Iceland vs Gordon Brown

Iceland vs Gordon Brown

By Dark Politricks

If you follow me on twitter at @darkpolitricks you will know I have just had a few days in Iceland. It was on my bucket list of things to do before I die and I had some cash so why not. I just wish I brought a video camera or better camera as the amount of rants I heard from taxi drivers about Gordon Browns actions during the Icelandic banking collapse could have filled 60+ minutes.

I had to get taxis as standing around in minus 10C waiting for a bus that will most likely drive past you isn't much fun. However I am glad I did. Not only was every single taxi driver able to speak perfect English but they are on the ball when it comes to politics, international relations and how the world really works.

Every single person I talked to was sick to the teeth of Gordon Browns action to use anti-terrorism laws to freeze Icelandic money in British banks. Not only did this help worsen the economic crisis in Iceland but it made the Icelandic people think they had been betrayed by a friend and ally.

If you don't know, Iceland kept the Brits alive during World War II by sending over fish for us to eat whilst all our trans Atlantic ships were being destroyed by German U-Boats. A little known fact is that per capita, Iceland lost the most people in the war, more than Russia, more than the Jews and more than the USA and UK combined. They only have a population of 320,000 (now), so a lot less back then, so you can see how many a few thousand people's deaths would compare to the total population.

Iceland suffered their economic crisis between October 2008 and the 31 August 2011, which was the day where the international bailout support programme led by the IMF officially ended.

The economic crisis revolved around a few Icelandic banks which were offering stupidly high rates of interest which attracted many foreign investors including many UK local authorities. Our dear leader of the time, Gordon Brown, had told them to invest their money in the highest paying interest accounts they could find. The Icelandic banks were offering high rates and were thus used by many.

The problem was that these rates of interest were totally unrealistic and there was no security for screw ups. In the UK we get up to £85,000 protected if the bank goes bust. So the Government bails small account holders out up to that sum. However Iceland failed to do this for foreign investors and it sent Brown and co fuming.

Every taxi driver I spoke to said that anyone with half a brain cell could see these banks high interest schemes would fail in the end and they eventually did. However Gordon Brown was having none of it. The UK along with the Dutch, demanded that Iceland pay back all the monies owed with interest or they would be thrown out the IMF.

Gordon Brown froze any Icelandic money in UK banks and used anti-terrorism laws to do so. This prompted the Iceland's prime minister Geir Haarde to call it "a completely unfriendly act" and was disgusted that a supposedly friendly nation was calling their country terrorists.

More than 25% of the Icelandic population (over 80,000 people) signed an online petition called "Icelanders are not terrorists". The UK responded by cancelling its scheduled patrol of the Icelandic airspace in December 2008. As Iceland has no standing army of its own it relies on other NATO nations to take turns in protecting it. The UK pulled out of this agreement leaving Iceland vulnerable to attack.

Iceland basically stuck two fingers up at these threats, kicked their whole government out when they seemed to bend over to the demands and took matters into their own hands by voting in a coalition government led by the Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green Movement.

They even won a court case in the court of the European Free trade Area, when the UK and Holland took Iceland to court over the failure to payback depositors in the failed banks. The court ruled on the 29th January 2013 in favour of the Icelandic banks and saved the country from having to pay back billions to foreign savers.

The EFTA court dismissed an application by the EFTA surveillance authority, which claimed that Iceland had failed to comply with an obligation to ensure compensation of a minimum €20,000 to Icesave depositors in the UK and Netherlands. Over €6.7 billion was owed to UK and Dutch investors and whilst the UK paid back the investors out of their own tax payers money, they then demanded that Iceland was to pay back the money to them.

However logic and reason won the day and when Iceland's President's Olafur Grimsson refused to sign an amended law on repayment he forced a national referendum on the issue and 94% of Icelanders rejected the move to payback the cash.

The judges have sided with Iceland in the matter and it was plainly obvious that the rates of interest were unsustainable and a payback to foreign depositors was unfeasible. The Iceland banks are actually paying back some of the money by selling off assets so that people won't lose out - it is just the unrealistic rates of interest that won't be given back to savers.

At the time the crisis resulted in massive migration from Iceland yet Iceland's economy stabilized under the government of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, and GDP actually grew by 1.6% in 2012. However many Icelanders remained unhappy with the state of the economy and government austerity policies. In 2013 they voted back in the same people who were in power during the crisis, the centre-right Independence Party but in coalition with the Progressive Party.

Relative to the size of its economy, Iceland’s systemic banking collapse was the largest suffered by any country in history. The amount of money owed by the 3 Icelandic banks taken into national ownership was equal to more than 11 times Icelandic GDP.

They also threw a load of banksters into prison - can you see a trend here? These people included:

• Baldur Guðlaugsson, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, who was sentenced to two years probation by the District Court of Reykjavík for insider trading.
• Aron Karlsson was sentenced to 2 years in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for defrauding Arion Bank in real estate dealings.
• Lárus Welding, CEO of Glitnir, and Guðmundur Hjaltason, Managing Director of Corporate Banking of Glitnir, were sentenced to 9 months in prison by the District Court of Reykjavík for a major breach of trust.
• Friðfinnur Ragnar Sigurðsson, Glitnir employee, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the District Court of Reykjanes for insider trading.
• Styrmi Þór Bragason, President of MP Bank, was sentenced to 1 year in prison by the Supreme Court for breach of trust.

The other thing to note is that whilst Ireland and Greece are now suffering like hell due to their Governments subservience to the banksters and their German EU masters Iceland is recovering well.

Instead of loading future generations up to the eyeballs with huge debt, and suffering serve austerity like many European countries Iceland is well on the way to recovery.

They have had one of the fastest economic recoveries on record. They stuck to their guns and told the banksters to fuck off. This is a lesson others should follow.


GDP of Nordic countries including Iceland from 2000 to 2007

Not only do the Icelandic people do things their way, but they are the leaders in the world for press freedom and Internet freedom.

Everywhere I went, whether it was the airport, the bus from the airport, the hotel, pubs, clubs or restaurants, all had free WI-FI. No logons just Internet access wherever I went, it was great.

No wonder many companies who don't want hassle from the NSA/GCHQ nexus of spy bitches base their servers there. It's just a shame we are sucking data straight from cables and main routers and until other countries build their own Internet infrastructure the axis of spying will continue to do so.

It is also not coincidence that the owner of Lavabit, who closed his business rather than succumb to threats to spy on his customers, was told by his lawyers that Iceland was one place he could move to and setup his business to escape NSA spying and Security Letters.

You can watch his interview on RT.com below.


The fact that anti-terrorism laws were used and abused by Gordon Brown shows that their true intention was nothing to do with terror but more to do with control over people.

The same laws were used to attack an 82 year man who dared protest the Iraq war during a Labour conference. Walter Wolfgang was dragged out of the conference for daring to heckle Jack Straw and detained under the terrorism act in 2005. They were also repeatedly used by the previous Labour government to detain and question tourists and other photographers "daring" to take photos of London landmarks.

Gordon Brown was only following in the foot steps of Tony Blair, the war mongerer who took us into 4 wars, destroyed many civil liberties and did more to destroy the picture of Labour as the "peoples party" than any other Prime Minister in recent years.

However whilst the UK is languishing in debt, the Greeks are begging on the streets and the Irish are cutting back services and trying to find ways to pay back their own banking debts the Icelandic people are doing just fine.

If you don't mind the cold, enjoy beautiful women and scenery then Iceland is one place to definitely consider going. Not only is everyone friendly but they all speak English and everyone I met was a good laugh. The fact that booze is so expensive yet the Icelandic people knock it back in gallons from 10pm to 6 am most nights must indicate that people are being paid enough to have a good time.

So whilst I had to apologise for my Governments behaviour constantly, I also let the Icelandic people know we also hated the Labour Government just as much as they do.

The fact that we are still suffering under many of Labours big brother laws, and that the farcical Protection of Freedoms Bill which promised so much when a Lib Dem idea yet turned into a "freedom from wheelclamping" bill just goes to show that none of our current political parties can be trusted when it comes to protecting our civil liberties and hard-won rights.

So just remember the next time the Daily Mail or Sun attacks the EU Human Rights Act or our PM threatens to pull out of it. We invented the thing in the first place after the 2nd world war. On top of that these rights protect you and me as well as the tiny minority of Jihadists the papers like to trot out as examples of the bill's failure. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater is the appropriate saying!

We don't have a written Bill of Rights like the American's (not that it seems to be doing much to help them anymore) so we must take what we can.

Until we get our own Bill of Rights and proper protection of free speech, without journalists boyfriends being detained at airports for revealing the massive spying our Government does on us, we should be happy for anyone who sticks up for our liberty.

The Icelandic people saw us as friends. When Gordon Brown froze their money it made it hard for them to import goods and prices shot up in their country. His act did more to harm them than the banking crisis in the first place.

The fact that a court sided with them just shows that he was in the wrong and they were right to ignore his demands.

Well done Iceland.

View the original article Why Icelandic people hate Gordon Brown at darkpolitricks.com.

Do you have to be a dead journalist nowadays to be considered a real one?

Do you have to be a dead journalist nowadays to be considered a real one?

By Dark Politricks

It seems that 2013 has been the year that the Empire finally threw away any semblance of liberty and free speech and decided to go for broke in its attack on all those who dare speak truth to power. They sure have been cranking the screws on anyone who speaks out against them in the last few months.

Just this week we have had David Miranda, the partner of Glenn Greenwald, held and robbed by UK authorities all under the guise of anti terrorism laws at Heathrow airport.

Once again this is another abuse of this law by the UK government. However this is to be expected as the UK government doesn't exactly have a good record on it's implentation.

If you can remember the Brown government mis-used the law when he froze Icelandic bank accounts during their banking crisis. Oh and of course there was the Blair governments arrest of the 82-year-old anti Iraq war protestor Walter Wolfgang who was dragged out of the Labour conference for heckling Jack Straw.

Plus our new anti terrorism acts (2000 and 2006) have been used to detain arrestees for up to 28 days without charge, restricted the right to protest and limited free speech in many areas all whilst giving our police new powers to stop and search people they think "could be" terrorists. These groups mainly consist of people who take photographs of policemen or London landmarks, or it seems the partners of journalists breaking stories on illegal surveillance by the state.

It seems the UK's implementation of anti terrorism laws has been used more to chill dissent and increase the polices power to abuse due process rather than to attack true terrorists. How hypocritical it is that we attack whistleblowers and journalists whilst fund and support al-Nusra Front jihadists and al-Qaeda linked LIFG rebels in our game of chess in the Middle East.

It shames me to be a Brit when we suck up to the USA in this way.

It seems we are so desperate for American money to keep the cogs running in our GCHQ super computers that we will bend over backwards anyway possible to help the US attack their own "domestic extremists".

We will do anything from detaining and robbing the partners of reporters who break stories on massive NSA surveillance or manning a 24 siege of the building in which another whistleblower is hiding out.

I wouldn't be surprised if I woke up tomorrow and heard on the news that David Cameron had authorised a drone strike on the Ecuadorian embassy and killed Julian Assange.

It sure would make the COINTELPRO littered US "press" happy to hear of his death. A certain Michael Grunwald would certainly love to write that particular obituary.

Again the Terrorism Act from 2000 was used to detain Glenn Greenwalds partner, a dubious use of the law at the very least and one which Glenn promises revenge on the UK government. I don't doubt he has many more secrets about the cosy affair between GCHQ and the NSA to reveal but he surely must be worried about the climate which now surrounds any journalist willing to go head to head with the beast.

Would the USA stoop to such levels as to actually dispatch with pesky journalists who reveal state secrets from whistleblowers?

Some people already believe this has been the case for years.

Recently we had the mysterious death of Michael Hastings who died in a mysterious car crash after going on the run due to fears he had about a story he was working on.

Apparently top US Army officials told the Rolling Stone journalist that he would be hunted down and killed over his story that lead to General McChrystal’s downfall and he was apparently working on a massive story concerning the CIA. This was all before he warned friends he had to go off the radar due to worries about his safety and then surprisingly his car exploded in an unusual accident.

With recent revelations that DARPA or anyone else with the skills can hack into computers on board cars nowadays it doesn't seem so far-fetched to believe he was taken out by some agency annoyed with his work. With computers controlling everything from dishwashers to cars and with NSA/GCHQ super computers able to pinpoint phones and GPS co-ordinates in real-time it wouldn't take a genius in this day and age with the right software to do some damage with a few keystrokes.

Got a webcam on your PC? Well just hope it's just your friends watching your pretty face from afar and not an NSA nerd or even your local school!

Then there was the case of Gary Webb who was found dead in an apparent suicide in 2000 apparently from "multiple gun shots to the head", an common way to kill yourself it seems for journalists and whistleblowers.

Gary Webb was the reporter who had famously broke the story about the CIA running guns to the Contra's and drugs back to the states. It was the CIA's coke that started the Los Angeles crack wars in the 80's and made a certain CIA owned drug dealer Ricky “Freeway Ricky” Ross very rich. It was his story that led to the black community and the NAACP trying to get congressional hearings held into the allegations.

Bary Seal, one of the CIA's drug running pilots was also famously found pumped full of bullets after threatening to expose the same CIA drug running scam that had the Bush families finger prints all over it. Even after his car had been sweeped "clean" by the personal phone number of a certain then Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush was found in his possession!

The Colombian drug dealers convicted of the crime believed they working for a certain Oliver North and the fingerprints that led to the Iran Contra scandal and Mena drug operation that link nearly everyone in the Bush family to Bill Clinton were all over the hit.

So it wouldn't be a total shock after the history of covert assassinations to hear on the news one day that Glenn Greenwald had been found dead along with his partner David. Probably after a heated argument overhead by an anonymous caller to the police. The official story would be that Glenn was found dead, supposedly having committed suicide after first killing his partner. Of course he would have shot himself three or four times in the head just to make sure of course.

Therefore if I was Glenn I would be slightly wary about waging all out war on the US/US axis of war. Of course he is well within his rights to do so and I wish he brings the whole house down if he possibly can, however it is clear he has been marked by the powers that be.

Co-opted and "owned" mainstream personalities have attacked him and even suggested he be arrested for his work with Edward Snowden.  David Gregory from Meet the Press asked why Glenn shouldn't be charged with a crime for aiding his source Snowden in revealing NSA secrets and CNBC host Andrew Ross Rokin also suggested that Greenwald should be arrested.

And those are just a few of the debates Glenn is having online with numerous, and obvious, Government paid spokesmen. All these propagandists for the Empire who read from scripts handed to them by the NSA/CIA are not real journalists and their attacks on Glenn just prove that the US media can no longer be trusted to hold anything to account, let alone the Government.

It seems a sad state of affairs when you cannot be considered a real journalist unless you are running in fear from the Government and their partners across the globe.

Is it really a choice between breaking a really major story such as the CIA drug smuggling, NSA spying, or US war crimes and then ending up dead, looking for asylum or locked up in a military prison for years?

All the while talking heads get paid millions just to parrot official stories and take the Governments word on everything. It must be hard to look in the mirror when you call yourself a journalist but don't dare put your head above the parapet.

"Everything's ok, just keep shopping", they say as the world burns and the constitution continues to be shredded piece by piece.

What a choice it has become. To be paid millions for toeing the line and having no moral fibre at all, or dare speak truth to power and risk two in the head or a life on the run.

View the original article Do you have to be a harassed journalist nowadays to be considered a real one? at darkpolitricks.com