Iceland: Sign of What's To Come?

[Annie]

Gunny posted something earlier regarding recession or depression? Right now seems to depend on where one occupies space. Since late summer/early fall it's been known Iceland is in serious trouble, so how are they handling it?

World Agenda: riots in Iceland, Latvia and Bulgaria are a sign of things to come - Times Online

January 21, 2009
World Agenda: riots in Iceland, Latvia and Bulgaria are a sign of things to come
Our third global political column explores the start of an age of rebellion over the financial crisis - beginning in Iceland

Icelanders all but stormed their Parliament last night. It was the first session of the chamber after what might appear to be an unusually long Christmas break.

Ordinary islanders were determined to vent their fury at the way that the political class had allowed the country to slip towards bankruptcy. The building was splattered with paint and yoghurt, the crowd yelled and banged pans, fired rockets at the windows and lit a bonfire in front of the main door. Riot police moved in....

...Governments have so far managed to deflect attention from their role in the crash, their slipshod monitoring, by declaring themselves to be indispensible to the solution. This may save the skins of politicians in wealthier countries who can credibly and expensively try to prop up banks and sickly industries. But it does not work in countries that are heavily indebted, with bloated and exposed financial sectors. There, the irate crowds are already beginning to demand: why hasn’t a single politician resigned? What has happened to ministerial responsibility? Who will investigate government failure?

Good questions, it seems to me, in these unquiet times.

 

[waltky]

Turning swords into plowshares...

Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland?
16 May 2013 - Iceland is awash in guns, yet it has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. US law student Andrew Clark asks why.

Even though I grew up in New England, there was something novel about seeing an Icelandic blizzard. It was paralysing, with epic wind gusts that made snowflakes feel like razors. As I dragged my bags along Reykjavik's snowy pavement, an older man in a Jeep pulled alongside me. "You want to get in?" he asked. It sounded crazy. Why would I ever get in a stranger's car? Despite everything I was taught about riding in cars with strangers, I climbed in the backseat. And I knew nothing bad was going to happen to me. After all, I was in Iceland for a week to study the nation's lack of crime, my second trip there in six months.

I had spent the last three years in Boston at Suffolk University Law School, where I was studying international law. Before my first visit to Reykjavik in August 2012, my law school thesis was settled - a study of cyber warfare and the Geneva conventions. But a week in Iceland changed my perspective. I was pleasantly flummoxed by what I saw. Violent crime was virtually non-existent. People seemed relaxed about their safety and that of their children to the point where parents left their babies outside and unattended. I'd spent time in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, but those countries now appeared plagued with crime by comparison.

Once I got back to America, I changed my thesis topic. I wanted to know what Iceland was doing right. Frankly, there is no perfect answer as to why Iceland has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. According to the 2011 Global Study on Homicide by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Iceland's homicide rate between 1999-2009 never went above 1.8 per 100,000 population on any given year. On the other hand, the US had homicide rates between 5.0 and 5.8 per 100,000 population during that same stretch.

After visits with professors, government officials, lawyers, journalists and citizens, the pie-chart breakdown became clear - though admittedly, it is impossible to determine how much each factor contributes. First - and arguably foremost - there is virtually no difference among upper, middle and lower classes in Iceland. And with that, tension between economic classes is non-existent, a rare occurrence for any country.

More BBC News - Why is violent crime so rare in Iceland?

 

[Katzndogz]

Icelandic Immigration Laws | eHow

Some say Iceland's immigration laws are the strictest among Western Democratic societies. If you are not from another Nordic country, permanent residence may prove to be a challenge in Iceland.

EA, Nordic and Nonmember Countries
Citizens of the Nordic countries, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland, have the most privileged status in Iceland and do not need to apply for residence permits. Citizens of the European Economic Area (EEA) countries can stay in Iceland for up to six months without a permit if they are looking for work and three months if they are not. Citizens from nonmember countries can only obtain one-year residence permits at a time and must apply before their arrival. Their residence permits are contingent upon their purpose in the country.

With little immigration there is, is primarily white Polish. Iceland does not import poverty as we do. They do not have a growing population of the uneducated as we do.

 

[longknife]

I hate to be so pessimistic but it's only gonna get worse and spread to other nations.

 

[Katzndogz]

Why do you think Denmark has passed such draconian immigration laws? They don't want to become another Britian, France or United States.

 

[Moonglow]

That is because people in charge of the government and the wealthy have not learned their lesson.

 

[SanTropez]

Iceland heavily invested in funds that collapsed during the crisis. They had poor financial planning and advice.

 

[Katzndogz]

Iceland has an energy benefit not shared by other nations. Their energy is basically free, which is a side effect of living on a volcano.

Iceland has low immigration, a low homogenous population, the people have little interest in drugs or getting high. Drug use in Iceland is 0.09%. It is a study in the quality of life where there is a small population of people who are very much like one another. They all have a very high work ethic and don't have much in the way of deliberately lazy people who want to be supported.

If Iceland is a model, the modular destroyer is multiculturalism.

 

[waltky]

How come ya never hear of any Icelandic hookers gettin' arrested?...

Icelandic women take up fight to ban Internet porn
Tue, May 28, 2013 - RAGING ISSUE: A change in government has fueled a fight between those who want to see access to Internet porn blocked and the defenders of freedom of speech

“I could access pornography in about three seconds, four at the most,” said 19-year-old Geir Johann Geirsson, his laptop open on the classroom desk at Borgarn High School in a Reykjavik suburb. “If you can access the Internet you can access porn, no matter how old you are.” However, in this small wind-swept north Atlantic nation, a battle against the multibillion-dollar industry is under way and campaigners are refusing to give up the fight, calling on the new government to put in place proposals to introduce porn blockers.

Defenders of the Internet — who claimed that proposals from the former government to limit porn promoted censorship and attacked freedom of speech — were given a boost at the end of last month, when the left-leaning administration was ousted by a center-right coalition. However, gender equality activists argue that, despite the setback, a debate has been started that will not go away.

Former Icelandic minister of the interior Ogmundur Jonasson, who proposed the change to the law, remains adamant the issue must be tackled. “There are people who want to silence this discussion, but it is a discussion that will not be silenced,” he said. “People want to confuse this with an argument about freedom of expression, but I would say it is those who are trying to silence the debate who are not respecting freedom of expression.”

If a porn ban happens anywhere in Europe it is likely to be in Iceland, which came top of the World Economic Forum’s 2012 Global Gender Gap report and has already implemented significant legislation to regulate the sex industry. Former Icelandic prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir — Iceland’s first openly gay leader — backed moves to criminalize buyers of sex rather than sex workers in 2009 and banned strip clubs in 2010. Distributing porn has been illegal from as far back as 1869 and highly sexualized images of women in advertising — ubiquitous to the point of banality in some countries in mainland Europe — are rare.

More Icelandic women take up fight to ban Internet porn - Taipei Times

 

[Cenere]

I think these problems are pretty much happening everywhere. We just don't actually hear a whole lot about Iceland and their problems. Eventually, we will have more of these incidents here in the states too.

 

[American_Jihad]

ICELANDIC LEFTIST POISONS ROBERT SPENCER
A new phase in the Left’s campaign of demonizing those whom it hates.
May 16, 2017

Robert Spencer

...

We took that marvelous Icelandic greeting as a cue to leave. But the damage had already been done. About fifteen minutes later, when I got back in my hotel room, I began to feel numbness in my face, hands, and feet. I began trembling and vomiting. My heart was racing dangerously. I spent the night in a Reykjavik hospital.

What had happened quickly became clear, and was soon confirmed by a hospital test: one of these local Icelanders who had approached me (probably the one who said he was a big fan, as he was much closer to me than the “F**k you” guy) had dropped drugs into my drink. I wasn’t and am not on any other medication, and so there wasn’t any other explanation of how these things had gotten into my bloodstream.

For several days thereafter I was ill, but I did get to Reykjavik’s police station and gave them a bigger case than they have seen in good awhile. The police official with whom I spoke took immediate steps to identify and locate the principal suspects and obtain the restaurant’s surveillance video.

...

As they were rising to power in Germany, the Nazis indoctrinated their young followers with the same message: those who oppose us are evil. Those who brutalize them are doing a great thing. The Left’s demonization of its opponents today will lead to exactly the same thing. It already has for me, in beautiful Reykjavik.

Icelandic Leftist Poisons Robert Spencer