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Alternative Monetary System Subtopics

Iceland’s lesson for the world

on Thursday, 01 March 2012. Posted in Alternative monetary system

Icelanders forced their entire government to resign from office! The government, under the dictation of global financiers, tried to bring the entire nation to a similar fi1nancial crisis to that which Greece is currently experiencing.

The major banks of Iceland were nationalized and the citizens decided unanimously to declare the insolvency of the debt incurred by private banks in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. A National Assembly was established to renew their constitution, and all of this happened in a peaceful manner. This was a revolution against the governments that stopped the crisis that had led to the collapse of Iceland's economy.

You are probably wondering why these events were not widely publicized? The answer to this stems from the following question: "What would happen if other European nations followed Iceland's example?"

Here is a brief chronicle of the facts:

September 2008: The nationalization of the most important bank in Iceland, Glitnir Bank, resulted in the entire stock market suspending its trading and Iceland declaring bankruptcy.

January 2009: Protests by citizens in front of the parliament caused Premier Geira Herde to resign along with the entire social-democratic governments.

The economic situation worsened and parliament proposed a bill to repay the debts of private bankers (towards British and Dutch banks) in the amount of 3.5 billion Euros. This was proposed to be done by taxing Icelandic families over a period of 15 years at an interest of 5.5 percent.

In response to this proposal, the second stage of this peaceful revolution was put into execution:

In the beginning of 2010: Citizens again took to the streets and demanded a referendum on the proposal.

February 2010: President Ólafur Grimsson vetoed the bill proposed by the parliament, and declared a national referendum in which 93% voted in favour of defaulting on the debt.

In the meantime, the government ordered a judicial inquiry to determine who was responsible for bringing about the crisis. The first arrest warrants were issued for bankers who had already fled Iceland, fearing the consequence of their actions. In this moment of crisis, an assembly was formed, whose goal is to declare a new constitution based on the experiences of the "recently learned lessons."

With this in mind, 25 citizens who declared themselves interested in being part of the assembly, (free of any association with political parties) were chosen out of 522. The criteria for choosing these 25 people, aside from them not having any party affiliations, were that they had to be legal voting age and must present the signatures of 30 supporters.

This new constitutional assembly started its work in February and is supposed to end with the presentation and submission to a vote on the "Magna Carta" being prepared by the assembly in the forthcoming elections.

Does anyone hear about all of these events in the European media? Did we see any reportages on television programs? Of course not!

In this manner Icelanders gave a lesson to all of Europe on direct democracy, national and monetary independence, and peaceful resistance towards the System. The least we can do is to be aware of what happened and make it an experience that will be passed from person to person.

For now we still have the ability to bypass the manipulation of the news/mass media that serve economic interests of banks and large transnational corporations. Let us not miss this chance, and inform others of these events, so that in the future we will be able to undertake similar actions if the need arises.

Source: Based on the article by Marco Pali, "Storie di ordinaria rivoluzione..." http://creativeculturali.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=3565617%3A86298xgs=1 xg_source=facebook) [za: Nexus, listopad-grudzień 2011]

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