

The silent icelandic revolution the media don't tell you about - chmike
http://www.aljunnah.com/2011/02/the-other-revolution-of-iceland/

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henrikschroder
What a fantastic example of author bias.

Just because a large amount of the population takes to the streets, and just
because the government resigns, it's not a revolution. A revolution means that
the people are trying to change the form of government, which is absolutely
not what happened. An overwhelming majority of the Icelandic are perfectly
happy with their current form of a liberal, western, parliamentary republic.

The result of the protests was that the government resigned, held a re-
election, and put the icesave bill to a referendum. There's absolutely nothing
revolutionary about this, this is exactly how our liberal democracies are
supposed to work.

But if you're from a region where there aren't any liberal democracies, I can
understand why a reporter would write this funnily biased piece, drawing
parallells between the actual protests and revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt,
and the protests in Iceland.

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dazzawazza
Given the stress that the Icelandic people were put under it is a credit to
them and their democracy that there wasn't more violence.

The media in the UK covered the 'revolution' closely because of the many ties
between the two countries. I can imagine most people in the middle east know
little or nothing about Iceland so why would the media cover ten thousand
people standing peacefully in the cold outside a parliament building making
reasonable demands.

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phamilton
This feels hardly readable. Anyone else having a lot of difficulty with the
English here?

~~~
samuel1604
Yeah I didn't understand much the article as well...

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gardarh
As an Icelander I must say this article is terribly poorly written. I don't
really understand what this silent revolution is about. Generally speaking, if
a "revolution" isn't discussed by any media outlet and cannot be found on
Google (in a country where government censorship essentially does not exist)
I'd say that it isn't just silent, it simply doesn't exist.

There was never a referendum on whether banks should be recapitalized or not,
they simply were recapitalized. However there was a referendum on the Icesave
deal (about terms of repayments of deposits of UK/Dutch depositors into an
Icelandic bank) after the president was petitioned not to agree with the
parliament decision to do so. The president formally has power to do this but
no president acted on it until the incumbent one in 2004 (50 years after
Iceland became a sovereign state) and again in 2010 regarding the Icesave
deal. This deal is actually quite different from what the Irish government is
currently doing by saving its bank system, the old Icelandic banks did go into
bankruptcy in 2008 have since been restarted as new institutions partly owned
by the government and partly by the old bankrupt estates. The deal is about
sovereign political responsibility and having a national referendum about it
is quite paradoxical in my view since the end result is basically asking: Do
you want to pay a great deal of money or not?

Of course the matter is more complicated than that. And is subject to lengthy
spin-filled bullshit ridden politics.

About the constituent assembly: It was supposed to have already started but
due to legal issues in the elections it hasn't started yet and is in a bit of
a limbo. The matter of this assembly is, of course, quite political as well.

Finally, the exaggerated comments on "capitalism" and "communism" in the
article are very exaggerated. Iceland has conventionally been a nordic welfare
state with a strong healthcare system, public school system, etc. The
atmosphere before 2008 was leaning towards the right but shifted a bit to the
left after the big bank collapse. It feels to me it's shifting back to the
right now as people realize that huge tax hikes aren't that great either.

Bottom line: this article is terrible, poorly written and not very
informative. I don't really understand how it got any attention on HN.

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mahmud
Why are we citing an article on a militant Jihadi website? I'm sorry, but
since when is HN an outlet for crackpot militant religious groups?

P.S. Whoever pens that site doesn't quite grok Islam. Says "there are no
copyrights in Islam" in all footers. Without copyright, or at least
attribution, there wouldn't be Islam today (i.e. the Sunnah is all citations
that would collapse if unattributed.)

~~~
fwdbureau
Not sure why you've been downvoted here, you make a valid remark. I'm pretty
sure the flag on this site's logo is the flag of the jihad. Since that wave of
'revolutions' in the middle east has started, a lot of disinformation has been
spreading, and some wolves seem to be hiding behind the cute flock of sheep.
It wouldn't hurt to care of where we're picking our news from, and take
everything with a pinch of salt

~~~
mahmud
You need not quote revolution: it's real. And Jihadis have NOTHING to do with
the Arab Spring. They would rather kill strangers in strange lands, instead of
actually rising up against their own despots.

Saudi Arabia funds them, and you heard what the fuckwit Mufti said about the
Egyptian uprising: he said Mubarak is the rightful rules of the soil and
Muslims must obey him.

Muslim people have woken up to the lies of the Islamists.

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sliverstorm
Has anybody killed anybody or threatened to kill anybody?

No?

Yeah, I wouldn't count on the media paying much attention.

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fleitz
Is this in regards to the Icesave bill?
[http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2011/02/16/iceland-
parliamen...](http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2011/02/16/iceland-parliament-
votes-yes-on-icesave-repayment-bill/#more-21234)

It looks like something much different is happening than what is described in
the article. I'm highly skeptical of the claims in this article. It seems
light on facts and heavy on opinion.

~~~
thefreshteapot
* it has taken a long time to get to this stage.

* the first version "the people" rejected, imagine that in UK.

* they ultimately have to pay (not by choice)

* notice how they plan on forcing the banks to pay for it (yes most owned by the government) not by taxing their people who have already suffered.

