Birgitta Jónsdóttir official blog

Warriors of Words

2012-01-12T16:27:00.001Z

Listen; poets of the world

your words are mighty

your vision is clear

war IS war

not peace

The voice of the oracle speaks

through your words

Fight with your pen

with your vision

Open the space between space

the world between worlds

between your words

The world is not simple

It unfolds in layers of understanding

and misunderstandings

Create that empty space

of understanding

by being unbearably honest

Create that space for free thinking

curling through your words

To strike in the heart of hearts

like a bolt of enlightenment

You are the carrier of the flame

the favorite of the muse

the warrior of words

Truth is truth

seek it

speak it

The bush is on fire

illusions run deep

seek, speak, the truth

Hope shall flourish

peace shall flourish

in the s p a c e

This poem is dedicated to all the poets, writers, artists, thinkers & spiritual leaders that made

the Book of Hope & the World Healing Book possible.

Happy 2012

2011-12-31T21:00:00.003Z

HaPpY 2012 - we are living at interesting times. May 2012 contain joy and happiness in your realities. ♥ My new years resolution this year as all the others is to do my best and to take on all experiences with a touch of serenity. Lets make 2012 a year where the tables will turn the pyramid of power upside down.

I was made into a cartoon some years ago by the Italian cartoonist Maurizio di Bona aka theHand. This blog started out as a joint experiment between two artists, me the writer/sputnik JoyB and theHand. We went busy doing other things for some years but have decided to put JoyB back on the priority list and resurrect her in 2012. Here is the first new JoyB toon: May 2012 be the road to ...

Happy Brightmas 2011 :)

2011-12-24T11:59:00.001Z

Photos & Videos from Birthday Party for Bradley Manning

2011-12-19T12:12:00.000Z

Around 50 people participated in celebrations and vigil for Private Bradley Manning outside the USA Embassy in Reykjavik, Iceland on the 17th of December 2011, that date marks Brad's 2nd birthday in prison. Photos by Arni Stefan Arnason and Asgeir Asgeirsson.

Statement to USA Authorities on Bradley Manning's Birthday

2011-12-17T20:57:00.000Z

Statement from the 50 people who have gathered outside the USA Embassy, Reykjavik, Iceland 17th of December 2011 to show Bradley Manning solidarity on his 24th Birthday delivered to the USA Ambassador to Iceland.

Today marks the second birthday Private Bradley Manning spends in jail. He is accused of having leaked secret documents to WikiLeaks of unprecedented proportions exposing serious war crimes and how the general population in the USA and around the world have been lied to in relation to the war waged in their name.

It is obvious that Manning will not get a fair trial. The USA president Mr Obama has prior to Manning even being brought to court claimed he was guilty. Obama also said that Manning could not go unpunished the way Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, once did, because the two cases are too different. Ellsberg, who sees Manning as following in his footsteps, cannot accept this assessment. He only agrees with the president on one point: Manning disclosed secret information, he says, but "all of the pages that I released were top secret."

The US government celebrated the release of the 'Pentagon Papers' on the Vietnam War as a sign of its openness. The truth, however, is that President Barack Obama has taken a much tougher line on whistleblowers than his predecessors. It is though timely to remind him that blowing the whistle on war crimes is not a crime.

The USA Army has come under fire for keeping Manning under detention for 18 months without trial, as well as the conditions of his detention. Since his confinement, Manning has become a symbol of free speech. We second the demands of the Bradley Manning Support Network whom have pushed for his release and the dropping of all charges against him.

Inter-Parliamentary Union Resolution on my Twitter case

2011-12-15T08:05:00.001Z

CASE No. IS/01 - BIRGITTA JÓNSDÓTTIR - ICELAND

Resolution adopted unanimously by the IPU Governing Council at its 189th session

(Bern, 19 October 2011)

The Governing Council of the Inter-Parliamentary Union,

Having before it the case of Ms. Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament, which has been the subject of a study and report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians following the Procedure for the treatment by the Inter-Parliamentary Union of communications concerning violations of the human rights of members of parliament,

Taking note of the report of the Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians, which contains a detailed outline of the case (CL/189/11(b)-R.1),

Considering the following information on file:

- Birgitta Jónsdóttir has been a member of the Icelandic Parliament since July 2009. She was the co-producer of a video, released by Wikileaks, showing United States soldiers shooting civilians in Baghdad from a helicopter;

- On 7 January 2011, she was informed by Twitter that it had received an Order from the United States District Court for the Eastern Division of Virginia to turn over to the United States the records and other information concerning her account. Twitter was given until 26 January to provide the information to the United States Government;

- The information sought by the United States Government with respect to Birgitta Jónsdóttir concerned the period from 1 November 2009 to date and involves subscriber account information including names, user names, screen names or other identities, mailing and other addresses, connection records, or records of session times and duration, length and types of service, telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, means and sources of payment for such services, including any credit card or bank account number, and billing records, records of user activity for any connections made to or from the account, including the date, time, length, and method of connections, data transfer volume, user name, and source and destination Internet protocol address(es), non-content information associated with the contents of any communication or file stored by or for the account, and correspondence and notes of records related to the accounts;

- The first court order, dated 14 December 2010, was originally kept secret and was only revealed to Birgitta Jónsdóttir and two other persons concerned by the same order, after Twitter took steps to ensure that it could notify the individual concerned;

- The Order of 14 December 2010 has been challenged by the three individuals, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation representing Ms. Jónsdóttir in the proceedings; on 26 January 2011, the defence counsel of the three individuals submitted a joint sealed motion to the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, requesting it to unseal the still secret court record of the United States Government's efforts to collect private records from Twitter as well as other companies which may have received such demands; a second joint motion, filed that same day, requested the Court to reconsider and overturn the 14 October 2010 Order;

At the request of Ms. Jónsdóttir’s legal counsel in the United States, the IPU submitted on 14 February 2011 a Memorandum to the Court concerning Ms. Jónsdóttir; the Memorandum was accepted by the judge and has become part of the court records;it sets out concerns regarding the potential impact of the Twitter order on:

(a) Ms. Jónsdóttir’s freedom of expression and her ability fully to exercise her parliamentary mandate;

(b) parliamentary immunity as the Twitter order renders the immunity guaranteed to her under Article 49 of the Constitution of Iceland null and void;

(d) her right to defend herself insofar as the United States authorities may be seeking disclosure of information from other service providers; the Memorandum, therefore, supported the defence motion to vacate the Twitter order and to unseal all other similar disclosure orders regarding Ms. Jónsdóttir;

On 11 March 2011, the Court denied the motion to vacate, granted the motion to unseal only in part and took the request for public docketing of certain material under consideration; the defence counsel has filed objections against the ruling, which are still pending before the District Court Judge,

Considering moreover that:

- Members of parliament enjoy fundamental freedoms, including the right to privacy as well as specific measures of protection to allow them to carry out their work unimpeded;

- Parliamentary immunity ensures that members of parliament cannot be held to account for the opinions they express and the votes they cast, and countries have generally put special mechanisms in place to ensure that they can carry out their mandate without undue restrictions and with full respect for their freedom of expression; as regards Iceland, members of the Althingi are protected under Article 49 of the Icelandic Constitution, which states that: “No member of Althingi may be subjected to custody on remand during a session of Althingi without the consent of Althingi, nor may a criminal action be brought against him unless he is caught in the act of committing a crime. No member of Althingi may be held accountable outside Althingi for statements made by him in Althingi, except with the consent of Althingi”;

- In all countries, freedom of expression is essential to democracy; citizens cannot exercise their right to vote or take part in public decision-making if they lack free access to information and ideas and are unable to express their views freely;

- Freedom of expression is even more essential to members of parliament and is recognized as such by courts the world over; without the ability to express their opinions freely, members of parliament cannot represent the people who have elected them;

- Members of parliament are elected by people to represent them in parliament. In their daily work they legislate and they hold the governments to account. They are unable to perform these duties if they cannot receive and exchange information freely without fear of intimidation;

- Citizens will not communicate sometimes sensitive information to their representative without the assurance that their identity will be protected. Members of parliament therefore find themselves in the same situation as journalists, with an absolute need to be able to protect their sources,

Also considering the following:

- Twitter is a website owned and operated by Twitter Inc. It offers a social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read messages called Tweets, which are text-based posts of up 140 characters displayed on the user's profile page. Tweets are publicly visible by default; however, senders can restrict message delivery to followers;

- Members of parliament are increasingly availing themselves of modern means of communication with citizens. A vast majority of parliamentarians today communicate by email. Social media - Facebook, Twitter, etc. - are on the rise, particularly among young members of parliament and when MPs communicate with youth. These forms of communication are rapidly complementing and replacing yesterday's telex, telephone calls and faxes;

- The new social media offer vast opportunities for members of parliament to communicate with the public and to exchange information that is essential to them in their daily work. The use of these media, however, also presents significant risks to parliamentarians that their privacy will be invaded and their parliamentary work impaired;

- For members of parliament, it is essential that any private communication they receive is accorded the same level of protection regardless of the technology, platform and business model used to create, communicate and store it. This does not appear to be the case today,

Considering finally, that Ms. Jónsdóttir is concerned that the United States authorities are seeking disclosure of information from other US-based service providers without her knowledge;

there are fears that those providers may meanwhile already have turned over to the Court information on her accounts; moreover, according to information provided in October 2011, Ms. Jónsdóttir may have become the subject in the United States of America of a preliminary criminal investigation before a grand jury in relation to three files which seem to concern information retrieved from her accounts with other social media and Internet search engines,

1. Affirms that freedom of expression goes to the heart of democracy and is essential to members of parliament; without the ability to express their opinions freely, members of parliament cannot represent the people who have elected them; if they cannot receive and exchange information freely without fear of interference they cannot legislate and hold the government to account;

2. Recalls that Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights upholds the right of everyone to freedom of opinion and expression; it stipulates that this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers;

3. Notes that, under standard human rights conventions and their jurisprudence, restrictions on the freedom of expression are subject to a threefold test: they should be prescribed by law, they must be necessary in a democratic society, and they must be proportionate to these necessary purposes;

4. Fails to see how the restrictions on freedom of expression that would result from compliance with the Twitter court order can be justified on such grounds, and holds that, on the contrary, such compliance would jeopardize a member of parliament's right to freedom of expression and hence his/her ability to seek, receive and impart information freely, which is absolutely necessary in a democratic society;

5. Is concerned that the national and international legal framework concerning the use of electronic media, including social media, does not appear to provide sufficient guarantees to ensure respect for freedom of expression, access to information and the right to privacy; the guarantees protecting freedom of expression and privacy in the “offline world” seem not to operate in the “online world”;

6. Notes also with concern that the parliamentary immunity Ms. Jónsdóttir would hav enjoyed under Icelandic law in exercising the political activity which is apparently at stake, is not operational in this case; given that the use of social networks by parliamentarians with their constituents and others is today commonplace in many countries, disclosure orders such as the one in question would undermine and even render void the ability of States to protect their members of parliament from unwarranted interference with their mandates;

7. Expresses deep concern, therefore, at the efforts made by a State to obtain information about the communications of a member of parliament of another State and the likely consequences of this for members of parliament the world over on their ability to discharge their popular mandate freely;

8. Is further concerned that Ms. Jónsdóttir may not only be subject to profiling but be subjected to a criminal investigation on the basis of information retrieved from social media and Internet search engines obtained without her having had the possibility of challenging its disclosure; notes in this regard that, unlike Twitter, other companies do not necessarily inform their users of judicial requests for information concerning them directly; considers that such a situation would be a grave breach of Ms. Jónsdóttir’s fundamental right to defend herself;

9. Requests the Secretary General to communicate its concerns in this case to the parliamentary authorities in Iceland and in the United States of America, and to seek their views along with official information regarding a criminal investigation possibly under way against Ms. Jónsdóttir;

10. Also requests the Secretary General to conduct a study on the impact of the use of social networks on the exercise of the parliamentary mandate;

11. Requests the Committee to continue examining this case and report to it at its next session, to be held during the 126th IPU Assembly (March/April 2012).

Report on the economic situation in Iceland three years after the collapse of the financial sector

2011-10-27T07:31:00.000Z

Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Margrét Tryggvadóttir and Thor Saari

Members of Parliament for The Movement.

A letter to the panel guests to the conference called Iceland’s Recovery – Lessons and Challenges to be held in Reykjavik on October 27th. as it is our wish to convey information and facts about the economic situation in Iceland that we are not sure you will be provided with prior to, or at the conference.

Introduction

To begin with the conference itself is at the core of a massive public relations effort by the government of Iceland and is part of a setup in order to convey to the world the achievements of the Icelandic government. As such the conference is unique in Iceland’s history, though the goal is not. Be reminded that in early 2008 the Icelandic government through a cooperative effort that included government ministers, the Confederation of Icelandic Employers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Financial Supervisory Authority, the Central Bank and the Icelandic Financial Services Association (representing the financial sector), embarked on what can only be called a vast program of misleading information, half-truths and deception about the health of Iceland’s financial sector.

This program was presented both domestically and to the international community, including high ranking government officials of neighbouring countries. This was done in 2008 even though as early as in February of that year it was revealed to the Cabinet and the political parties behind the government that the finances of the banking sector were not sustainable and that it would crash sometime soon and not later than in the second half of 2008. Some of the these same people, from these same organizations and political parties will sit beside you at this conference and provide you with their side of the story.

The Crash

The collapse of the banking sector dragged large parts of the economy down with it leading to a complete collapse in the construction industry, finance and investment. The currency depreciated by over 50% during 2008 leading to a surge in inflation as imports are a major part of the economy. An example is the Japanese Yen going from less than 0.5Yen/ISK to more than 1.3 Yen/ISK in a few months. The currency collapse and the following surge in inflation led to a mutation upwards in household mortgages as virtually all of them were either FX-linked or index-linked (to CPI) and most borrowers went from being in good financial health to being technically insolvent at the least. While some of this is surely to blame on the households themselves as overleveraging was common, these lending practices were encouraged by the banks and the government all the way through to October 2008, even though they knew this was unsustainable. The government knew exactly what would happen but continued to praise the banking system and the banks were taking large positions against the ISK via an array of derivative contracts while at the same time encouraging FX-loans to Icelandic homeowners.

The banks collapsed in October, the government took over the banking sector and established new banks on the remnants of the older ones. In the restructuring process it was decided to transfer assets (loan portfolios) from the now defunct banks to the new banks as part of the equity side of their balance sheet, while at the same time leaving most of the debt behind in the old banks.

Household debt

As the asset transfer took place the assets were re-valued and written down to something estimated to resemble a „fair value“ of about 40% of the book value, on average. Household mortgages were written down by approximately 40%, ending with a fair value of about 60% of the previous book value. However, following the transfer these write-downs were not passed on to households (as recommended by the IMF) but instead the new banks got a free hand in trying to collect the previous full book value of the loans.

Facing massive public protests and a large scale bankruptcy by the household sector the government has since tried to establish policies to resolve this household debt problem. The solutions have not worked. One of them (most common) is a write-down of mortgages to 110% of the estimated value of the home. Because of underlying inflation and the CPI-indexing of mortgages, these mortgages very quickly increased again to 120% and then to 130% of the estimated home value, requiring repeated attempts to reach the 110% level. The results are that some 26.000 individuals are registered in serious default. If each of these individuals represents a household, this means that approximately 35% of all households in Iceland are still in a serious default position with their debts, even after being able to tap in to their pension funds in order to stay solvent.

The solution to the FX-indexed loan problem has also been a disaster as via government legislation the FX-linked loans were converted to ISK loans starting at the initial borrowing date and then re-valued using the Central Bank policy rate for the period of the loan. However, the CB policy rate was at times over a three year period was close to 20% reaching 21% at the most. Needless to say people would never have borrowed money at these rates in the first place, but they are now forced to pay up and shut up.

This has lead to stagnation in private consumption, possibly the only area where economic growth can occur considering the current situation of no investment and decreasing global prices for Iceland’s exports. A “Japanese” decade (or more) is perhaps what lies ahead, at the best.

Monetary policy, the financial sector and the currency

It is also interesting to observe the dynamics around the making of this facade of economic recovery as the economy is basically being re-built on the same hollow ground and with the same rotten wood that led to the crash. The architect of the previous monetary policy that worked so disastrously is now the Governor of the Central Bank and is advocating a return to the old policy with a slight twist of some bells and whistles that look dubious at the best. His assistant, the Deputy Governor was the Central Bank’s chief economist in the years prior to and during the Crash, never uttering a word publicly about the disastrous policy or upcoming problems. Most of the same staff as before is still at the CB, which by the way became insolvent during the crash.

The financial sector is being reconstructed with more or less the same bank-secrecy laws in place, unknown ownership of two of the banks and without splitting up the banks in to separate commercial and investment banks. Most of the same staff as before the crash is still employed in the banks, including managers, division chiefs, regulatory supervisors, accountants and analysts.

The Icelandic currency is not freely tradable any more as strict currency controls are in place. While the plan is to lift the controls as soon as possible, the problem is that the plan includes lifting the controls while floating the currency in to the same environment that led to it’s collapse in the first place. While there has been some talk about the necessity of either abandoning the ISK altogether and adopting another monetary unit (Euro, US Dollar, Canada Dollar, Norwegian Krona) or a New Icelandic Krona based on a new footing (NIK), no proper research in that area has taken place.

The only possible conclusion to be drawn from this is that the economy will likely face another crash in the near future.

The General Government Debt Issue

As is fairly common the Icelandic government has an inclination to shroud it’s debt statistics in a veil that is not easily lifted all at once (see table on page 6). While the official numbers look perhaps not too bad by some international standards, with central government debt amounting to 1.345 billion ISK at year-end 2010 or approximately 87% of GDP, one must bear in mind that this debt bears high interest and is in part (at least 25%) indexed to the CPI. Currently the interest payments only on this debt are estimated to be about 17%-20% of government income in the 2012 budget. Central government debt continues to increase with new borrowing exceeding repayments by 11 billion ISK in 2012. Municipal debt amounts to 215 billion ISK, bringing the general government debt level up to 101% of GDP. Currently one municipality is insolvent and 10 to 15 other municipalities are in serious debt trouble, some technically insolvent already.

The state has however gone to great lengths to finance it’s activities by means that do not account directly as central government debt, that is by the use of state guarantees (contingent liabilities). These guarantees while differing somewhat in their nature (direct vs. indirect guarantees) have for example been used to finance all the loans provided by the Housing Financing Fund (all CPI indexed), by far the largest lender of mortgages in Iceland and to finance large hydro-electric power plants by the National Power Company. All together these guarantees amount to 1.508 billion ISK or approximately 98% of GDP.

In addition there are so-called extraordinary state guarantees on all domestic bank deposits and on assets taken over by two of the newly established private banks. These guarantees are granted by the Minister of Finance according to provisions in the Emergency Laws passed in 2008 and amount to 1.542 billion ISK or approximately 92% of GDP. Guarantees to municipality-owned companies by municipalities amount to 324 billion ISK and un-funded pension obligations by the state and by local governments to state and municipal employees pension funds amount to 383 billion ISK. Add to this the Central Bank debt of 280 billion ISK and the debt overhang of Iceland’s general government and its institutions is obviously enormous.

While of course it is not appropriate to add up all these different obligations one must keep in mind the risk involved as the Housing Finance Fund needed a large infusion of cash from the government last year, the Central Bank became insolvent in 2008 and other state guaranteed entities have also gone under.

Conclusion

Though we have perhaps presented you with a rather bleak picture of the current economic situation in Iceland please bear in mind that very little of the necessary restructuring has taken place and that neither political nor personal responsibility for the crash has been accepted by anyone. So far after almost three years of investigation, only three people have been charged by the Special Prosecutor, two of them found not guilty and one found guilty. It is our worry that Iceland is heading straight on into another economic crash and political turmoil that will be far worse than the last one. Raising a critical voice might make a difference and is the purpose of this letter.

Sincerely yours,

Birgitta Jónsdóttir,

Margrét Tryggvadóttir,

Þór Saari

Members of Parliament for

The Movement.

The island Iceland in Brave New World

2011-10-20T22:28:00.000Z

"The words galvanized Bernard into violent and unseemly activity. "Send me to an island?" He jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesticulating in front of the Controller. "You can't send me. I haven't done anything. lt was the others. I swear it was the others." He pointed accusingly to Helmholtz and the Savage. "Oh, please don't send me to Iceland. I promise I'll do what I ought to do. Give me another chance. Please give me another chance." The tears began to flow. "I tell you, it's their fault," he sobbed. "And not to Iceland. Oh please, your fordship, please …" And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller. Mustapha Mond tried to make him get up; but Bernard persisted in his groveling; the stream of words poured out inexhaustibly.

In the end the Controller had to ring for his fourth secretary."Bring three men," he ordered, "and take Mr. Marx into a bedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him."The fourth secretary went out and returned with three green-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing. Bernard was carried out.

"One would think he was going to have his throat cut," said the Controller, as the door closed. "Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward. He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson."Helmholtz laughed."

Aldous Huxley - Brave New World - chapter xvi page 224

Worlds are magic, writers are shamans - it is interesting how our world is becoming Brave New World. Time for a gathering soon in Iceland of all the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own.

Nato Parliamentary Assembly in Romania

2011-10-09T08:22:00.002Z

I am currently in the RomanianParliament in Bucharest participating in the NATO parliamentaryassembly. I am in the Civic Dimension ofSecurity Committee. A few months ago Lord JOPLINGpresented a report on Cyber Security. His report dealt with a widerange of topics: WikiLeaks and Anonymous were of great concern in hisreport, where he wove together real and serious attacks on nationssuch as Estonia with the threat of leaks: a very dangerous trend.Leaking information to the public domain is not an act of war, Iwould rather classify it a civic duty to expose war crimes.

Ihave not been able to find a legal way to provide changes in thisbiased report. I did criticizeit harshlyyesterday and basically said i could not support it with all itsfactualerrors and biased perspective and attempts to make cyber attacks intosomething that would justify the usage of article 5. Apparentlysuch criticism is not commonhere at the assembly on reports. The Lord thus offered me to send ininfo on factual errors. I did. I have with some great help fromactivists from all over the world gone through this report step bystep and provided both amendments and deeper perspectives. You candownload it HERE as pdf.

Inthe draft resolution on cyber security is no mention of the factualerrors in Lord Jopling report and no proper way for me to amendthose. Looking through the draft resolution on Cyber Securitythe following struck me with discomfort:

“9. URGESmember governments and parliaments of the North Atlantic Alliance:

to ensure swift implementation of the revised NATO Policy on Cyber Defence and the related cyber defence Action Plan, adopted in June 2011, introducing the cyber dimension in all three of NATO’s core tasks: collective defence, crisis management and co operative security;

Weare URGED to ensure swift implementation of: revised NATO Policy onCyber Defence and the related cyber defence Action Plan, adopted inJune 2011

Asthis is a secret document and we will not be given access to reviewthe policy. It is not wise for us the parliamentarians present hereto ensure swift implementationof something we have not seen and will not be granted access to. Itmakes a mockery of the Nato parliamentary assembly to request itsmembers to accept this process. If this is a common practice I urgeall parliamentarians to abstain from participating in such an actbecause we cant possibly ask for legalizing something we have not been able to scrutinizeand this process of accepting policies blindly is not very democraticand it does not provide the needed core information for us to havedebate and offer political guidance and authority.

ThusI have requested that we will delete sub-paragraph 9.a in the draftresolution on Cyber Security unless we be given prior access to NATOPolicy on Cyber Defence and the related cyber defence Action Plan,adopted in June 2011.

Noone has chosen to do a report on the findings in the Afghan War logs.I will ask if my committee would be willing to do that at thisassembly, there are not many like minded parliamentarians at theassembly and thus harder to get a Rapporteurstatus. I will keep on trying.

Hereis the entire draft resolution:

Civil dimensionof security

209 CDS 11 E

Original: English

NATOParliamentary Assembly

DRAFT RESOLUTION

CYBERSECURITY

presented by

LordJOPLING (United Kingdom)

GeneralRapporteur

The Assembly,

1. Recognizingthe benefits offered by the cyber domain to our societies aswell as to the defence and security sector, including opportunitiesfor greater situational awareness and co ordination among thearmed forces of the Allies as well as for the Alliance‘s publicdiplomacy;

2. But alsoconcerned with the emergence of a new category ofthreats that target national information infrastructures, and thatcould seriously undermine the security interests of the Alliance andits member states;

3. Anxiousthat cyber defence capabilities and awareness of cyber threats varysignificantly across NATO member states thereby weakening theAlliance’s overall cyber security;

4. Welcomingthe decisions made by the leaders of the Alliance at the NATO LisbonSummit and the meeting of NATO Defence Ministers in June 2011,identifying cyber security as one of the key priorities of theAlliance;

5. SalutingNATO’s approach aimed at expanding its cyber defence policy toinclude centralized cyber protection of all NATObodies and the use of NATO’s defence planning processes in thedevelopment of the Allies’ cyber defence capabilities. ;

6. Believing that,in view of the growing scope and severity of cyber attacks, inaddition to exploiting fully the opportunities offered by Article 4,the potential application of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty incase of a serious cyber attack against the Alliance or its individualmembers, should not be ruled out;

7. Notingthat legislative “black holes” still exist both at a nationallevel and in terms of international law when it comes to settingsecurity standards for the cyber domain;

8. Emphasizingthat stricter security regulations for the cyber domain should notcome at the cost of reduced civil liberties and rights, such asfreedom of speech and the right to communicate over the Internet, andnoting the key role of the Internet in mobilizingdemocratic movements in authoritarian countries;

URGES member governments and parliaments of the North Atlantic Alliance:

a. to ensure swift implementation of the revised NATO Policy on Cyber Defence and the related cyber defence Action Plan, adopted in June 2011, introducing the cyber dimension in all three of NATO’s core tasks: collective defence, crisis management and co operative security;

to promote domestic awareness of cyber threats, taking into account lessons learned from milestone events including the cyber attacks against Estonia in 2007 and against Georgia in 2008 as well as the emergence of Stuxnet malicious software;

to scrutinize domestic legal frameworks, ensuring that coherent and effective laws are in place to address the evolving cyber threats;

to provide necessary support for the efficient functioning of national Computer Incident Response Teams, and to invest sufficiently in the training of national cyber security experts;

to promote closer partnerships between governments and the private sector in order to ensure the security of government networks and improve the exchange of expertise in case of a breach of security;

to ensure that the introduction of additional security measures in the cyber domain are accompanied by adequate mechanisms of parliamentary and public oversight over their respective government institutions;

to support international efforts to develop universal norms of acceptable behaviour in the cyber domain that would ban the use of cyber attacks against civilian targets, promote exchange of best practices and establish mechanisms of international assistance to stricken nations, while ensuring full universal access to the Internet as a venue for the exchange of ideas and information;

to ensure that adequate attention is paid to the physical protection of networks, including undersea fiber-optic infrastructures;

URGES relevant NATO bodies:

to ensure that NATO Computer Incident Response Capability is fully operational by the end of 2012, and that NATO’s cyber defence services are centralized;

to facilitate, if requested, national efforts of NATO member states to acquire adequate cyber defence expertise and state-of-the-art technologies;

to test the efficacy of NATO and member states’ cyber defence efforts through NATO’s periodic international exercises, and to ensure that these exercises are fully funded, staffed and well-attended;

to use capabilities such as NATO Cyber Defence Management Board and NATO Co operative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, to analyze rapid developments further in the cyber domain and to develop strategies for strengthening cyber defences across the Alliance, while exploiting the advantages of the information age through initiatives such as NATO Network Enabled Capability;
to develop efficient co-operation mechanisms with the relevant EU institutions, with the particular aim of supporting the EU’s legislative efforts to establish robust cyber security standards across the private sector;

to increase assistance, if requested, to NATO partner countries in the field of cyber security, particularly by sharing best practices and raising awareness of cyber threats.

_______________

Five young Tibetans have lit themselves on fire in the last ten days

2011-10-08T04:42:00.001Z

Letter from Tendor, Executive Director for Students for Tibet: please share it...

"This morning, I opened my laptop to the devastating news that two more Tibetans -- aged 18 and 19 -- self-immolated today.

In the last 10 days, five young Tibetans have lit themselves on fire in Ngaba in eastern Tibet. Since March, seven Tibetans have committed acts of self-immolation. We believe at least two have died but cannot confirm this as Chinese authorities refuse to disclose any information on their conditions.

While these young men have decided to sacrifice their lives, it's not an escape from life's suffering they are seeking. It's freedom. Not only for themselves, but for their nation.

China's tyranny is driving Tibetans to take extreme actions previously unheard of in our culture. In their desperation, Tibetans are crying out to the world for help.

China's systematic repression and tyrannical rule in Tibet -- stationing officials in the monasteries, disappearing monks by the hundreds, shutting down phone lines, cutting off the internet, installing surveillance cameras and military checkpoints everywhere -- have created a spiraling nation-wide crisis.

Enough is enough. The world must intervene now to save Tibetan lives.

In the coming days, as part of a broad coalition of Tibetan NGOs and Tibet Support Groups, Students for a Free Tibet will launch a new campaign that says ENOUGH! and calls for global diplomatic intervention to save Tibetan lives.

We need your help. We are calling for world leaders to issue a coordinated international response to condemn China's repressive measures in Ngaba and across Tibet and to institute multi-lateral mechanisms to advocate for the Tibetan people.

Most immediately, we must pressure China to withdraw its security forces from Ngaba and stop the ongoing harassment and torture of Tibetan monks at Kirti monastery.

On November 3-4, Chinese President Hu Jintao will sit with world leaders in Cannes, France at the G20 summit. We're encouraging as many Tibetans and supporters as possible to be there to protest the Chinese government.

On Wednesday, November 2nd, we're also calling for a mass mobilization in Cannes, France and cities around the world to intensify the pressure on China.

Tibetans have endured unimaginable suffering under Chinese occupation for the last 50 years. But until now there has not been a single known case of self-immolation. Today conditions in Ngaba and at Kirti Monastery have driven Tibetans to a breaking point.

Please, help us show Tibetans in Ngaba and across Tibet that their deep pain and suffering has not gone unnoticed by the world. Together, we can build a global force that Chinese leaders cannot ignore.

With urgency,

Tendor
Executive Director"

Legalizing Freedom of Information

2011-09-25T22:58:00.002Z

My speech from Kapittel Stavanger International Festival for Literature and Freedom of Speech

Norway 22nd of September 2011

First of all I want to express mygratitude to the USA Department of Justice fortheir attempts to have my personal backend information handed overto them from my Twitter account because of my volunteer work forWikiLeaks. It has raised my awareness about the lack of civic rightssocial media users have and thus given me reasons to fight for theserights.

Before my Twitter case Ididn't think much about what rights I would be signing off when accepting user agreement with online companies. The text is usuallylengthy in a legal language most people don't understand. I think itis save to say that very few people read the user agreements, andvery few understand its legal implications if someone in the realworld would try to use it against them. It is simply virtual untilcase is made in the real world.

Many of us who use theInternet, be it to write emails, work, browse its growing landscape,mining for information, connecting with others or use it to organizeourselves in various groups of likeminded, are not aware of that ourbehavior online is being monitored. Profiling has become a defaultwith companies such as Google and Facebook. These companies havehuge databases recording our every move within their landscape inorder to groom advertisement to our interests. For them we are onlyconsumers to push goods at, in order for them to sell ads in a cleverbusiness model. For them we are not regarded as citizens with civicrights in their world. This notion needs to change. To be fair, Iguess no one really knew where we were heading when these companieswere start ups. Neither us the users, nor the companies hogging andgathering our personal information for profit. Very few of us had theimagination that governments that claim to be democratic would invadeour online privacy with no regard to rights we are supposed to havein the real world. We might look to China and other stereo typetotalitarian states and expect them to violate the free flow ofinformation and our digital privacy, but not our very owndemocratically elected governments.

What I have learned aboutmy lack of rights in the last few months is of concern for everyonethat uses the Internet and calls for actions to raise peoplesawareness about their legal rights and ways to improve legalguidelines and framework online be it locally or globally.

I guess the problem andthe dilemma we are facing is that there are no proper standards, nobasic laws in place that deal with the fundamental question: are weto be treated as consumers or citizens online? There is nointernational charter that says we should have the same civic rightsas in the offline world.

Our legal systems are slowcompared to the speed of online development. With the social mediaexplosion many people have put into databases very sensitiveinformation about themselves and others without knowing that theyhave no rights to defend themselves against attempts by governmentsto obtain their personal data – be in locally or like in my caseglobally. According to the ruling of the judge in my Twitter case, wehave fortified those rights when we agree to the terms and conditionsby the company hosting our data even if it is not kept on servers inthe USA, the company would only need to have a branch in the USA forauthorities to be able to demand the information to be given to them.We have to rely on, for example, Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitterto look out for our interests. It might not always be in theirinterest to look out for us.

I want to stress thatTwitter did fight for the interests of their users in my case bygoing to court to unseal a document demanding them to hand overpersonal backend information about me and four other users connectedto WikiLeaks. The document Twitter managed to unseal stated that theywere to hand over our personal information without our knowledgewithin three days. If Twitter had not managed to unseal the documentwe would not know how far the DoJ is reaching to get their hands onour data and how difficult it is to guard our privacy in theborderless legal jungle. I am for example not a USA citizen andbecause of that I am not protected by the 1st and 4th amendment inthe USA constitution. Users from the USA are protected in the samecase by these fundamental rights.

The reason we humans makeinternational treaties and declarations about human rights is becausesomewhere along the line we agreed that certain rights are sacred anduniversal. We need to make the same principles applicable to ourhuman rights online as they are offline. These two worlds have fusedtogether and there no way to define them separated anymore.

If is too easy toobtain the information stored online and thus it is too easy toabuse. If someone wants to go through all my regular mail they wouldhave to obtain a search warrant in advance. No such thing happened inmy case. I am according to the DoJ not under a criminal investigationyet they demanded Twitter to hand over my personal messages and IPnumbers without my knowledge. If authorities want to tap your phonethey need warrants, but not in order to get your IP number. Ifauthorities want to search anything of personal nature or spy onsomeone in the real world they would have to get warrants. It hasnever been as easy for big brother to pry into all our most sacredinformation without us ever knowing.

I find it important toshed light on the fact that USA authorities have reached so far intheir attempts to criminalize WikiLeaks that they are demandingbackend information from a Member of Parliament from sovereignnation. This is a whole can of worms that I am not sure that the USAwants to open. What about the USA senators that want to applythemselves in the international field of human rights issues. Abuseof human rights in for example China, Tibet or North Korea. Can USAauthorities protect their own Senators from demands of probing intothe personal data from China? I don't think so.

Members of parliaments allover the world are encouraged to use social media to be in touch withtheir voters. Many people don't understand that sending a message onFacebook or via Twitter or gmail is not an official pathway. Thevoters might send sensitive information about themselves to theirMP's online. With court ruling in favor of exposing this informationto a foreign government – the line of privacy and sovereignty ofindividuals in cyberspace has taken a new dangerous direction.

Merging the Online withthe Offline world

The reason why I felt so at home onlinewhen I discovered it 16 years ago was the fact that I am born on asmall island at the edge of the world with only 315,000 peoplesharing it with me. My island has natural borders, with roaringAtlantic Ocean making a shield against the rest of the world. That shield can cause an intense sense of cultural and personalclaustrophobia. Being a poet with such a small language zone writingpolitical poetry when that was not so cool in Iceland, I felt priorto the times of internet isolated and alone at times. The internetallowed me to break out of that limitation. I was the first poet inIceland to create a website and to publish my work and the poetry andart of others through various adventures online. Later I learned Iwas among the first in the world.

One of the prime influences in shapinga profound understanding that I don’t belong to one nation, that Ibelong to all of this planet was my participation in co-creating thelandscape of the new online world. In 1995, I started workingwith the shapers and pioneers in the internet landscape in Icelandand beyond. One of my passions was to merge creative spaces.Music, poetry, and art all bleed well together in the multi-creativespace of the internet. But that was not enough. Afterall, this was a new world, without borders and without limitations,other than the limitations of our imagination. Likemindedpeople found each other, no matter where they happened to be locatedin the real world. We could work together — trans-border,trans-culture, transgender, trans-party, trans-race. It was aworld of transparency, almost beyond duality. Borders, just anoptical illusion. It was as close to paradise as I could get inthis human vessel. It was almost spiritual; it was as if thecollective consciousness had taken on tangible shape in a virtualworld that was influencing the real world at an increased speed everyday. My dream was that this world we created with the free flowof ideas, information, and understanding could manifest itselfoutside the virtual.

The internet has given us the tools toempower ourselves in the real world, with knowledge beyond thecultural conditioning we acquire within our own culture. Theinternet has given us the tools to work together beyond traditionalborders, and it has allowed us to create real windows into the realworld that reach far beyond our cultural beliefs about othercountries. However, this world beyond borders is now underserious threat, a threat that is growing at an alarming rate. Ihave seen the development of the internet since its early visualstage. I have seen how it can improve and enrich the quality oflife. I have also seen how those who hold the reigns of powerin our world have discovered that the internet needs to be tamed,like the rest of the world, and brought under their control — to beindustrialized in the same manner that other media have been broughtunder control by industry and the state. My last hope ofgathering momentum in stopping this development is through the freespirit within the wilderness of the internet — where theconditioning and the reigns of control have not been able to tame thefree spirits who roam with the hackers’ manifesto singing in theirhearts.

I have seen new stories and new mythsemerge out of the language of the internet, where people speaktogether through Google and translate new languages; and I have seenthe library of Alexandria materialize with free knowledge andtorrents of information wash upon shores otherwise impossible toreach. I have seen the alchemy of stories take on real shape ina collective online effort; and the truth seeped into the realworld. As the untouchables try to hide their secrets for thechosen few, those secrets keep spilling out in a whirlwind of lettersin every digital corner of the world. They sweep through thestreets of Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt, Tunisia, Greece, China, Iceland,Spain, Iran, and the United States — confirming that the rumors aretrue: “corpocracy” is the new global empire, and it thrives inlocal corruption.

The internet has given people access toinformation that should remain in the public domain; yet it is atrending policy within the belly of the all embracing system to makeeverything secret by default. It is time to reverse this tendency acreate a consensus about the process of keeping secrets. Transparency and open access to information are the only realpressures on governments to remain true democracies. If youdon’t have freedom of information and expression, you are notliving in a democracy; rather it is ruled by dictatorship with manyheads.

Many people don’t realize that if wewon’t have freedom of information online, we won’t have itoffline.

Media Morphing intoCyberspace

The media is in transition– morphing from the traditional format into the online mediaformat. Most people want to be able to access news online and usageof traditional media is shrinking day by day. The mainstream mediahas not figured out how to make profit or how to survive onlinewithout cutting off many of the services we have learned to depend onand regarded as their main responsibility, such as investigativejournalism and in depth analyzing of complex matters in simple easyto grasp terms for the general public.

In this fragile morphingstage the media is faced with increased challenges from internationallegal firms that specialize in gagging the media. More out of courtsettlements are occurring every day. Super injunctions, priorrestraints, and attempts to alter our historical records online is onthe rise. Criminalization of whistle blowing and filtering of onlinecontent is also of great concern.

People feel that mainstream media hasfailed them and thus they turn to alternative media online and theculture of cracking secrets is on the rise. I want to stress that iam shocked by the lack of courage by the USA media in relation toWikiLeaks. Shocked because WikiLeaks simplyacted as the middle man. The save box in cyberspace that receivedthe brown envelope from the source and handed it over to the media.Shocked by the ignorance from the media, for it's obvious to me thatif WikiLeaks will be taken down or the people behind it, it will beharder for other media to stay on a firm ground when under attack forpublishing leaked material from whistle-blowers and secret sources.

I feel there has been too much focus onthe people behind WikiLeaks, not the content they have provided. Thishas taken the focus off the historical significance of the leaks andcreated something of a frenzy around sensationalism around cults ofpersonalities. If we allow ourselves to step away from the personsand look into the achievements of WikiLeaks it is obvious thatbecause of them we have the state of freedom of information on theagenda, all over the world, and of course the issue ofwhistle-blowing as a option when witnessing criminal behavior in thepublic, military and private sectors.

I left WikiLeaks about a year ago forvarious reasons. I might not agree with how it has developed but itssignificance remains the same. We need many more leak sites until wehave real laws in place that protect content, whistle-blowers,sources and journalists.

The culture of free flow of informationis still strong online, and every attempt to block, hinder, or eraseinformation is met with increased creativity. Yet those of uswho care for freedom of information have to step-up our quest toremove the gags, tear down the firewalls, and dissolve the invisiblefilters.

The telecom companies have gained incredible power and tendto cave-in under government pressure, as we saw happen in Egypt inearly 2011. We also saw Amazon cave-in under political pressure andkick WikiLeaks off its cloud. Corporation and specialized law-firmshave figured out the best countries to use as a medium to attack andgag journalists, writers, publishers, and the rest of the mediabecause of weak laws to protect the media. They have become so goodat it that important stories have vanished from the public domain. Modern book-burnings occur every day in every library in theworld by a click of a button. Libel tourism, prior restraints, gagorders, out-of-court settlements, and tampering with our onlinehistorical records are altering our current history in real time androbbing us of the possibility to be informed about the activities ofthe most influential corporations and politicians in our world. Wehave to do everything in our power to stop this development —through lawmaking and creative resistance.

The “IcelandicModern Media Initiative” (IMMI) is an attempt to raise the standardand upgrade the current legal framework in order to strengthenfreedom of information, speech, and expression in our modern world.The creation of a save haven for freedom of information has to startsomewhere – Iceland is a good place because we learned the hardway, the destructive nature of lack of transparency and where cultureof secrecy can lead us. People yearn forchange and thus this crises can be used for something that will bebeneficial for us and hopefully for therest of the world. You can learn more about the project that iscurrently being written into law in Iceland at http://immi.is

I gave a speech at Nordic Tech Politicsin Oslo earlier this month, I met many inspirational people fromNorway and from speaking to them the idea of creating a Scandinavianshield inspired by IMMI was not only born, but a determination tomaking that vision into reality. We have been blessed in this part ofthe world for having strong foundation for freedom of information.Sweden has set the standard for the rest of us in many ways.

It is interesting to note thatsocieties of transparency have more equality.

I have learned to embrace times ofcrises and make good use of it because times of crises are the onlytimes we can push for real change in our societies.

The crisis in Iceland has helped ustransform from secrecy to transparency and encouraged people to takeon more responsibility when it comes to co-creating our society.Never before has it been easier for people in power to hand over thepower of information to the rest of us and for us to reclaim ourpower.

This process of transformation takeswork and dedication. By giving over our powers to religious orpolitical leaders we can never expect to live in our dream world –only by applying our time and vision can we hope to co-create ourdream into reality.

Constitutional dreaming together

One of the most positive results fromour Iceland crisis is the re-writing of our constitution. The mainreason i helped create a political movement in the wake of themeltdown was to create the tools for the general public to be able toinfluence law making, and also to inspire people to be part ofdecision making. Chief aim was to have our old copy paste Danishconstitution re-written by the people of Iceland. That process hastaken place and the parliament of Iceland has been handed over a billby the people we elected to write it with us.

The constitutional committee encouragedthe general public in various ways to be part of the process, such asencouraging people to comment on each new segment via the facebookcomment system. More on that here: Icelands crowdsourced constitution

The new constitution includes somepretty awesome freedom of information laws plus net neutrality. Thebig task is to get the bill into national referendum before myco-workers at the parliament attempt to thin it out.

The parliament needs a strong mandatefrom the nation on what it wants to keep of the new bill and whatnot. I hope by 2013 we will have a constitution that is what thenation dreamed together into reality. An agreement on what sort ofsociety we want to live in together. I think perhaps all nationsshould allow each generation to have a go at the constitution – forit is a brilliant platform for a healthy debate on what we envisionas societies together. It is important to note that it has beenforeseen that the 21st century will be the century of the commonpeople.

Finally I want to leave you with thewisdom of Alan Moore who claims that writes are the modern dayshamans, I agree with him. One word, one sentence can mean live ordeath, joy or grief. Lets treat the world of words with thatknowledge of power.

Many thanks to the EFF and ACLU for offering me strong legal support in my Kafka nightmare through the USA legal system.

Council of Europe Condemns U.S. Treatment of PFC Bradley Manning

2011-09-07T20:15:00.000Z

Draft Resolution Blasts “Abuse of State Secrecy”

STRASBOURG, France – The Council of Europe issued a draft resolution today condemning a “cult of secrecy” which the human rights organization says has allowed Western security and intelligence services to routinize the concealment of violent crimes and other rights abuses. The Council’s Rapporteur, Dick Marty, stressed the “fundamental role” of whistleblowers like PFC Bradley Manning in holding governments accountable for their illegal and unjust behavior.

"Bradley Manning acted as a whistleblower and should be treated as such," the report concluded. "We therefore join Amnesty International in expressing our worries as to the treatment he receives.”

The Bradley Manning Support Network, which collects funds to cover PFC Manning’s legal defense costs and conducts public education and outreach on his behalf, welcomed today’s announcement.

Read the draft resolution here (PDF):

http://www.assembly.coe.int/CommitteeDocs/2011/State%20secrecy_MartyE.pdf

“We welcome the support of the Council of Europe in condemning the abuse of whistleblowers who seek nothing more than to right the wrongs that Western governments refuse to acknowledge,” said Jeff Paterson, co-founder of the Bradley Manning Support Network. “The Council’s report documents numerous incidents where revelations attributed to Bradley Manning have made a critical difference for those seeking justice.”

The draft report released today by the Council of Europe offered a number of recommendations for creating effective oversight mechanisms by representative bodies to hold security and intelligence services accountable to the public. It noted however that, given the current “deficit of transparency,” the public has no choice but to rely on whistleblowers to hold government agencies accountable for abusive behavior.

PFC Bradley Manning is a US Army intelligence analyst who is accused of revealing illegal and unjust foreign policies that have been concealed by the US government. He has been held in confinement without trial for over 15 months. His legal team expects pretrial hearings to begin as early as next month.

Bradley Manning Support Network

http://bradleymanning.org

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

September 7, 2011

Contact: Zack Pesavento,

919.418.1285, zack@beyondthechoir.org

Icelandic MP visits Gaza-bound US flotilla at Military Compound in Athens

2011-07-03T17:56:00.000Z

Press Release

Icelandic MP visits Gaza-bound US flotilla at Military Compound in Athens

Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament and the Foreign Affairs Committee, visited the US boat "Audacity of Hope" bound for Gaza early Saturday, July 2. The boat was stopped at gunpoint by the Greek coast guard Friday, July 1, and forced to move to a Military Compound in Athens. Below is her statement.

It was truly inspirational for me to speak to the people at the Boat who had just been faced with death if they would not turn back to port as ordered by the Greek Military. I managed to speak to many of the people on board who were shaken by the events the night before. Despite the setback, all of them felt determined to carry on with the mission of aid and solidarity with the people suffering in Gaza.

This project is the embodiment of hope and it is a powerful attempt to expose the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. At the boat I met people of all ages, backgrounds and colors. All of them had in common a beautiful and strong urge to take selfless action for the greater good of humanity.

To be the first Member of Parliament to visit “The Audacity of Hope” ship and to feel the gratitude from the crew and passengers made me deeply thankful. I urge fellow MP´s from Europe, especially from Greece, to pay a visit like I did. I also call upon the foreign affairs minister in Greece to show some courage, to stand up against foreign powers—in this case Israel--like his ancestors did. There is no threat within the Flotilla, only peaceful people who wish to deliver aid and friendship to Gaza.

Last year when the Israel military killed and wounded people on the first Flotilla, I was outraged. I warned that if the international community accepted attacks of this kind in international waters, then who would know where the Israelis would go next? It is hard to imagine that the Israel government has managed to let the Greek government do their dirty work for them in Greek waters. If this is allowed to continue, I shudder to think what they will do next.

None of the people I met at the boat on Saturday could be classified as a threat, except that they threaten to expose the illusion that war is peace.

I pledge full support to the Freedom Flotilla 2011 and call upon other elected officials to do the same. I feel it is of utmost importance that we never forget the attacks on Gaza a few years back, and that we keep in mind who suffers the most because of the siege: the children of Gaza.

Lets send Manning Letters of Support

2011-04-29T12:27:00.000Z

Rough translation from an interview today in Icelandic webzine run by the left green party in Iceland. I will follow the request up Monday - hope to get positive feedback.

Birgitta Jonsdottir encourages heads of state in Iceland to write a support letter to Manning

I hope that individual ministers, such as for example the Jóhanna, PM, Steingrímur, finance minister or Ögmundur, interior minister feel moved to send Bradley Manning a person letter of support, says Birgitta Jonsdottir MP for the Movement. Manning is the soldier that is in prison because of suspicion of having leaked a massive quantity of classified documents to WikiLeaks. He has been in solitary confinement for nearly a year. There has been a slight improvement in his conditions recently. He has been moved to another prison and is now allowed to receive mail and be among other inmates for up to three hours a day.

I would be deeply moved if many people would feel inspired to write this young man a letter of support, says Birgitta and makes a point that such support might be an important moral support for Manning. It is important for everyone to understand that the treatment of him it absolutely unacceptable. He has been barred from staying in physical form, has been kept in a tiny cell in isolation for nearly a year and been kept on suicide watch for a long time, that means the guards have to wake him up every few minutes to see if he is ok. David House is the only person apart from Manning's lawyer that has been allowed to pay visit to Manning. House has stated that he can see a steady decline with every visit in Manning's physical and mental health. Birgitta underlines that Manning is gradually having a physical and mental breakdown.

Birgitta also points out that newly leaked documents out of Guantánamo Bay prove how highly developed the torture techniques of the military have become and worries that the interrogation of Manning is conducted by similar methods as in Guantánamo Bay. Even if Manning has been moved into improved conditions that might be a more dangerous scenario for him because many of his fellow inmates might consider him the perfect traitor and lets not forget how gays have been treated in the military. His situations as an individual is difficult and that is why it is so critical that many people from all walks of life show him visible support and one of the best ways of showing it, is to send him support letters.

Those interested in supporting Manning can send letters to the following address:

Bradley Manning 89289 830 Sabalu Road Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027 U.S.A

Why I said NO to Icesave

2011-04-10T10:28:00.001Z

It is important to note the following relatively simple facts in relation to Iceland and Icesave

1. I was part of the leadership from all parties that put together guidelines for what had to be in the new contract between the three nations. One of our demands (the Movement) in order for us to be able to say yes was that the three nations would share the risk if the assets of old Landsbanki would not cover 90% - 100% of the so called debt created by the bank owners. Neither Holland nor the UK were willing to share the risk with us.

2. If issues related to the contract would arise and be taken to court the new contract states that it would be taken to court in Holland. It should have been in a court outside all three countries.

3. I have not met a single NO voter that wants the Icesave burden to be shouldered by taxpayers in any of the three countries. We want the people who stole the money to be held accountable. They still invest and have large companies in their names. We wanted the three countries to collaborate in order to reclaim the money from the white collar criminals.

4. It is high time to set an example for other taxpayers in other countries in order for them to follow suit: to say NO to the socialization of private debt. It is unacceptable that the untouchables rake in the profits without sharing with the rest of us and then expect us to pay for their reckless behavior.

5. The Icelandic people want this case to go to court, if the ESA court rules that the general public should be held accountable for banks that collapse, then we will pay. But to accept this debt without clear understanding on this big issue would be insane.

6. Taxpayers in the UK and Holland will not have to pay this, if all our governments will really put all their efforts to get the money from the people that took the money that was put in the Icesave accounts. The money in the Icesave accounts was real, depositors put it in the Icesave accounts but where is it? I know for a fact that Björgólfur Thor the main owner of Landsbanki the host of Icesave still has large shares in companies in Iceland that are doing really well, those companies with the shares are registered at offshore islands. Time for him to show us the money and pay it back. Let us not forget that spokespeople for the YES in all three countries claim that the assets will cover this.

7. If we would have said yes yesterday, it would have meant that we would have had to pay 29 billion Icelandic Kronas around the middle of this month only in interest. That is unrecoverable money in foreign currency we simply cant afford while it is not clear by legal standards of the EEA if taxpayers should bail out banks.

Michael Hudson on ICESAVE

2011-04-08T07:42:00.001Z

Tomorrow the Icelandic nation will vote again on if private debt created by the Icelandic banksters should be theirs. Massive propaganda machine has been set in motion to scare the nation into saying yes lead by the Icelandic government and the unions. We need every help we can get to keep the debate balanced and fair. A big thank you to Michael Hudson and Eva Joly for allowing us to see the things in the large context. And a big thank you to the activists in Iceland who have tried to bring balance to the debate and have spent nights and days fighting against Goliath. Here is a thought provoking article by Michael Hudson I just got in my mailbox. Please share if you feel it matters.

Will Iceland Vote “No” on April 9, or commit financial suicide?

Michael Hudson

A year ago, in March 2010, Iceland’s economy was so small that it did not warrant much attention when 93% of its voters rejected the Social Democratic-Green government’s surrender to Gordon Brown and the Dutch, the European Union (EU) bureaucracy and IMF demands that it impose austerity as penance for believing the neoliberal fairy tales about how bank deregulation and “free markets” would make it the richest, happiest country in the world. Indeed it seemed to be, according to United Nations data. But the dream was dashed after the Icesave electronic Internet bank branches abroad were emptied out by their proprietors.

Britain and the Netherlands paid out more than $5 billion to some 340,000 of their own depositors whom their own bank oversight agencies had failed to warn the about looting going on. Iceland’s taxpayers were told to bear the cost, as virtual tribute.

The dream was the neoliberal promise that running to debt was the way to get rich. Nobody at the time anticipated that taking private (and indeed, fraudulent) bank losses onto the public balance sheet would become the theme dividing Europe over the coming year, dividing European politics and even threaten to break up the Eurozone.

A landmark in this fight is to occur this Saturday, April 9. Icelanders will vote on whether to subject their economy to decades of poverty, bankruptcy and emigration of their work force. At least, that is the program supported by the existing Social Democratic-Green coalition government in urging a “Yes” vote on the Icesave bailout. Their financial surrender policy endorses the European Central Bank’s lobbying for the neoliberal deregulation that led to the real estate bubble and debt leveraging as if it were a success story rather than the road to national debt peonage. The reality was an enormous banking fraud and insider dealing as bank managers lent the money to themselves, leaving an empty shell – and then saying that this was all how “free markets” operate. Running into debt was promised to be the way to get rich. But the price to Iceland was for housing prices to plunge 70% (in a country where mortgage debtors are personally liable for their negative equity), a falling GDP, rising unemployment, defaults and foreclosures.

To put Saturday’s vote in perspective, it is helpful to see what has occurred in the past year along remarkably similar lines throughout Europe. For starters, the year has seen a new acronym: PIIGS, for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain.

The eruption started in Greece. One legacy of the colonels’ regime was tax evasion by the rich. This led to budget deficits, and Wall Street banks helped the government conceal its public debt in “free enterprise” junk accounting. German and French creditors then made a fortune jacking up the interest rate that Greece had to pay for its increasing credit risk.

Greece was told to make up the tax shortfall by taxing labor and charging more for public services. This increases the cost of living and doing business, making the economy less competitive. That is the textbook neoliberal response: to turn the economy into a giant set of tollbooths. The idea is to slash government employment, lowering public-sector salaries to lead private-sector wages downward, while sharply cutting back social services and raising the cost of living with tollbooth charges on highways and other basic infrastructure.

The Baltic Tigers had led the way, and should have stood as a warning to the rest of Europe. Latvia set a record in 2008-09 by obeying EU Economics and Currency Commissioner Joaquin Almunia’s dictate and slashing its GDP by over 25% and public-sector wages by 30%. Latvia will not recover even its 2007 pre-crisis GDP peak until 2016 – an entire lost decade spent in financial penance for believing neoliberal promises that its real estate bubble was a success story.

In autumn 2009, Socialist premier George Papandreou promised an EU summit that Greece would not default on its €298bn debt, but warned: “We did not come to power to tear down the social state. Salaried workers will not pay for this situation: we will not proceed with wage freezes or cuts.”^¹ But that seems to be what socialist and social democratic parties are for these days: to tighten the screws to a degree that conservative parties cannot get away with. Wage deflation is to go hand in hand with debt deflation and tax increases to shrink the economy.

The EU and IMF program inspired the modern version of Latin America’s “IMF riots” familiar from the 1970s and ‘80s. Mr. Almunia, the butcher of Latvia’s economy, demanded reforms in the form of cutbacks in health care, pensions and public employment, coupled with a proliferation of taxes, fees and tolls from roads to other basic infrastructure.

The word “reform” has been turned into a euphemism for downsizing the public sector and privatization sell-offs to creditors at giveaway prices. In Greece this policy inspired an “I won’t pay” civil disobedience revolt that grew quickly into “a nationwide anti-austerity movement. The movement’s supporters refuse to pay highway tolls. In Athens they ride buses and the metro without tickets to protest against an ’unfair’ 40 per cent increase in fares.”^² The police evidently are sympathetic enough to refrain from fining most protesters.

All this is changing traditional political alignments not only in Greece but throughout Europe. The guiding mentality of Tony Blair-style “New Labour” policy is economic loyalty to Europe’s financial centers as government spending is slashed, public infrastructure privatized and banks bailed out with “taxpayer” burdens that fall mainly on labor. “Both the conservative and communist leaders have refused to support the EU-IMF programme. ‘This programme is strangling the Greek economy … it needs renegotiation and radical change,’ said Antonis Samaras, the conservative leader.” (Ibid.)

A Le Monde article accused the EU-IMF plan of riding “roughshod over the most elementary rules of democracy. If this plan is implemented, it will result in a collapse of the economy and of peoples’ incomes without precedent in Europe since the 1930s. Equally glaring is the collusion of markets, central banks and governments to make the people pay the bill for the arbitrary caprice of the system.”^³

Ireland is the hardest hit Eurozone economy. Its long-term ruling Fianna Fail party agreed to take bank losses onto the public balance sheet, imposing what looks like decades of austerity – and the largest forced emigration since the Potato Famine of the mid-19^th century. Voters responded by throwing the party out of office (it lost two-thirds of its seats in Parliament) when the opposition Fine Gael party promised to renegotiate last November’s $115-billion EU-IMF bailout loan and its accompanying austerity program.

A Financial Times editorial referred to the “rescue” package (a euphemism for financial destruction) as turning the nation into “Europe’s indentured slave.”^⁴ EU bureaucrats “want Irish taxpayers to throw more money into holes dug by private banks. As part of the rescue, Dublin must run down a pension fund built up when Berlin and Paris were violating the Maastricht rules … so long as senior bondholders are seen as sacrosanct, fire sales of assets carry a risk of even greater losses to be billed to taxpayers.” EU promises to renegotiate the deal promise only token concessions that fail to rescue Ireland from making labor and industry pay for the nation’s reckless bank loans. Ireland’s choice is thus between rejection of or submission to EU demands to “make bankers whole” at the expense of labor and industry. It is reminiscent of when the economist William Nassau Senior (who took over Thomas Malthus’s position at the East India College) was told that a million people had died in Ireland’s potato famine. He remarked succinctly: “It is not enough.” So neoliberal junk economics has a long pedigree.

The result has radically reshaped the idea of national sovereignty and even the basic assumption underlying all political theory: the premise that governments act in the national interest. As Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism website has pointed out:

The eurozone is up against Dani Rodrik’s trilemma: Democratic politics and the Nation State vs globalism based on the Bretton Woods system. You cannot have all three corners of the triangle at once. The creators of the European Union knew that the end game was the dissolution of nation states. …
But what they failed to anticipate is that the costs of these crises would be visited on the inhabitants of particular nation states, and that would lead them to rebel against the “inevitable” integration. As long as democratic mechanisms are intact in enough of the countries being pressed to wear the austerity hairshirt, revolt is indeed possible. Economists argue that the cost for any nation to exit the eurozone is prohibitive. But how does that stack up with a “rescue” program that virtually guarantees continued economic contraction and depopulation for Ireland? Faced with two unattractive alternatives, the desire for self-determination and for punishment of coercive European technocrats may make supposedly irrational moves seem compelling.^⁵

The shape of Europe that is emerging is not the original view of mobilizing technology to raise living standards. The leaders who originally sponsored the EU viewed nation states as having plunged the continent into a millennium of warfare. But today, finance is the new mode of warfare. Its objective is the same as military conquest: to seize the land and basic infrastructure, and to levy tribute – euphemized as bailout repayments, as if the financial system were necessary to fuel industry and labor rather than siphoning off their surplus.

The Irish government’s €10 billion interest payments are projected to absorb 80% of the government’s 2010 income tax revenue. This is beyond the ability of any national government or economy to survive. It means that all growth must be paid as tribute to the EU for having bailed out reckless bankers in Germany and other countries that failed to realize the seemingly obvious fact that debts that can’t be paid won’t be. The problem is that during the interim it takes to realize this, economies will be destroyed, assets stripped, capital depleted and much labor obliged to emigrate. Latvia is the poster child for this, with a third of its population between 20 and 40 years old already having emigrated or reported to be planning to leave the country within the next few years.

The EU’s nightmare is that voters may wake up in the same way that Argentina finally did when it announced that the neoliberal advice it had taken from U.S. and IMF advisors had destroyed the economy so much that it could not pay. As matters turned out, it had little trouble in imposing a 70% write-down on foreign creditors. Its economy is now booming – because it became credit-worthy again, once it freed itself from its financial albatross!

Much the same occurred in Latin America and other Third World countries after Mexico announced that it could not pay its foreign debts in 1982. A wave of defaults spread – inspiring negotiated debt write-downs in the form of Brady Bonds. U.S. and other creditors calculated what debtors realistically could pay, and replaced the old irresponsible bank loans with new bonds. The United States and by IMF members applauded the write-downs as a success story.

But Ireland, Greece and Iceland are now being told horror stories about what might happen if governments do not commit financial suicide. The fear is that debtors may revolt, leading the Eurozone to break up over demands that financialized economies turn over their entire surplus to creditors for as many years as the eye of forecasters can see, acquiescing to bank demands that they subject themselves to a generation of austerity, shrinkage and emigration.

That is the issue in Iceland’s election this Saturday. It is the issue now facing European voters as a whole: Are today’s economies to be run for the banks, bailing them out of unpayably high reckless loans at public expense? Or, will the financial system be reined in to serve the economy and raise wage levels instead of imposing austerity.

It seems ironic that the Socialist parties (Spain and Greece), the British Labour Party and various Social Democratic parties have moved to the pro-banker right wing of the political spectrum, committed to imposing anti-labor austerity not only in Europe, but also in New Zealand (the 1990s poster child for Thatcherite privatization) and even Australia. Their policy of downsizing public social services and embrace of privatization is the opposite of their position a century ago. How did they become so decoupled from their original labor constituencies? It seems as if their function is to impose whatever right-wing agenda the Conservative parties cannot get away with – not unlike Obama neutering possible Democratic Party alternatives to Republican lobbying for more Rubinomics.

Is it simply gullibility? That may have been the case in Russia, whose leaders seemed to have little idea of how to fend off destructive advice from the Harvard Boys and Jeffrey Sachs. But something more deliberate plagues Britain’s own Labour Party in out-Thatchering the Conservatives in privatizing the railroads and other key economic infrastructure with their Public-Private Partnership. It is the attitude that led Gordon Brown to threaten to blackball Icelandic membership in the EU if its voters oppose bailing out the failure of Britain’s own neoliberal bank insurance agency to prevent banksters from emptying out Icesave.

What seems remarkable is that Icelandic voters may take seriously their prime minister’s threat that a “No” vote on the Icesave bailout would lead the UK and Holland to blackball Icelandic entry. The new Conservative Prime Minister has little love for Mr. Brown, and realizes that his own voters are not eager to support membership of a country that is willing to sacrifice the domestic economy to pay bankers for what looks like shady loans. And what of the rest of Europe? Is buckling under to unfair bank demands really the way to make friends with the indebted PIIGS countries? Do these countries want to admit another neoliberal advocate favoring banks over their domestic economies? Or would Iceland make more friends by voting “No”?

Last weekend half a million British citizens marched in London to protest the threatened cutbacks in social services, education and transportation, and tax increases to pay for Gordon Brown’s bailout of Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland. The burden is to fall on labor and industry, not Britain’s financial class. The Daily Express, a traditionally campaigning national paper, is now running a full throttle campaign for Britain to leave the EU, on much the same ground that Britain has long rejected joining the euro.

What is the rational of Iceland and other debtor countries paying, especially at this time? The proposed agreements would give Britain and Holland more than EU directives would. Iceland has a strong legal case. Social Democratic warnings about the EU seem so overblown that one wonders whether the Althing members are simply hoping to avoid an investigation as to what actually happened to Landsbanki’s Icesave deposits. Britain’s Serous Fraud Office recently became more serious in investigating what happened to the money, and has begun to arrest former directors. So this is a strange time indeed for Iceland’s government to agree to take bad bank debts onto its own balance sheet.

The EU has given Iceland bad advice: “Pay the Icesave debts, guarantee the bad bank loans, it really won’t cost too much. It will be fairly easy for your government to take it on.” One now can see that this is the same bad advice given to Ireland, Greece and other countries. “Fairly easy” is a euphemism for decades of economic shrinkage and emigration.

The problem is that the more Iceland’s economy shrinks, the more impossible it becomes to pay foreign debts. Iceland’s government is desperately begging to join Europe without asking just what the cost will be. It would plunge the krona’s exchange rate, shrink the economy, drive young workers to emigrate to find jobs and to avoid the bankruptcy foreclosures that would result from subjecting the nation to austerity.

Nobody really knows just how deep the hole is. Iceland’s government has not made a serious attempt to make a risk analysis. What is clear is that the EU and IMF have been irresponsibly optimistic. Each new statistical report is “surprising” and “unexpected.” On the basis of the IMF’s working assumption about the króna’s exchange rate at end-2009, for example, the IMF staff projected that gross external debt would be 160% of GDP. To be sure, they added that a further depreciation of the exchange rate of 30 percent would cause a precipitous rise in the debt ratio. This indeed has occurred. Back in November 2008, the IMF warned that the foreign debt it projected by yearend 2009 might reach 240% of GDP, a level it called “clearly unsustainable.” But today’s debt level has been estimated to stand at 260% of Icelandic GDP – even without including the government-sponsored Icesave debt and some other debt categories.

Creditors lose nothing by providing junk-economic advice. They have shown themselves quite willing to encourage economies to destroy themselves in the process of trying to pay – something like applauding nuclear power plant workers for walking into radiation to help put out a fire. For Ireland, the EU pressed the government to take responsibility for bank loans that turned out to be only about 30% (not a misprint!) of estimated market price. It said that this could “easily” be done. Ireland’s government agreed, at the cost of condemning the economy to two or more decades of poverty, emigration and bankruptcy.

What makes the problem worse is that foreign-currency debt is not paid out of GDP (whose transactions are in domestic currency), but out of net export earnings – plus whatever the government can be persuaded to sell off to private buyers. For Iceland, the question would become one of how many of its products and services – and natural resources and companies – Britain and the Netherlands would buy.

It is supposed to be the creditor’s responsibility to work with debtors and negotiate payment in exports. Instead of doing this, today’s creditors simply demand that governments sell off their land, mineral resources, basic infrastructure and natural monopolies to pay foreign creditors. These assets are forfeited in what is, in effect, a pre-bankruptcy proceeding. The new buyers then turn the economy into a set of tollbooths by raising access fees to transportation, phone service and other privatized sectors.

One would think that the normal response of a government in this kind of foreign debt negotiation would be to appoint a Group of Experts to lay out the economy’s position so as to evaluate the ability to pay foreign debts – and to structure the deal around the ability to pay. But there has been no risk assessment. The Althing has simply accepted the demands of the UK and Holland without any negotiation. It has not even protested the fact that Britain and Holland are still running up the interest clock on the charges they are demanding.
Why doesn’t Iceland’s population behave like that of Ireland or Greece, not to mention Argentina or the United States, and say to Europe’s financial negotiators: “Nice try! But we’re not falling for it. Your creditor game is over! No nation can be expected to keep committing financial suicide Ireland-style, imposing economic depression and forcing a large portion of the labor force to emigrate, simply to pay bank depositors for the crimes or negligence of bankers.”

The credit rating agencies have tried to reinforce the Althing’s attempt to panic the population into a “Yes” vote. On February 23, Moody’s threatened: “If the agreement is rejected, we would likely downgrade Iceland’s ratings to Ba1 or below.” If voters approve the agreement, however, “we would likely change the outlook on the government’s current Baa3 ratings to stable from negative,” in view of a likely “cut-off in the remaining US$1.1 billion committed by the other Nordic countries and probably also to delays in Iceland’s IMF program.”

Perhaps not many Icelanders realize that credit ratings agencies are, in effect, lobbyists for their clients, the financial sector. One would think that they had utterly lost their reputation for honesty – not to mention competence – by pasting AAA ratings on junk mortgages as prime enablers of the present global financial crash. The explanation is, they did it all for money. They are no more honest than was Arthur Andersen in approving Enron’s junk accounting.

My own view of ratings agencies is based in no small part on the story that Dennis Kucinich told me about the time when he was mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. The banks and some of their leading clients had set their eyes on privatizing the city’s publicly owned electric company. The privatizers wanted buy it on credit (with the tax-deductible interest charges depriving the government of collecting income tax on their takings), and sharply raise prices to pay for exorbitant executive salaries, outrageous underwriting fees to the banks, stock options for the big raiders, heavy interest charges to the banks and a nice free lunch to the ratings agencies. The banks asked Mayor Kucinich to sell them the bank, promising to help him be governor if he would sell out his constituency.

Mr. Kucinich said “No.” So the banks brought in their bullyboys, the ratings agencies. They threatened to downgrade Cleveland’s rating, so that it could not roll over the loan balances that it ran as a normal course with the banks. “Let us take your power company or we will wreck your city’s finances,” they said in effect.

Mr. Kucinich again said no. The banks carried out their threat – but the mayor had saved the city from having its incomes squeezed by predatory privatization charges. In due course its voters sent Mr. Kucinich to Congress, where he subsequently became an important presidential candidate.

So returning to the problem of the credit rating agencies, how can anyone believe that agreeing to pay an unpayably high debt would improve Iceland’s credit rating? Investors have learned to depend on their own common sense since losing hundreds of billions of dollars on the ratings agencies’ reckless ratings. The agencies managed to avoid criminal prosecution by noting that the small print of their contracts said that they were only providing an “opinion,” not a realistic analysis for which they could be expected to take any honest professional responsibility!

Argentina’s experience should provide the model for how writing off a significant portion of foreign debt makes the economy more creditworthy, not less. And as far as possible lawsuits are concerned, it is a central assumption of international law that no sovereign country should be forced to commit economic suicide by imposing financial austerity to the point of forcing emigration and demographic shrinkage. Nations are sovereign entities.
It thus would be legally as well as morally wrong for Iceland’s citizens to spend the rest of their lives paying off debts owed for money that should rather be an issue between Britain’s Serious Fraud Office and the British bank insurance agencies.

Overarching the vote is how high a price Iceland is willing to pay to join the EU. In fact, as the Eurozone faces a crisis from the PIIGS debtors, what kind of EU is going to emerge from today’s conflict between creditors and debtors. Fears have been growing that the euro-zone may break up in any case. So Iceland’s Social Democratic government may be trying to join an illusion – one that now seems to be breaking up, at least as far as its neoliberal extremism is concerned. Just yesterday (Thursday, April 7) a Financial Times editorial commented on what it deemed to be Portugal’s premature cave-in to EU demands:

Another eurozone country has been humbled by its banks. Earlier this week, Portugal’s banks were threatening a bond-buyers’ go-slow unless the caretaker government sought financial help from other European Union countries. … Lisbon should have stuck to its position. … it should still resist doing what the banks demanded: seeking an immediate bridging loan. … By jumping the gun, the government risks having scared markets away entirely. That may prejudice the outcome of negotiations about the longer-term facility.
The caretaker government has neither the moral nor the political authority to determine Portugal’s future in this way. It should not precipitately abandon the markets. That may mean paying high yields on debt issues in coming months – higher than they might have been had the government not folded its hand too soon. … The right time to opt for an external rescue would have been at the end of a national debate.”^⁶

The same should be true for Iceland. Looking over the past year, it seems that the island nation has been used as a target for a psychological and political experiment – a cruel one – to see how much a population will be willing to pay that it does not really owe for what bank insiders have stolen or lent to themselves.

This is not only an Icelandic problem. It remains a problem in Ireland, and in the United States for that matter, as well as in Britain itself.

The moral is that creditor foreclosure – or voluntary forfeiture to pay international bankers – has become today’s preferred mode of economic warfare. It is cheaper than military conquest, but its aim is similar: to gain control of foreign property and levy tribute – in a way that the tribute-payers accept voluntarily. Land is appropriated and foreclosed on – or, what turns out to be the same thing, its rental income is pledged to foreign bank branches extending mortgage credit that absorbs the net rent. The result is economic austerity and chronic depression, ending the upsweep in living standards promised a generation ago.

Iceland’s government seems to have become decoupled from what is good for voters and for the very survival of Iceland’s economy. It thus challenges the assumption that underlies all social science and economics: that nations will act in their own self-interest. This is the assumption that underlies democracy: that voters will realize their self-interest and elect representatives to apply such policies. For the political scientist this is an anomaly. How does one explain why a national parliament is acting on behalf of Britain and the Dutch as creditors, rather than in the interest of their own country accused of owing debts that voters in other countries have removed their governments for agreeing to?

1 Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, “Greece defies Europe as EMU crisis turns deadly serious,” The Telegraph (UK), December 18, 2009.

2 Kerin Hope, “Greeks adopt ‘won’t pay’ attitude,” Financial Times, March 10, 2011.

3 Olivier Besancenot and Pierre-François Grond, “The Greek People are the Victims of an Extortion Racket,” Le Monde, May 14, 2010.

4 Ireland’s winter of discontent,” Financial Times editorial, March 1, 2011.

5 Yves Smith, “Will Ireland Threaten to Default?” Naked Capitalism, March 15, 2011.

6 “Banks 1, Portugal 0,” Financial Times editorial, April 7, 2011.

MY TWITTER CASE AND “THOUGHTCRIME”

2011-03-16T07:57:00.002Z

All of who care for freedom of information, speech and expression should be thankful for the recent ruling in my Twitter case. Thankful because it exposes the reality in which we live, at least according to the U.S. Department of Justice and one U.S. judge. The judge’s ruling exposed the blatant truth: that as the U.S. DOJ sees it, and at least according to this first judge, users of the Internet and social media sites hosted in the USA do NOT have any rights as individuals to defend themselves against the tyranny of authorities wanting to use the often sensitive information about us collected by services like Twitter. This includes critical information about the location, timing and recipients of our emails, conversations, messaging and social networking that are now fair game for the “thought police.” It is good that we know that this is how the prosecutors and one judge in the court system in the land of the free views our rights, because now we can do something about regaining those rights!

We are at critical point when it comes to freedom of information and speech. If we don’t act now it might be too late in a years’ time. Everything happens so fast in the realm of the Internet -- our rights are eroding every day at an alarming speed. I urgently suggest and call upon everyone who cares for their rights to their lives online to join me in fighting for these rights.

I am calling for a joint action to demand that all social media sites that host our information in the USA publicly promise to notify their users when they receive government demands for information – and if necessary fight for their ability to do so as Twitter did here in the face of a gag order. They should include that promise in their Terms of Use so that it can be relied on by their users. If they can’t make that pledge, enforced by user terms like Twitter’s, we will leave them and we will demand that authorities recognize our rights to defend ourselves directly. I also challenge Facebook, Google and Twitter to battle for every one of us against unwarranted and sometimes secret demands to our information from the U.S. government.

Here are a few examples that I find unsettling:
Google hosts our entire history of searching and they create a profile of every one of us as consumers so that they can make us targeted costumers for individually directed ads. This is why Google can maintain their services for free.

If authorities get access to some or all of this profiling as the DOJ maintains that they can – do you feel comfortable that they do? Consider this scenario: You are doing research on terrorists or the drug culture for an article or essay – all of your searching is now part of your profile. It is easy to build a very damning and erroneous profile of you simply based on your innocent research. The government maintains that most, if not all of this information is “non-content” and so reachable by them in the same way that my Twitter information was.

Many users do not understand that they are giving away all control of their web usage statistics. Personal data can be used against you in secret! This is very dangerous to those, like me, who are activists, journalists and researchers. It equally endangers the merely curious.

In George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, a “thoughtcrime” was an illegal type of thought. Are we approaching the sad state of affairs where our public written communications, indeed our very thoughts are seen by an increasingly surveillance-obsessed totalitarian state as “thoughtcrimes”? Is this the kind of world we would wish for our children?

In the next few weeks I will work to gather as many as supporters as possible to be part of this joint action for our rights as users of social media. It will be an effort to our privacy rights and the right to defend our personal information online. Drop me an email if you have ideas on how to take this further so we may make a shockwave of change.

A promo clip for the upcoming documentary about yours truly by Judith Ehrlich

2011-03-14T11:35:00.000Z

Iceland: The Mouse that Roared (Birgitta Jonsdottir)

Press release from my lawyers because of twitter records

2011-03-11T23:05:00.000Z

Court Rules Against Privacy in Battle Over Twitter Records

ACLU And EFF Plan To Appeal Ruling In Case Challenging Government
Attempt To Obtain Private Data in WikiLeaks Investigation

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 11, 2011

CONTACT:
Rachel Myers, ACLU, (212) 549-2689 or 2666; media@aclu.org
Rebecca Jeschke, EFF, (415) 436-9333 x 125; press@eff.org

ALEXANDRIA – A federal magistrate judge in Virginia ruled today that the
government can collect the private records of three Twitter users as
part of its investigation related to WikiLeaks, and that those users and
the public can be prevented from seeing some of the documents that the
government submitted to the court to justify obtaining their records.
The court denied the government’s request to conduct the hearing in
secret, however, and the court made public all of the documents related
to the users’ legal challenge. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
and the American Civil Liberties Union plan to appeal the decision on
behalf of their client Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic parliamentarian.

These secret government demands for information about the subscribers'
communications came to light only because Twitter took steps to ensure
their customers were notified and had the opportunity to respond. The
ACLU and EFF also asked the court to make public any similar orders to
any other companies

"This ruling gives the government the ability to secretly amass private
information related to individuals’ Internet communications. Except in
extraordinary circumstances, the government should not be able to obtain
this information in secret. That's not how our system works," said Aden
Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology
Project. "If this ruling stands, our client may be prevented from
challenging the government’s requests to other companies because she
might never know if and how many other companies have been ordered to
turn over information about her."

"With so much of our digital private information being held by third
parties – whether in the cloud or on social networking sites like
Twitter – the government can track your every move and statement without
you ever having a chance to protect yourself," said EFF Legal Director
Cindy Cohn. "We're disappointed that the court did not recognize that
people using digital tools deserve basic privacy and that the government
should be required to meet a high standard before it demands private
information about you from the online services you use, be they Twitter,
Facebook, Gmail or Skype."

EFF and the ACLU plan to appeal the ruling on behalf of their client.

Today’s ruling and other information about the case are available online
at: http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/twitter-wikileaks-court-order

Poem a day: from Wake Up II

2011-02-15T07:46:00.001Z

Countries without Borders

The cities of the world

are merging,

borders falling.

cultures crossing.

Through the void

of cyberspace,

the earth is shrinking,

the sense for distance changing.

One race,

emerging.

Floating through space,

virtually real.

I feel home

in every corner of the world.

Expressions

through symbols,

we can all understand.

Art is the language,

the word still a virus

from outer space.

Colors, forms, sounds, shapes,

interwoven

in interspace.

Cities without borders.

Earth without borders.

Us without borders.

Poem a day: from Wake Up

2011-02-14T22:50:00.000Z

Generations

Generation X

Generation Beat

Generation Beast

Generation 2000

Sub Cultures

Bums

Punks

Angels

Buddhas

Divas

Gods

Human Beings

It's the glory of the age of the consumer

Doomsday

already occurred

time and time again

Terror in the vacuum

What is this doomsday anyway?

Fear of fear itself?

Resurrection of the heart

ancient wisdom

compact thought

streaming beyond time and space

Willingness to start a revolution

in our own hearts

Taste the bittersweet

brutal honesty

The collective knowledge

of the transparency generation

spreading through the nerves of cyberspace

Aussie Males & Scandinavian Females...

2011-02-12T09:40:00.000Z

Because my words have been taken out of context and remixed into something that doesnt really reflect how I think, i am going to set things straight in relation to this whole Australian Male chauvinist issue.

What i said to the journalist last summer, was along the following lines while trying to explain why that could have happened in Sweden:

One has to bear in mind the cultural differences between people from Australia and Scandinavia. Australian men often experience Scandinavian females to be feminists in a negative way while Scandinavian females experience Australian men to be a bit of a male chauvinists. This can often lead to massive misunderstandings - the problem might also be caused by that deep cultural differences can not be detected on the surface but something people gradually discover after a while.

I have lived in both Australia and Sweden and experienced how these misunderstandings develop because of different cultural acceptance of roles and power. I did not mean to insult the entire male population in OZ. Just trying to explain cultural differences early on in the Swedish case.

But of course as always happens when words are recycled through many paths, people and media - they tend to loose the context and are no longer a part of a larger picture and dont reflect at all what one said to begin with.

I do think compared to Scandinavian males that Australian males often come across as a bit of a male chauvinist and I think compared to Australian females Scandinavian females often come across as a bit of a female chauvinists.

Icelandic Foreign Affairs Minister responds to protests in Egypt

2011-02-01T20:53:00.004Z

Tuesday 1^st of February 2011

Yesterday Birgitta Jónsdóttir, a member of the Icelandic Parliament for the Movement and the Foreign Affairs committee called for support from the Icelandic Government for the people protesting in Egypt and condemnation of the oppression they are facing.

During a parliamentary Q&A yesterday when asked about his option about the situation in Egypt by, Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Foreign Minister echoed her worries about the situation and call for support for the Egyptian people that are demanding change and calling for democratic reform in Egypt. The Minister said that the Government protested against all violations of human rights. He condemned that the Egyptian public did not enjoy freedom of expression and information as media outlets were banned in the wake of blackout on Al Jazeera, the Internet and mobile networks.

Össur Skarphedinsson, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iceland, is deeply concerned by the situation in Egypt and condemns any use of violence against protesters. The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights has estimated that up to 300 people have been killed since the protests began.   

The Minister said that free elections, without any limitations to freedom of expression, were needed so that the people of Egypt were able to express their will.

The Movement is thankful for response from the Minister and has called for a meeting in the Foreign Affairs committee to address the situation and call for a parliamentary resolution to show solidarity with the demand for democratic reform in Egypt.

Happy 2011

2011-01-01T17:09:00.002Z

Cartoon by theHand aka Maurizio di Bona

Poem by Birgitta

Join the experiment on Facebook

Put Tibet Back on the Map:

2010-12-27T10:30:00.000Z

Stand in Solidarity with Tibetans in Tibet!

When is the right time to offer political asylum for Assange in Iceland?

2010-12-12T12:34:00.000Z

I would like to make a few points clear: I don´t think it is right that Julian Assange is held in custody in the UK because of the allegations in Sweden. I however think it is a to mistake to mix the allegation in Sweden with freedom of information. It is a personal case that has been mixed together with a non personal case, by supporters and adversaries of WikiLeaks alike.

Julian is in just as much danger to be transferred to the USA from the UK as from Sweden. That is why it is totally unacceptable that he is held in custody. That appears to me like an attempt to gag him and should be protested loud and clear. If Julian is charged in the USA I will call for Iceland to grant him political asylum if his own country fails to protect him.

I find it deeply troubling to attack anyone in the personal case pending in Sweden, none of them are guilty until charged. I have heard conspiracy theories spanning the entire scope: from Assange being the victim of CIA to Julian being a CIA agent. It is important to stop the speculations and wait for the facts.

I however call for Julians release on bail early next week - if not, it is obvious that this personal case in Sweden is being used as a political tool against freedom of information.

I fully support what WikiLeaks stands for and I am also fully behind OpenLeaks - may there be many more to come.

My statement from the NATO parliamentary assembly 161110

2010-11-17T23:07:00.000Z

(The NATO secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen chose to send the NATO Parliamentary Assembly a video message instead of showing up in person. His excuse was he was too busy preparing for a Summit meetings of Heads of State and Government later this month. An insult to the parliamentary process. I decided to address this despite there were no Q&A after the video, I was granted the space to do this. Heads of state are serving the parliaments and the parliaments are serving the people. It is important to always remember this. Rasmussen seems to have forgotten this obvious fact.)

Statement made by Mrs. Birgitta Jonsdottir, member of the Icelandic delegation to the NATO-PA, 16 November 2010 at the Annual Session in Warsaw (after Secretary General of NATO´S video message)

Thank you Mr. President,

I greatly appreciate the Assembly’s stated purpose to provide a forum for the exercise of parliamentary scrutiny of NATO and to create a context for the Alliance to be ruled in a democratic fashion. At a national level, subjecting military establishments to democratic control is no easy task. But it becomes even more challenging in a multi-national context.

I therefore find it utterly baffling that the Secretary General of NATO has chosen not to appear before this body today. I also understand that he did not meet with the heads of our delegations at the annual February meeting in Brussels.

Secretary Generals of large alliances are indeed busy people, particularly when those alliances are entangled in tragic wars. But what we are talking about here is a wilful effort on the part of the Secretary General to avoid subjecting himself and his institution to the essential and sometimes uncomfortable rigors of democratic accountability.

To put it bluntly, we did not travel to Warsaw to conduct a dialogue with a video image of the Secretary General of NATO. Speaking with a television is, in itself, a rather absurd exercise – but it becomes well nigh impossible when that image is a pre-recorded one. I suspect that I am not the only parliamentarian who sees this matter as an affront to the people we represent.

I would therefore like to urge the leadership of the Assembly to make it very clear to the current Secretary General that our members will not tolerate any deviation of the very fundamental exercise in democratic scrutiny. NATO cannot be allowed to become an unaccountable body.

Iraq War Logs

2010-10-24T09:17:00.001Z

Iraq War Logs covered by AL JAZEERA made me think of a poem I wrote in the wake of the war. Last place i performed this poem was at a NATO parliamentary assembly side event in the Scottish parliament last year. I will bring the issue of the War Logs to the next NATO parliamentary assembly meeting that will take place in Warsaw 12th of November. The way the war logs have been made available via the WikiLeaks network to the general public, the media, the UN, the politicians and the people within the counties suffering from the war crimes uncovered in the war logs will hopefully wake people up about the:

Horror of War

Headless bodies
burned flesh
smell of decay

A wedding band
on a slim delicate finger
Shades of memories
a future that can never be

A lonely head in a lush green field
eyes wide open
In the hollow a reflection of
untold love

Mountains of starved children
shiny bones
flesh torn off the bodies

Shocked and awed
by the images of mothers
miscarrying their unborn children

Shocked and awed
by the silent fear
countless civilians
dead dead dead

These are images
we should put in a frame
Mount them in our homes
so we never forget;
the true horror of war

and hopefully we will be able to find other solutions in conflict then full fledge war... lets use the war logs to stop future wars - fight war not wars!

My speech at Woodstock 5 Stelle

2010-09-28T15:04:00.000Z

I have seen signs

the end of the world

as we know it

has begun

Don't panic

it might look terrifying

on the surface

but inside every

human being

a choice

to go under

or act

Earth is calling

Sky is calling

God is calling

Creation is calling

wake up, wake up now

Generate the capacity for love

for compassion in your heart

Now is the time

to yield to the call of growth

to the call of action

you are the change makers

Sleepers of all ages

wake up

wake up now

The 21^st century will be the century of the common people – the century of YOU of US

The ideologies of the old school of politics, media, monetary systems, corporations , and all known structures are in a state of transformation. They are crumbling. Now is the time for fundamental change on all levels, we have to seize this moment. Because this is THE moment.

It is rare that generations and so many individuals get such an opportunity to transform the world as we know it. The big question is how do we transform it? Lets start by turning the pyramid of power upside down.

It is obvious that we are running out of planet, many people have lost the vital connection to our environment, most of humanity doesn’t comprehend cause and effect of lack of sustainability anymore and many of us feel lost, displaced and lonely. All the structures we thought would take care of us, be it systems, ideologies, religion, politics or institutions are failing. Big time!

Parties and politicians are often in an unhealthy marriage with corporations and corruption is thriving in the political arena all over the world. Many governments and politicians talk about transparency yet the process of politics and laws is shredded in secrecy.

When everything collapsed in Iceland in 2008 I sensed that within this crises was to be found an incredible opportunity for change. Because of that I helped create a political movement February 2009. Its chief agenda was to bring forth democratic reform, such as people being able to call for national referendum and sever the ties between corporations and politics.

In order for profound change to be possible those of us inside parliament have to behave like activists by changing the traditions and revealing the unwritten rules of power.

We are creating a haven for freedom of information in Iceland. Information will set you free and thus it should be free to access by everyone. We went on a quest to find all the best possible laws from around the world that ensure freedom of expression, information and speech. By basing our laws on legislation that has already proven to be strong enough to withstand attacks from those that want us to live in a world with less flow of information about the darker side of politics, international corporations, war and oppression.

Information doesn’t have any borders any more. We live in a world where the super powers want to put global censorship laws on the Internet. We have to be a step ahead of them.

I joined forces with Wikileaks because I feel it is so incredible important that there are places in our world where whistleblowers and sources can feel save to drop important documents that governments and corporations want to hide from us.

Immi will make it possible for investigative journalists from around the world publish their stories if they are under treat to be placed under gag orders in their own countries, everyone should have free access to information, in our world there should be no gag orders, no prior restriction. Immi will provide a shield against that.

We should have a haven for those that are willing to risk their lives to blog or write news about things in their own world, even if we might not be able to save them from the risk they take, we could at least make sure that their stories will not be taken down from the internet, no matter what.

My hope is that immi will transform into the International modern media initiative, because everyday the freedoms we want to protect with it are eroding at an alarming rate. Here in Italy you are witnessing the end of the freedom of media with a new set of laws called legge bavaglio. There is no copyright on immi. Use it now! Without freedom of information, you don’t really have democracy but dictatorship with many heads.

The 21^st century will be the age of us, the common people, where we will understand that in order to live in the reality we dream of, we have to participate and help co-create that reality.

I strongly encourage you to join this incredible Movement Beppe Grillo has co-created, run for office, be part of this opportunity of change. If I could become an MP in the Icelandic parliament, anyone can become a member of parliament.

Here is our first task: If there is something we have to make sure stays under the guardianship of nations not corporations then it is the following, water companies, energy companies, social welfare, education and health systems.

We have made everything so complex and grand, perhaps it is time to return to more simple ways, more self sustainable ways, we can do that by learning from each other, by helping each other locally and globally and by remembering that we as individuals can change the world, and now is the time to step forward – take on that challenge and be the change maker. Don’t expect others to do it, your time has arrived to make a difference!

A year and a half ago, I was temporary unemployed, single parent with the simple goal of figuring out how I as an individual could help create a sustainable future for the next generations. Needless to say: no one really believed I could be where I am today. Yet it is not a Cinderella story but a story I co-created with my society.

Most people have seen that left and right politics doesn’t have any meaning anymore. To create political movement based on common agenda of pressing issues of basic human rights and democratic reform is so important right now.

In order for the common people like us to co-create our society we have to have the democratic tools to do that. People need to get into parliaments to change the laws so we all can have the power that is rightfully ours, to impact our society and apply real pressure on those in power to work for us, not the elite.

M political movements chief aim has been to inspire ordinary people to take on political responsibilities. We don’t want people with political training, we don’t want professional politicians and we above everything else don’t want to be a political party. And remember no matter what they will tell you: power corrupts and disconnects people from the reality other citizens live in.

We created the Movement 8 weeks before elections, we had no money, and no one knew us, yet we got more then 7% of the vote at the general elections in 2009. I hope to see the same sort of numbers for your Movement in the 2010 elections.

One of the reasons why it is so important for groups to get representatives into places of power, is that it is a lot easier to get media attention on your causes, and it is handy to be able to confront or talk with ministers and other mps about important issues without delay.

When I was working as an activist one of the hardest challenges was to get the attention from both the media and the people in power to the cause, getting some changes implemented was nearly impossible. Now that I am getting a better understanding on how things work within the legislative body I have much better chance to help other activists and the general public to get attention and even legislative changes and resolutions on issues they are concerned about.

What might seem impossible now might be quite possible tomorrow because we are experiencing very rapid changes on all levels. So I encourage you to start to make the blueprint for the future you want to live in, to be passionate about your cause and to believe that everything is possible, today failings might turn into tomorrows successes.

Thank you all the people of the Movement in Italy – I know I am experiencing a truly historical moment here today. Thank you all who dare to be part of this massive movement of transformation of politics.

Transformation of politics

2010-08-16T18:16:00.000Z

the 21^st century will be the century of the common people

I have seen signs

the end of the world

as we know it

has begun

Don't panic

it might look terrifying

on the surface

but inside every

human being

a choice

Earth is calling

Sky is calling

God is calling

Creation is calling

Wake up, wake up now!

Generate the capacity for love

for compassion in your heart

Now is the time

to yield to the call of growth

and unlimited love

to all that life is

So wake up

wake up now

The ideologies of the old school of politics, media, monetary systems, corporations , and all known structures are in a state of transformation. They are crumbling and now is the ideal time for reform on all levels, if we seize this moment.

I am sure we can get sustainable change in our world if we use the concept of globalization in our advantage to push for changes in a joint effort locally and globally.

Iceland is in many ways an ideal place for experimental work in this regard, being a country with only 316.000 souls living there yet our society is among the most developed in the world. With a tiny bureaucratic body compared to similar societies, we can move radical change much quicker through our system.

Right now we are doing an experiment in this regard with the Icelandic modern media initiative, also known as IMMI. The concept behind immi was to take an international form of legislation used to benefit the big corporations known as tax havens. Tax havens are created by pulling together all the best legislation from around the world to create secrecy to hide financial transactions and funds, to create shady companies, a cozy swindle haven.

We wanted to use the same concept to create a transparency haven.

We went on a quest to find all the best possible laws from around the world to ensure freedom of expression, information and speech. By basing our laws on legislation that has already proven to be strong enough to withstand attacks from those that want us to live in a world with less flow of information about the darker side of politics, international corporations, war and oppression, we are also supporting the laws in those countries we are basing our legislation on and it will also make our laws stronger in the global context.

The immi proposal is already having an impact globally, there has been much dialogue all over the world as a result of this proposal, about the reality of freedom of information in a world where information doesn’t have any borders any more and the same applies to the legal firms that specialize in gagging journalists and media firms, they don’t have any borders either.

No one believed immi could be pulled through the icelandic parliament with such overwhelming support, all the MPs present and members of the government voted for it. I was sure it would pass – it just had everything going for it and by going with the flow following my intuition all the way through with it – it is becoming a model mps and people who are passionate about freedom of expression all over the world are using, to push for reform in their own countries. My aim is to make it into the International modern media initiative. Because everyday the freedoms we want to protect with immi are eroding in our world at an alarming rate. Here in Italy you are witnessing the end of the freedom of media with a new set of laws on whistleblowers. I have been asked by journalists and organizations from Italy if there is anything I can do to help. And I am wreaking my brain, how can I possible help this ancient culture with such incredible people who have put their mark on the history of the world. You surely have the manpower, the passion and the heart to make reform happen. There is no copyright on immi. Feel free to use it.

It is rare that generations and so many individuals get such an opportunity to transform the world as we know it. The big question is how do we transform it?

It is obvious that we are running out of planet, many people have lost the vital connection to our environment, most of humanity don’t comprehend cause and effect of lack of sustainability anymore and many of us feel lost, displaced and lonely. All the structures we thought would take care of us, be it systems, ideologies, religion, politics or institutions are failing big time.

Something big is happening

Gaia has regained her consciousness

her way of surviving

An image

growing in my mind

of a whole universe of possibilities

to make the invisible seen,

the impossible possible

to be part of

this movement

of awakening

To learn to listen to our mother’s voice

through her infinite creations

To trust,

to be trusted

I keep making the picture bigger

so I won't lose myself

Earthquakes move through me

volcanic eruptions of insight

as the revolution

of silent changes

of daily rituals

begins

To follow my intuition as a politician makes a lot more sense to me then the rivalry and manipulations of left or right ideology. The right and wrong ideology of the old world has simply outgrown itself. No longer do we have strong parliaments with a direct link between the general public and decision maker. We have so called professional politicians that are far removed from the reality most of us live in. Parties and politicians are often in an unhealthy marriage with corporations and corruption is thriving in the political arena all over the world. Many governments and politicians talk about transparency yet the process of politics and laws is shredded in secrecy.

When everything collapsed in Iceland in 2008 I sensed that within this crises was to be found an incredible opportunity for change. Many others sensed this as well and grassroots movements appeared out of thin air with the aspiration for real change for a society based on integrity, compassion and equality where the general public should and could be able to help co-create society.

As a result of an attempt to have the grassroots groups work together on larger issues and of course to join hands in protests and pressure for change I helped create a political movement February 2009. Its chief agenda was to bring forth democratic reform, such as people being able to call for national referendum and to be able to vote for individuals not only parties. We also are aware of that no matter who you place in a corrupt system in thrones of power, even fine individuals get corrupt with power and the fear of loosing power. In order for profound change to be possible those of us inside parliament have to behave like activists by changing the traditions and revealing the unwritten rules of power. Information will set you free. Now once we have the information what are we going to do with it? What sort of world do with want to live in and are we ready as individuals to put the time energy and effort into creating the blueprint of the future?

The 21^st century will be the age of us, the common people, where we will come to a profound understanding that in order to live in the reality we dream of, we have to participate and help co-create that reality. But how?

Yet again an Icelandic experiment might be an answer. All nations have done this at some point. We are going to rewrite our constitution. Usually it is the elite that writes the constitutions, we however have managed to make sure that the general public will take part in both the dialogue about what should be in our constitution and to vote on each new constitutional law before the parliament has its final say. This is fundamental in order to ensure that the constitution writing will be a part of a broad dialogue and consensus on what we agree on as a nation should be the foundations of our society. If this experiment works for us I strongly recommend that all nations will follow suit if the constitution is not something you know by heart and has a profound meaning towards the future. Perhaps we can once that process is over make a constitution together for the world – in Bhutan for example they put in their constitution that they would have instead of GDP measure, happiness measure. The annual growth of happiness.

The concept of gross national happiness (GNH) was developed in an attempt to define an indicator that measures quality of life or social progress in more holistic and psychological terms than gross domestic product (GDP). I think every constitution on our planet should include something about the importance of happiness among its nations. I hope ours will.

The real value I see in the rewriting of constitutions is the dialogue between people in each country and this platform of co-creation.

The root of most of our problems as humanity on this planet comes from greed and hunger for power. We have war upon war upon war and we all know in our hearts that war is always about these elements. How do we counterbalance this and all the lack that seems to be all over our world. We all know that there is enough food, land and water in our world for everyone. Yet starvation, war, conflict, disaster and hatred seem to be the only thing we get to know about other nations on a regular news basis.

In order to counterbalance this we must change our monetary systems. Fractional reserve banking is creating money out of thin air and in the end the bubble always burst and who ends up paying? The motto of the banksters has always been; privatize the profit, socialize the losses. So why do we let them get away with it? Is there really no alternative? Well I got news for you, there are many alternatives, there is never just one way of doing things. But those in power tend to want to maximize their own profits at the cost of those they are supposed to be serving. Explore new monetary solutions, there are plenty of models to explore. I encourage you to see Money as dept, the Money masters, the secret of Oz and Capitalism, a love story.

I might be a dreamer, but I am not the only one. Everyday I come across people who have the same dreams, who want to do something both locally and globally. We as humanity almost stopped the Iraq war, because we worked together globally through the internet, wrote articles, took to the streets, organized events and rallies.

If there is something we have to make sure stays under the guardianship of nations not corporations then it is the following, water companies, energy companies, social welfare, education and health systems.

A year and a half ago, I was temporary unemployed, single parent, living below the so called poverty line, with the simple goal in my heart of figuring out how I as an individual could help create a sustainable future for the next seven generations, how to make this planet smile from within, how to co-create my society.

During my life I have been given many difficult lessons, death and great loss has been my companion and I have lost many dear friends and relatives to various modern social ills. I chose to use these difficulties to make me stronger and more compassionate towards the difficulties of others, I chose to make me more humane. It has not been easy yet I wouldn’t change a second of it. It has made me into me and I am content with how I have developed. Needless to say: no one really believed I could be where I am today. It is not a fairy tail though but a story I co-created in partnership with my society.

First of all it is not as hard as one imagines to create a political movement. Most people have seen that left and right politics doesn’t have any meaning anymore. To create political movement based on common agenda such as a youth party to focus on issues young people find to be important is something I would like to see happening.

My political movement was based around democratic reform because that was what was the most needed in our country at this time. Get ordinary people into power who have no political training and who will stay only for a short period of time in power. Because no matter what they will tell you: power corrupts and disconnects people from the reality other citizens live in.

We created the Movement 8 weeks before elections, we had no money, no one knew us, yet we got more then 7% of the vote at the general elections.

One of the reason why it is so important for groups to get representatives into places of power, is that it is a lot easier to get media attention on the cause, and it is handy to be able to confront or talk with ministers and other mps about important issues without delay.

The key is to apply pressure and changes from within the system during pressure building from outside. What might seem impossible now might be quite possible tomorrow because we are experiencing very rapid changes on all levels. So I encourage you to start to make the blueprint for the future you want to live in, to be passionate about your cause and to believe that everything is possible, failings might turn into tomorrow successes.

It is important to learn the game the people in power play in order to keep their place of power.

But the most important part is if you have a chance to work within the belly of the beast to not become like them but to listen to your heart, to listen to your intuition and to be impeccable with your word. And finally not care at all if you loose that place of power. I don’t care if I am out of work tomorrow, I am only focused on what I can do today. It gives me incredible freedom to follow the flow of this very moment.

Finally here is a poem that sort of explains why I co-produced the Collateral Murder Video published by WikiLeaks during Easter this year. You should look at this video no matter how hard it is to experience the lack of humanity displayed there and then look up another video with a speech from the soldier who discovered the children in the van. He wrote to us and wanted to do something for the children, he has stepped forward with incredible courage and compassion to mend for what he was part of during this ongoing war. Helping making this video with awful war crimes, available to everyone who dares to see our world with its many wounds was my Cry from the Heart in action. I hope it will inspire you to work for peace, work with compassion in our world.

Cry from the Heart

Tears run impulsively

bitter sea of colossal grief

cluster-bomb in my heart

for every life taken

Who are we to act like a force of nature

Self destruction the distinctive human trait

Revenge

abort the revenge

Fear not the Arabs

Fear not the "Terrorists"

Fear not the Communists

Fear not the tree huggers

Fear the triangle of righteous doom

Fear the glorification of the apocalypse

Fear the mass consumerism

Fear the leaches who suck in and spit out

this planets resources

Doomsday in the heart

Doomsday in the mind

as the Inconvenient truth

about the destruction

the genocides

the mutilations

the endangered species

flow out like 1000 wounds

Will it heal

Will this heart ever beat again

this heart of hope

for humanity

As it heads towards glorious self destruction

yet again

part II

Despair

rivers of despair

wounds

oceans of pain

Patriarch

Matriarch

ism

Means nothing to me

nothing at all

Flesh, blood, earth, dirt, gravel, sand

and that single yellow flower on that highland hearth

drowned in the silt of greed

But this time

the times are changing

Into a dream of universal

equality

Please

don't look the other way

We are the same

I feel the pain

I feel the hope

This eternal ethnic bond

with each grain of sand

each grain of blood

infusion of humanity

Please let me be you

Feel your pain

Feel your healing

But what are we

Aliens on this Earth

Parasites

Are we controlled by the external or internal parasite

of duality

of Heaven and Hell

Who made this hell

Who can undo what has been done

Only you, only me, only us

Related links:

IMMI (the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative)

http://immi.is/?l=en&p=intro

The Wizard of Oz (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22TlYA8F2E

The Money Masters (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-ZCj1_HHI

Money as Debt (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oeqZVTCFzg

Capitalism, a Love Story (video)

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/capitalism-love-story/

FLOW: For the Love of Water (video)

http://www.documentarywire.com/flow-for-the-love-of-water

The Story of Stuff (video)

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-story-of-stuff/

Icelandic Modern Media Initiative and WikiLeaks (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCmjmDXp7TI&feature=fvw

Collateral Murder: video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0&feature=channel

WikiLeaks' Collateral Murder: U.S. Soldier Ethan McCord's Eyewitness Story

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kelmEZe8whI

BP Slick Covers Dolphins and Whales

2010-07-07T08:26:00.002Z

"From the information that goes with this video at Youtube:
This was the most emotionally disturbing video I have ever done!
A flight over the BP Slick Source where I saw at least 100 Dolphins in the oil, some dying. I also photographed a Sperm Whale covered in oil all around it's blow hole.
Please spread this around the world. Send me any links to places it gets posted so I can follow.
I want to piss off the world. Who will answer for these gentle creatures?"

I encourage everyone to watch this to the end and once you are done spread this and take action. The USA government has put a ban to reporting about this incredible disaster - right now all reporting is under the same rules as reports from wars they inflict on other nations, goes through their filters and is heavily restricted.

For the Love of Water

2010-07-04T11:16:00.000Z

Please watch this important film about privatization of water and if this is shocking to you, please join those that are trying to stop this insanity and grand theft at such great prize for humanity.

Text from the YouTube site: "How Did A Handful Of Corporations Steal Our Water? Water is the very essence of life, sustaining every being on the planet. 'Flow' confronts the disturbing reality that our crucial resource is dwindling and greed just may be the cause

Irena Salina's award-winning documentary investigation into what experts label the most important political and environmental issue of the 21st Century - The World Water Crisis. Salina builds a case against the growing privatization of the world's dwindling fresh water supply with an unflinching focus on politics, pollution, human rights, and the emergence of a domineering world water cartel.

Interviews with scientists and activists intelligently reveal the rapidly building crisis, at both the global and human scale, and the film introduces many of the governmental and corporate culprits behind the water grab, while begging the question "CAN ANYONE REALLY OWN WATER?"

Beyond identifying the problem, FLOW also gives viewers a look at the people and institutions providing practical solutions to the water crisis and those developing new technologies, which are fast becoming blueprints for a successful global and economic turnaround."

Max Keiser interviews Birgitta Jonsdottir about the blackmail against Iceland

2010-03-17T08:10:00.002Z

From the blog of Mike "Mish" Shedlock

"Icelandic citizens have overwhelmingly spoken. They do not care for the bailouts. They also rightfully believe the Icesave proposal was blackmail, as without it inclusion in the EU would be delayed.

Thus, it's good to see some hardball from someone in the Icelandic parliament. Hopefully Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir will be rewarded for her arrogance and removed in the next election.

The citizens of Iceland think "no means no", so does Birgitta Jonsdottir, and so do I. Best wishes to Iceland."

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Birgitta Jonsdottir at Red Ice Radio

2010-02-13T09:28:00.000Z

An hour long interview with Birgitta Jónsdóttir at Red Ice Radio about the current situation in Iceland, IcesLave, the soft revolution in Iceland and how grassroots groups can band together in order to put pressure within establishments such as parliaments.

Icelandic mini doc about the financial crises

2010-02-04T10:36:00.000Z

I made this mini doc a year ago... explaining the reasons behind the total financial meltdown, trying to explain why the Icelandic people are so angry and how they made history by uniting against injustice faced by the government and the financial elite

Icelandic financial crises [HQ]

by Birgitta Jonsdottir (videos)

11:08

Iceland

An island in the North Atlantic oceans

Iceland - Nest for about 320.000 people

Iceland - Same size as the state of Kentucky

Iceland - Colony of Denmark until 1945

Iceland - Best known for the singer Bjork

Iceland - Also known for being the nation who elected the first woman in the world to be a president

Iceland - also known for strange and mystical landscape
Iceland - also known for its pristine nature

Until September 29th 2008 very few people cared for Iceland or even knew about it - however that was all about to change because
Iceland’s limited legacy changed from mystery to being the first country in the world to literary experience the bankruptcy - the total meltdown of corporation capitalism

When you google Iceland today you will get more information about the financial crises that brought one of the best off nations in the world to its knees
Unemployment has shot from less then 1% to 10% since October 2008

What happened one might ask in awe – how is it possible that all the newly privatized banks (6 years ago the nation owned all the major banks) got basically bankrupt and the nation had to take them back with debt beyond comprehension

No one knows yet the exact number of our national debt in the aftermath of the greatest financial blunder in the history of our world

Who is to blame for the fact that almost 70% of all companies are going under?
Who is to blame for us being driven back for decades?
Who is to blame for the fate of all the people who are loosing their savings, their homes, their work, their lives?

Birgitta guest at the Keiser Report

2010-02-04T10:29:00.000Z

Keiser speaks to Birgitta Jonsdottir, leader of The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament.

Birgitta guest at the Alex Jones Show

2010-02-03T00:37:00.001Z

It is time for the people of the world to join hands and start a real resistance towards the ocialization of Private debt. The Icelandic people are ready to say NO in a national referendum to taken on private debt left over by the banksters who brought the country to its knees in 2008 - will your nation be the next? Rise up against this injustice - there is no power in the world as mighty as the power of the masses.

Heroin-Economic Detox

2010-01-29T09:46:00.002Z

Author: Birgitta Jónsdóttir of Hreyfingin (The Movement)

Financial Crisis, Iceland, International Politics
Comparisons between Ireland and Iceland abound, but as recent events there show, the public response has been more vociferous to the injustice of the Icesave bailout. However, as political activist, poet, editor and member of the Icelandic parliament Birgitta Jónsdóttir shows here, Iceland is also like Ireland in that it is a small Island with a political elite that is far too close to a corrupt financial establishment.

Iceland founded Althing, the national parliament, in 930, making it one of the oldest parliamentary institutions in the world. Icelanders were free until 1262 but then we were submitted under the Norwegian Monarchy that lasted until 1400, after that we were ruled by Denmark and full independence wasn’t our reality until 1944. In order to understand Icelandic politics one has to compare it to nations who have claimed freedom from colonists. In many ways Icelandic politics are still coloured by legislation and functions of the old Monarchy. Our constitution is basically a copy/paste of the Danish constitution and it had become redundant a long time ago. Iceland’s population consists of only 320,000 people. This, of course, means we are a clan-based society which has resulted in nepotism of a high degree in politics.

The nation finally realised last year that a separation of the three branches of government is a mere illusion. Iceland is a state of political party leaders. It is subject to the dictatorship of a handful of political leaders. The separation of the three branches of government is disregarded, Althing has no power whatsoever. It’s merely a processing and handling institution for the executive power (the cabinet) and the appointment of judges is subject to the whims of those in power.

The financial meltdown
As a result of the total financial meltdown, old demands of increased democratic reform have been rekindled with more fervour then ever before. The country had not seen a government without the Independence Party for 18 years straight. The Independence party gradually shifted into neoliberal policies and the Progressive Party eventually became so weak that any chance of voice or reason was thwarted by what some consider as bribes, when it came to, for example the privatisation of the national banks a few years ago. As a result of the three banks collapsing, each earmarked to different political party, the Social Democrats, the Independence Party and the Progressive Party, a wave of anger erupted and resulted in a revolution a few months later. No other country was hit as dramatically as Iceland when the global financial crises hit the world in 2008. The staggering debt has left the country hovering at the edge of debt moratorium. Going from being classified as the 5th richest country in the world to a debt moratorium is leaving little room for maintaining the same social structure as before. The nation has to face either spending all its GDP in paying interest on foreign debt (in many cases originating from private debt rolled over to taxpayers) or claiming debt moratorium.

The public and the power of change
A left government has never ruled in Iceland, not until the pots and pans revolution in January 2009 drove the meltdown government from power. The Social Democrats were a part of that government but after the elections in April 2009 the Left Green Movement and a new political movement created shortly before the elections from a coalition of grassroots movements originated from the demand for social reform called the Civic Movement were considered the true winners of the election. The left parties could for the first time in Icelandic history form a majority government; and so they did. The name the government chose for itself was “Nordic welfare government”. That sounded like music to the ears of many Icelanders who had dreamed of living at times when left values were the core values of society. However it might have been a grave mistake for the SDA and LGM to take on running an economic program through the iron fist of the IMF, which indeed bases its program on everything *but* left values. It might have been a grave mistake to clean up the mess after the heroin economics practiced in Iceland for the last decade or so by the neoliberals of the Independence Party.

Is left really left?
The Social Democratic Alliance was created in the run-up to the parliamentary elections of 1999 as an alliance of the four left-wing parties that had existed in Iceland up till then: the Social Democratic Party, the People’s Alliance, the Women’s Alliance and the National Movement. The parties then formally merged in May 2000. The merger was a deliberate attempt to unify the entire centre left of Icelandic politics into one party capable of countering the right-wing Independence Party. The initial attempt failed however as a group of Althing representatives rejected the new party’s platform - which was inspired by that of Tony Blair’s New Labour Party - and broke away before the merger. They founded the Left-Green Movement, based on more traditional socialist values as well as environmental issues. Some MPs and Ministers from the Social Democratic Alliance have been heavily criticised for being more to the right then the neoliberals in the Independence Party.

The Left Greens have been criticised for abandoning all its major pre-election promises, such as being opposed to the application for EU membership. However, most of the Left Green MPs voted in favour of application last summer. The SDA said before elections that they were not willing to form a government with anyone unless they would support EU application. They also promised to help pave the way for more multinational heavy industry, mostly aluminium smelters for notorious corporations such as Rio Tinto. There has also been heavy criticism on this government for passing a budget that will erode many of the core values of the Icelandic welfare system, such as equality in health and education. The most banal poison pill this government decided to swallow was the Icesave bill. The way the left-wing government handled this case of transferring private debt to the taxpayers of Iceland has been a total failure from day one. First of all they refused to accept assistance from foreign experts in handling contracts for nations in a similar situation as Iceland. They did nothing to bring attention to the fact that the IMF program was blocked by the UK and Dutch governments and other EU member states.

The SD dream of being part of the EU family could be thwarted if they didn’t do as they were told at the dramatic ECOFIN meeting in November 2008. The £3.4 billion payout agreed upon to roll over to taxpayers is against the will of 70 per cent of the nation. Just the interest payments of the Icesave bailout will suck up income tax from 80,000 taxpayers in Iceland every year for at least seven years.

It will place Iceland in the same position as developing nations who spend all their GDP paying interest of foreign debt typically created by dictators. The reason why this is such a hot potato in Iceland is that the government has still not made enough effort to freeze the assets of the people responsible for this unbearable debt. The people responsible are still living in luxury while we now have three per cent of the nation relying on churches and independent welfare organisations to feed them. And it is only going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

The Minister of Health Ogmundur Jonasson resigned recently because of the way his government handled the Icesave saga with, according to him, intolerable tendency to secrecy and emotional blackmail. The neoliberals are to blame for the mess in Iceland. All extremes in politics tend to have terrible results for the nations whom are naive enough to elect that sort of power to govern their social structure. Perhaps it really is time for those that claim to be left parties in Iceland to have a long hard look at what is really left of the left wing politics in their parties. The trend for confusion as to what are left wing policies within the Social Democratic Alliance is contributed to largely by seeking inspiration from the British Labour Party during the era of Blair. It created a deep impact on left policies and politics in Iceland. The opinion of many people is that the Blair leftism has very little to do with left wing policies. Perhaps now is the time in Iceland to look beyond traditional political lines and seek some sort of consensus on what all parties need to work together towards in order to pull us out the mess we are in.

Iceland politics in major political crises
One of the nosiest cries for change during the times of the revolution in January 2009 was for social reform such as the possibility for the general public to call for a national referendum. Another one was to be able to vote in a similar fashion as they vote in Ireland, a single transferable voting system. The nation also wants to have a general constitutional convention for the people, not the politicians. All the parties promised, pre-election, to listen to these demands yet all of the bills proposed by the government are still collecting dust in committees. There is turmoil in all the political parties; power struggles have made their mark on all the parties. The Left Green Party in on the verge of loosing some its key MPs if they carry on sacrificing their ideals and policy in order to hold on to power. There are two towers battling for idealistic power within the party and today it doesn’t look like they will be able to keep it together for much longer. All this political turmoil is quite natural in a total meltdown and crises like the island is going through. There will be without doubt a few new government coalitions before the dust has settled. The financial meltdown was much more then just a financial shock for the island nation. It revealed in a shocking way the deep-rooted problems of nepotism and the weakness of parliament.

What next?
As I am writing this article (5th of January 2010) historical events have been unfolding yet again on the island.

The Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson chose to listen to the 23 per cent of the nation who signed a petition calling on him to put the state guarantee for £3.4 billion to be paid to the British and Dutch governments to a national referendum. The bill was passed through the parliament with a narrow vote on December 30, 2009 after months of acrimonious debate, tainted with secrecy and dishonesty on the part of the government. Every day throughout the debate, new controversial information would emerge and documents would leak on a regular basis to local media or wikileaks. Finally, the people of Iceland have a chance to have something to say about their fate. On January 5th 2010 the Icelandic president had the courage, backed up by his nation, to place the interest of the people before that of the banks.

On 1st of February the report from a Special Investigation Commission established by the Icelandic Parliament will be published. The Commission’s mandate has been to seek the truth relating to the events leading to, and the causes of, the downfall of the Icelandic banks, and related events. The head of the committee said to the press last August that no other committee in our history would have to bring the nation as bad news as the committee he chairs. Speculation is that many political leaders and politicians from all parties will have to face the blues except the Left Greens and the Movement. This could mean that there would have to be general elections again this year. Many fear that the Independence Party will regain its strength on the political arena - they are already gaining following in polls. One thing is for sure - these are interesting times in Iceland, politically and socially. The nation seems to be awakening to its responsibility of co-creating the social structure it wants to live in. The nation has been forced to rethink its values and morals, consumerism is no longer the core value. However, values of self sustainability, family and compassion are emerging as the cornerstones in our society.

Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a party group chairperson for The Movement (Hreyfingin), a member of the Icelandic parliament, activist and a poet.

This article was originally published in the most recent issue of the Scottish Left Review (issue 56, Jan 2010). The SLR is a monthly political journal which explores Scottish and International politics from a radical perspective. They have invited contributions from left-wing activists in a number countries, including Ireland, to see how the left is responding in similar situations. There will be at least one of these contributions published per issue throughout 2010.

Cry from the Heart

2010-01-29T00:54:00.002Z

from a series of poems i wrote a few years ago - thinking of war and war again - internal and external.

part I

Tears run impulsively
bitter sea of colossal grief
cluster-bomb in my heart
for every life taken

Who are we to act like a force of nature
Self destruction the distinctive human trait

Holocaust created
not once
but NOW

Revenge
abort the revenge

The USA, the UK and Israel
Holy triangle of doom

Their bloody footprints left in
Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Iran, Tibet, Tchechenia, Cuba, Columbia, Nicaragua, Venezuela

Fear not the Arabs
Fear not the "Terrorists"
Fear not the Communists
Fear not the tree huggers
Fear the triangle of righteous doom
Fear the glorification of the apocalypse
Fear the mass consumerism
Fear the leaches who suck in and spit out
this planets energy

Doomsday in the heart
Doomsday in the mind
as the Inconvenient truth
about the destruction
the genocides
the mutilations
the endangered species
flow out like 1000 wounds

Will it heal
Will this heart ever beat again
this heart of hope
for humanity
As it heads towards glorious self destruction
yet again

part II

I feel your pain
I feel your pain
I feel your pain

Bombs, limbs, blood, tears, death, grief, anxiety, hatred, revenge, bullets, spit, split, tormented, crippled, infested, pain, fear

Bombs, limbs, blood, tears, death, grief, anxiety, hatred, revenge, bullets, spit, split, tormented, crippled, infested, pain, fear

I feel your pain
I feel your pain
I feel your pain

in my marrow

part III

Despair
rivers of despair
wounds
oceans of pain

Patriarch
Matriarch
ism
ism
ism

Means nothing to me
nothing at all

Flesh, blood, earth, dirt, gravel, sand
and that single yellow flower on that highland hearth
drowned in the silt of greed

This time
the times are changing
Into a dream of universal
equality

Please
don't look the other way
We are the same

I feel the pain

I feel the hope
This eternal ethnic bond
with each grain of sand
each grain of blood
infusion of humanity
Please let me be you
Feel your pain
Feel your healing

I move with her breath
within this planets womb

What are we
Aliens on this Earth
Parasites
Are we controlled by the external or internal parasite
of duality
of Heaven and Hell
Who made this hell
Who can undo what has been done
only you only me only us

part IV

I feel your pain
I feel your pain
I feel your pain

compassion, hope, joy, love, peace, light, abundance, oneness,
compassion, compassion, love, joy, rejoice
compassion, hope, joy, love, peace, light, abundance, oneness,
compassion, compassion, love, joy, rejoice

I feel your hope
I feel your hope
I feel your hope

magnifying

in my marrow

Living dead or alive

Every day I think about
all these people
dead or alive
So far away
yet so close
Missing them
–a state of mind

My desire for touch
is purly physical
To run fingers through thick hair
To hear familiar voices

I don't fear death
I fear the fact I don't fear it

I fear to be living dead
the walls close in around me
Six feet under in the daily routine

I fear to be living dead
That I cease to see the beauty
all around me
and the fact that life is
a countinious
miracle machine

You are the system change

2010-01-25T05:50:00.003Z

honesty the virtue
we want to see
as above so below
the result from the moral financial system collapse

we want a system transformation

NOT
system adjustment

heads of state abuse your honesty as their shield of lies
for the sake of protecting

you

what are you waiting for
the streets are empty
and silent

of
you

be the system change

Save the people of Iceland!

2010-01-17T01:11:00.001Z

Save the people of Iceland!

Posted using ShareThis

Open Letter: Support Iceland Against the Financial Blackmail of the British and Dutch Governments and the IMF

2010-01-12T21:16:00.003Z

: Birgitta Jónsdóttir is a spokesperson for The Movement.

January 5, 2010 is a historical day for Icelanders. The Icelandic President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson had a tough decision to make, and difficult choices to make. To listen to the 23% of the nation that signed a petition calling on him to put the state guarantee for 5.4 billion dollars to be paid to the British and Dutch governments to a national referendum. Or to ignore the nation and sign the bill for the government, after the bill had been passed through the parliament with a narrow vote on December 30, 2009 after months of acrimonious debate, tainted with secrecy and dishonesty on the part of the government. Every day throughout the debate, new information would emerge and documents would leak to local media or wikileaks.Yesterday, the people of Iceland finally had a chance to have something to say about their fate, because if the state guarantee is accepted it will mean that Iceland will become like a third world country, spending its GDP largely on paying interest on foreign debt. Last summer, a bill for a state guarantee was passed that had a significant meaning not only for Iceland, but also for other nations around the world facing the same problems of private debt being forced on taxpayers.The bill included a reasonable and fair way of handling the interest and the debt: Icelanders would pay, but only a certain percentage of their GDP, and if there were to be another financial black hole, they would not pay during that time. Thus it comes as no surprise that the Dutch and British governments reacted so swiftly with a condemnation of Iceland’s citizens for having the audacity to think they have the right to exercise their democratic rights in deciding for themselves what is in the best economic interests of their nation.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.Of course there has been an incredible spin by the government controlled media, attacking the nation and the president for this simple and fair demand. The UK and Dutch media were also full of misleading news, saying the nation had demanded not to pay, and that we would become isolated and there were even suggestions that the British navy should flex its muscles against this nation which has no military. As if the terrorist act they imposed on us was not enough during the darkest hour of our crises to bring us further down!The spin is failing because people around the world are finally starting to hear our side of the story, and other suppressed nations have perhaps seen this as a sign that they can also rise up against the corpocracy in our world where those with the money have as a rule always won. Let’s hope the nation will not been coaxed into fear of isolation and let’s hope the people of the world will join in this experiment of letting the interest of the peoples rise above the interests of banks, corporations, and international bullies such as the IMF. We need your support. I will soon issue a comprehensive report on the entire Icesave saga.Love and rage from Iceland

Birgitta Jónsdóttir

Party group chairman for The Movement in the Icelandic Parliament

Icelandic perspective of weather

2010-01-12T21:04:00.000Z

EU, IMF Revolt: Iceland and Latvia May Lead the Way

2009-12-21T14:49:00.001Z

Ellen Hodgson Brown, J.D.

www.webofdebt.com/articles

December 7, 2009

Total financial collapse, once a problem only for developing countries, has now come to Europe. The International Monetary Fund is imposing its “austerity measures” on Iceland and Eastern Europe, with Latvia the hardest hit of the “Baltic Tigers.” But these are not your ordinary third world debtor supplicants. Historically, the Vikings of Iceland repeatedly repulsed British invaders; and Latvian tribes repulsed even the Vikings. If anyone can stand up to the IMF, these stalwart northern warriors can; and today they might even find an ally in each other.

Dozens of countries have defaulted on their debts in recent decades, the most recent being Dubai, which declared a debt moratorium on November 26, 2009. If the once lavishly-rich Arab emirate can default, more desperate countries can; and when the alternative is to destroy the local economy, it is hard to argue that they shouldn’t. That is particularly true when the legal grounds for imposing the creditors’ claims on the government are highly questionable. Both Iceland and Latvia have been saddled with responsibility for private obligations to which they were not parties. Economist Michael Hudson writes:

“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 . . . but also toward the neoliberal foreign advisors and creditors who pressured these governments to sell off the banks and public infrastructure to insiders.”

Eva Joly, a Norwegian-French magistrate hired to investigate the Icelandic bank collapse, calls it blackmail. As a condition for receiving IMF loans and membership in the European Union, Iceland is being required to endorse an agreement in which it would reimburse Dutch and British depositors who lost money in the collapse of IceSave, an offshore division of Iceland’s leading private bank. But these are not debts the government is legally bound to assume; and Joly warns that succumbing to the EU’s demands will drain Iceland of its resources and its people, who are being forced to emigrate to find work.

Iceland’s economy contracted by 7.2% during the third quarter, the biggest fall on record. Latvia forecasts a 17.5% decline in the economy this year, with major cutbacks in public spending. As in other countries squeezed by neo-liberal tourniquets on productivity, employment and output are being crippled, bringing these economies to their knees.

The cynical view is that that may have been the intent. Instead of helping post-Soviet nations develop self-reliant economies, writes Marshall Auerback, “the West has viewed them as economic oysters to be broken up to indebt them in order to extract interest charges and capital gains, leaving them empty shells.”

But Iceland and Latvia could call the bluff of the IMF and EU, following the lead of Argentina in 2001. In the face of dire predictions that the economy would collapse without foreign credit, in 2001 it defied its creditors and simply walked away from its debts. By the fall of 2004, three years after a record default on a debt of more than $100 billion, the country was well on the road to recovery; and it achieved this feat without foreign help. The economy grew by 8 percent for 2 consecutive years. Exports increased, the currency was stable, investors were returning, and unemployment had eased. “This is a remarkable historical event, one that challenges 25 years of failed policies,” said economist Mark Weisbrot in a 2004 interview quoted in The New York Times. “While other countries are just limping along, Argentina is experiencing very healthy growth with no sign that it is unsustainable, and they’ve done it without having to make any concessions to get foreign capital inflows.”

To find the money for its remarkable development, Argentina did not need foreign investors. It issued its own money and credit through its own central bank. Earlier, when the national currency collapsed completely in 1995 and again after 2000, Argentine local governments issued local bonds that traded as currency. Provinces paid their employees with paper receipts called “Debt-Cancelling Bonds” that were in currency units equivalent to the Argentine Peso. The bonds canceled the provinces’ debts to their employees and could be spent in the community. The provinces had actually “monetized” their debts, turning their bonds into legal tender.

Issuing and lending currency is the sovereign right of governments, and it is a right that Iceland and Latvia will lose if they join the EU, which forbids member nations to borrow from their own central banks. Latvia and Iceland both have natural resources that could be developed if they had the credit to do it; and with sovereign control over their local currencies, they could get that credit simply by creating it on the books of their own publicly-owned banks.

In fact, there is nothing extraordinary in that proposal. All private banks get the credit they lend simply by creating it on their books. Contrary to popular belief, banks do not lend their own money or their depositors’ money. As the U.S. Federal Reserve attests, banks lend new money, created by double-entry bookkeeping as a deposit of the borrower on one side of the bank’s books and as an asset of the bank on the other.

Besides thawing frozen credit pipes, credit created by governments has the advantage that it can be issued interest-free. Eliminating the cost of interest can cut production costs dramatically. For a discussion of some new technologies that could make even small countries self-sufficient, see David Blume, Alcohol Can Be a Gas.

For the full text of this article, see www.webofdebt.com/articles.

Ellen Brown is a California attorney and the author of eleven books, including “Web of Debt: The Shocking Truth About Our Money System and How We Can Break Free,” available in English, Swedish and German. Her websites are www.webofdebt.com and www.ellenbrown.com.