending. The people were taken care of while financiers were told to take a hike, and just as all the experts didn't predict the crash, none of them predicted Iceland's recovery. Maybe the big lesson here is that economists don't know what the fuck they're talking about, and there are other factors in play than neoclassical theory. That is why this hasn't received coverage, because it would lead to self-reflection that would make those in power uncomfortable.
Of larger nation than Iceland Norway and Sweden handled the bank crisis around 1990 by nationalizing the banks and adding to their capital reserve. The shareholders lost their money, but the banks were able to recover in not too many years.
The worst thing that can be done is a bailout. In that case the people that took unnecessary risks for their own short-term gain are rewarded, and everyone else have to pay.
There is a systematic method to deciding which stories are covered by MSM outlets and which aren't. It is not a coincidence that most outlets chose not to cover the Iceland story, regardless of it being a very small country.
Not everything is a "conspiracy", and failure to acknowledge that there are certain forces at play is a blatant misunderstanding of the role MSM plays in public brainwashing.
Yes, exactly. As someone who knows the media world better than he'd like to, I cannot think of a more succinct or generally applicable characterization. You, sir, have nailed it.
When they're not winning (which is frequent), and thinking "what the fuck am I doing here?" (also frequent) chances are good that whoever or whatever they're getting snowed by can be fairly described just the way you did.
Just because you are ignorant of the evidence doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
I know about Iran-Contra, the gulf of tonkin, etc. How about the USS liberty?
Your link was very interesting.
I don't understand why people insist on using the "shadowy figures gathering in smokey rooms" straw-man, Herman/Chomsky's propaganda model has been around for 25 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model
1) we care about the pomp and circumstances surrounding the British royalty (weddings, deaths, etc)
2) we care about what happens in Israel
3) we care about events that make us feel morally superior (rapes in India)
4) we care about things that could affect us (terrorists in Afghanistan, EU's sovereign debt crisis, etc)
American media doesn't even cover what happens in major European countries like the U.K. or France or Germany, much less in minor ones. And it's not just among regular people. Even educated, well-informed people generally don't care about what happens abroad. It's just American exceptionalism at work. We feel we are so dramatically different from anyone else, either in other countries or in other times, that nothing that happens in those other places could possibly have any relevance to us. The idea that we would look to other countries for ideas on how to solve domestic problems is completely alien to us.
I know I personally view world news through the lens of "how will this affect me?". If I want to learn something about how things are going in Iceland, I'll read Wikipedia (which I do fairly often, but most people probably don't).
As for looking to other countries for a solution, I'd say that's part of what makes us Americans. The idea of "we rebelled against the European power for a reason, we don't want to be like them" is ingrained into our culture. I don't think that's a terrible thing, but rather one of the things that make us unique. Diversity is not a bad thing.
The other part of what defines American culture is our individualism. That's changing rapidly these days, as our population centers become more concentrated and a larger percentage of the population are more closely tied to a larger social community. I think you'll see a bit of a "whiplash" effect, as we quickly lose many parts of our "Americanism" and become more like Europe. When that happens, the media coverage will change to reflect that.
Individualism has historically been correlated with urbanization. Just because people are living closer together does not a community make. In fact, urbanization has tracked with the breakdown of old communitarian social relations and its replacement with market relations. If anything is going to erode that, it will be new "solidarity economies" and things of that nature rather than the simple concentration of population.
Read "Manufacturing Consent" book for a more thorough explanation on how the system works.
(It works on individual level -- journalists and corporate --- certain stories are suppressed by the owners).
individual media outlets know that if they cover this they will incur the wrath of their advertisers and go bankrupt, so they don't cover it.
These are not conspiracy theories, these are facts.
...in this case I would not be surprised if the government essentially told news outlets not to tell the story.
[citation needed]
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4683804
Draft text:
http://stjornlagarad.is/other_files/stjornlagarad/Frumvarp-e...
Interesting excerpts:
(14) "All are free to have their opinions and convictions and shall have the right to express their thoughts. Censorship and other comparable impediments to the freedom of opinion must never be enacted into law. Limits on the expression of opinion may, however, be stipulated by law to protect children, security, health, the rights or reputation of others, as necessary in a democratic society."
(18) "All shall be free to pursue their religion, individually or in association with others, publicly or privately. The freedom to pursue religion or personal convictions shall only be limited by law as necessary in a democratic society."
(20) "No one may be obligated to be a member of an association. Such obligation may be imposed by law if it proves necessary for an association to perform its lawful role due to the public interest or the rights of others."
I am sure that the Chinese leaders would say that the labour camps are "as necessary in a democratic society"
Oh and that old chestnut its for the children
And the parties that were once in power but were ousted by the people are vehemently against any constitutional changes and will fight it. And they will probably come back into power this spring and kill any hopes of this new constitution.
Sad but true.
Snippet from the Wikipedia article:
"On 20 January 2009, the protests intensified into riots. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people clashed with riot police, who used pepper spray and batons, around the building of the parliament (Althing), with at least 20 people being arrested and 20 more needing medical attention for exposure to pepper spray.[3][11] Demonstrators banged pots and honked horns to disrupt the year's first meeting of Prime Minister Geir Haarde and the Althing. Some broke windows of the parliament house, threw skyr and snowballs at the building, and threw smoke bombs into its backyard.[2][3][12] The use of pots and pans saw the local press refer to the event as the 'Kitchenware Revolution'.[13]"
[2] ^ a b Gunnarsson, Valur (21 January 2009). "Icelandic lawmakers return to work amid protests". Associated Press. Archived from the original on 31 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
[3] ^ a b c "Iceland protesters demand government step down". Reuters. 20 January 2009. Archived from the original on 3 February 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009.
[12] ^ "Icelanders held over angry demo". BBC. 21 January 2009. Archived from the original on 24 January 2009. Retrieved 22 January 2009
[13] ^ Ian Parker, Letter from Reykjavík, "Lost," The New Yorker, 9 March 2009, p. 39.
In Iceland, it's known as the "Búsáhaldabylting" which basically means "kitchen appliance revolution", if that gives you any idea of what it was like. (edit: you already stated that in your post)
Edit:
To elaborate some more... most of the people who were arrested, or those who were pepper sprayed were nothing more than opportunistic (often young) people taking advantage of the situation. Some of them were self declared "anarchists" or had some kind of "fuck-the-system" attitude. Most of them probably had little stake in what was happening. this was in contrast to most of the peaceful protesters, they were family people protesting how the govt. handled the bank collapse.
These people had just lost their life savings, their house, their car and were left with insane debt. I went, and protested for my parent, whose debt have now doubled because of the inflation. I showed my anger, I threw rocks, I screamed, we were all pretty angry.
But only a very small group of people were actually violent, and you could literally point out who was there for a valid protest and who was just looking for an excuse to fight the police.
--
Addendum: What you may not understand is that loans in Iceland are "insured". That's good... if you're a bank, but if you're a n individual, it's bad... very bad.
It basically means that, in addition to interest, your loan principal increases by the amount of inflation. So if the inflation is 5%, voila, your loan is now 5% higher. Now realize that inflation went as high as 18.6%, which means your 4% interest loan just went up 18.6 + 4 = 22.6% in one year.
There are associations currently suing the banks and the govt. to try and make this form of loan illegal.
At least this was my experience with the recent student protests in Montreal. I attended a few of these protests and my roommate many more. They were mostly peaceful. The ones that weren't were in response to dubious police behavior such as locking protesters in a street and not letting anyone out for extended periods of time. This happened maybe once or twice over the course of a year. I felt safe moving about Montreal.
Now if I looked at the media, especially foreign media, it was another story. Had I not been in Montreal to see things first hand, I would have imagined a warzone. I would have been afraid to visit or live in Montreal. It was amazing to see the students portrayed as violent protesters when they went to incredible lengths to insure everything was done peacefully.
I experienced this same phenomenon, but not for protests, living in Toronto during the SARS epidemic. The city was running perfectly, no one was panicking (I think we had something like 22 potential cases). The only noticeable difference was that I saw a few face masks in the subway. If I listened to foreign media, everyone in Toronto was panicking, thousands were infected. Once again, it was represented as a warzone.
Having been there, I can say it wasn't in both cases. The media often misrepresents stories to make them more interesting. Having read the stories about Iceland (which are rather mild), if the trends I observed hold, it must have been really peaceful protest.
There's no more "the media". The internet is the media.
We are the media (yes, even HN), and remember, with power comes responsibility.
Still, some media outlets have more penetration than others, however, the story still gets told.
But it's the 'big media' that's losing relevance and paying the price.
So in my opinion, the Icelanders didn't fail to pay a debt; they refused to incur one because the entire world has started feeling entitled to zero-risk bank deposits. Which is quite sensible: Iceland is a tiny country, 319,000 people, and Great Britain is quite large, 62 million people. Spreading billions of dollars of loss over Iceland's population is thousands or tens of thousands of dollars per capita. Spreading the same loss over Great Britain's population is tens or hundreds of dollars per capita. Iceland just can't afford to be insuring global banks, which is why the didn't and aren't.
You didn't even try to check that with Google that did you?
The Momentary Default of 1979 The Treasury of the United States accidentally defaulted on a small number of bills during the 1979 debt-limit crisis. Due to administrative confusion, $120 million in bills coming due on April 26, May 3, and May 10 were not paid according to the stated terms. The Treasury eventually paid the face value of the bills, but nevertheless a class-action lawsuit, Claire G. Barton v. United States, was filed in the Federal court of the Central District of California over whether the treasury should pay additional interest for the delay.
The government decided to avoid any further publicity by giving the jilted investors what they wanted rather than ride the high horse of sovereign immunity. An economic study of the affair concluded that the net result was a tiny permanent increase in the interest rates of T-bills.
We seem to be selling a lot of treasuries at low return.
Although I tend to agree with the sentiment. We always hear the same arguments: yes [solution for a big problem] works great in [scandinavian country] but it is so small and homogeneous, the same could never work in [larger european country or USA]. Surely measures that have been applied successfully elsewhere, even in a small country, are more likely to succeed here too?
Furthermore, organizing effective social movements does not scale very well. Organizing 1000 truly active participants - by which I mean people who are willing to do more than just tweet and write blog posts - is as difficult in Iceland as it is in the US, but in Iceland that already gets you close to 1% of the population, whereas in the US it is basically nothing.
The same arguments don't really apply to topics like health care, because the limits of social organization are not as important there.
Let's not pretend this "revolution" is about anything other than the Icelandic people not willing to pay for the failures of the government they elected.
From my understanding, this is not quite true. Icelandic banks defaulted on debts towards foreigners, the Icelandic government was being pressured into taking over those debts - even though there was no legal obligation to do so - and the Icelandic people revolted against this.
So: Private entities screwed up - both the banks and non-Icelandic bank customers who misplaced their trust in those banks - and so private entities were morally responsible for taking the losses. The Icelandic people simply did their part to ensure that capitalism works properly, even though it required going against their government.
Why should they be? It's supposedly common knowledge that no democratic government has the power to bind the hands of a future government.
It is important to the financial stability of the world that the financial industry understand the world as it is, and not how they would like it to be. Hopefully the Iceland incident has been an a sufficiently good example that the bad lessons the US is teaching will be ignored.
Do note that many of our compatriots put more money into IceSave than was covered by the bank guarantee system. Hence, they did not deserve to be made "whole" (they took a risk, willingly, for a higher return).
Also note that The Netherlands single-handedly increased the max. amount to 100k euros, then demanded that the Icelandic people repay them, which isn't really right either. Sure, there were major issues in terms of lack of oversight and irresponsible investments resulting in risk of insolvency in case of a "bank run", but the "greed" of the UK and NL consumers dropping their life savings for one extra percentage point should not have been rewarded.
Lastly, I seem to recall that Iceland has agreed to repay most of it in the long run (though I may be mistaken, that proposal has been voted out and reinstated several times, and I'm too lazy to find out the latest status)
Why ask such a question when they already know the answer?
Try finding any resoures that the rest of the world (I.E. Super powers) would like to exploit : http://www.iceland.is/the-big-picture/nature-environment/nat...
Nothing interesting? Well there you go.
I was born in Sri Lanka, where there were open conflicts in a civil war going back to 1984 (I was 2 years old) and riots back to the 70's. Did the West care? Nope... Again, nothing much the rest of the world is intersted in. And unlike the "peaceful revolution", a lot of people died :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Sri_Lankan_Ci...
In all the years I've spent in the U.S. I could find 1 or 2 mentions on CNN maybe, but that's about it.
I hate to put it in these terms, but unless there's actual interest to the rest of the world and resources at stake, no one really cares. It's the cold hard truth.
Same with the war in Darfur... Which incidentally has been going on as open conflict since 2003, but tensions and clashes go back to 1991. Did you hear about it back then?
I feel this has been covered a lot across the BBC and NYTimes
It would be interesting to know from someone who has been following them.
To be fair, that does cover both the Government and the Opposition these days.
> An assembly is elected to write a new constitution [...]. The only qualifications for candidacy are adulthood and the support of 30 people.
This wouldn't work in a large country such as the USA. There are simply too many people with extreme views that would make such an election impossible.
If the republicans would not go to such extreme lengths to accommodate the feelings of every conceivable nut case, they would probably be better off in the long run, and even non-schizophrenics would be able to see some direction in their politics.
Because Iceland has a population smaller than Provo-Orem, Utah?
However, it probably wouldn't work anywhere with a significantly larger population size. Too many people with their own ideas causes things to fracture along ideological lines, rather than aiming for a common cause.
I don't know about Europeans or Asians but sadly not many in the US will as I hope.
I know this is purely anecdotal due to the influences of my friends and family in reacting to news like this. Not many of my friends/family are voracious readers on what's happening around the world and want to see how things are done. Even after I would explain to them what happened in Iceland or what we have failed to do with our banking executives, many would simply shrug and say "not much I can do".
I am confident if there was a research done on the attitudes of Americans, we would be dismayed to learn that many don't really care.
So does it really matter if the 'media suppresses' these info when in actually a reader can actually find all sorts of news if he or she bothers to look?
From what I've read, 1/3 or less of the colonists were in favor of the American revolution. The only reason it happened is because the representatives did not take a vote. Would anybody be surprised if a lot less than that percentage proactively care about their liberty today?
Of the people I know that do really care about what's happening in the US today, most seem to feel helpless to stop it.
I often wonder whether many of the US's problems are simply scaling problems and I wonder how many political scientists see it that way?
Thanks in big part to technology, it is no longer possible for a powerful elite to keep the rest uninformed and uneducated.
The guy put MEDALS - ACTUAL MEDALS - on the corrupt bankers.
Here he is giving the Icelandic Order of the Falcon Cross Medal to the two highest-level execs of Kaupthing Bank: http://lydveldi.blog.is/img/tncache/250x250/ce/lydveldi/img/... [edit - no, this is the Iceland Commerce and Export Award 2005 he's giving to them - here's a picture of the falcon-cross medal ceremony in 2007: http://www.forseti.is/media/orginal/aeae7417f17892d.jpg - 4th from the right is Kaupthing head Sigurður Einarsson; Björgólfur Guðmundsson received the medal in 2005 (can't find a picture)]
Then he tells lies on behalf of the country in interviews, saying Iceland is doing this or will do that, stuff that just isn't true. He fabricates stuff. As president. Appearing in official capacity.
Even if all he did was to speak overly strongly outwards as effectively-powerless president, thus jeopardizing international relations that officially represented people in actual powers are handling - even if he did only that I would be outraged and would wish for him to resign. He's not just a loudmouth - he's a goddamn liar.
Fuck Ólafur.
I understand that people like him. He's charismatic. Thing is that as he is using his time as precident for self-serving PR, he's effectively on a taxpayer-funded campaign to clean up his image and make people like him. You're not aware of his background so he looks good. Please check the guy out before you support him; He hasn't earned any kind of respect yet.
Also sometimes shocking is the content their editors deem fit for news(Was once shocked to see L.Lohan going to court as a headline story on CNN International, not CNN USA)
Again there might not be a big media club deciding which stories to cover or which agenda to push but individual media houses are clearly biased in their coverage of selected news stories. You just have to watch them long enough to notice it.
What is Actually going on in Iceland http://studiotendra.com/2012/12/29/what-is-actually-going-on...
Can somebody help and make sense of these contradictory perspectives?
Ironically, in the same year the people of Iceland democratically elected to default on sovereign obligations, the IMF released a paper entitled, "Default in Today's Advanced Economies: Unnecessary, Undesirable, and Unlikely" ...
America's most popular prime time news program (60 Minutes) did a full-length feature on this. It was done a while ago so it has also been in re-runs.
This has not been ignored or otherwise kept quiet by the mainstream media--quite the opposite.
'Isn't it a journalists Job to make relavant News, Relavant to the Public.'
And then have groups of people that just get together to grow and/or share on some ideals.
github > democracy > republic.
The big difference between Code Napoleon and Common Law legal systems is the system of precedent. In Sweden you can read and understand the rules, in the US what's important is how the laws have been interpreted by the courts in past "similar" cases.
Also, github is a commercial company. Can you elaborate on what you mean by ">"? The relation between a group of people sharing ideals and a republic vs. democracy is not clear to me.
Looks like you failed there - I presume you meant harm there, but you wrote arm.
Having a law that prevents arming others seems a bit odd...
1)First empoverish people, them give them presents (like a government job) and then just keep them at those (sheep) jobs voting for whatever your will, or else they lose their jobs. This is to what i see as the current trend.
Solutions: 1) 6 hours max work hours, instead of 8. More creativity, no unemployment and more happiness, health and society involment (e.g. making friends and "art").
2) Simple law, like the one i proposed before, and easy to learn. Test it with a 6 year old. When people start an ecosystem around crime it will only generate more crime, since the ecosystem wants to thrive.
3) a github like collaborative space for science, cities, etc. Goal, e.g. : to establish a moon colony, or to eliminate diseases or pain, or get to immortality. Btw dear rich people you will die someday and your statistical chances are to reincarnate in some baby in a poor country.