Icelanders: Get Mad and Get Even!
November 3rd, 2008Gordon Brown has made his biggest mistake ever.
He has branded Iceland a terrorist nation, causing all transfers of money in and out of that country to dry up:
LONDON — No one disputes that Iceland’s economic troubles are largely the country’s own fault. But there may be more to the story, at least in the view of Iceland’s government, its citizens and even some outsiders. As grave as their situation already was, they say, Britain — their old friend, NATO ally and trading partner — made it immeasurably worse.
The troubles between the countries began three weeks ago when Britain took the extraordinary step of using its 2001 antiterrorism laws to freeze the British assets of a failing Icelandic bank. That appeared to brand Iceland a terrorist state.
“I must admit that I was absolutely appalled,” the Icelandic foreign minister, Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir, said in an interview, describing her horror at opening the British treasury department’s home page at the time and finding Iceland on a list of terrorist entities with Al Qaeda, Sudan and North Korea, among others.
In a volatile economic climate, in which appearance matters almost as much as reality, being associated with terrorism is not a good thing.
“The immediate effect was to trigger an almost complete freeze on any banking transactions between Iceland and abroad,” said Jon Danielsson, an economist at the London School of Economics. “When you’re labeled a terrorist, nobody does business with you.”
The Icelandic prime minister, Geir H. Haarde, accused Britain of “bullying a small neighbor” and said the action was “very out of proportion.” In a recent speech in Beijing, Sir Howard Davies, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England and now the director of the London School of Economics, said that Britain had used a “beggar thy neighbor” approach to Iceland.
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Amazing.
Firstly, when someone stabs you in the face with a knife, you do not sit down and say that you ‘absolutely appalled’. You’ve got to get mad. You have to say, “I am a human being my life has value!”
Gordon Brown and Alister Darling have committed a crime by falsely listing that bank as a terrorist organization and freezing their assets. The entire Icelandic economy is suffering because of this action.
By deliberately bringing this calamity on the people of Iceland, they have comitted the crime of Collective Punishment:
Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behaviour of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions. In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions. Historically, occupying powers have used collective punishment to retaliate against and deter attacks on their forces by resistance movements (e.g. by destroying whole villages where attacks have taken place).
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The term is also used to describe confiscation of assets connected with drug use and trafficking or otherwise connected with organized crime in the United States[citation needed]. More recently the U.S. Army has been accused of practicing collective punishment in Iraq [4].
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Now.
If I were a member of the Icelandic government, I would put out a statement thusly:
“Gordon Brown and his Chancellor Aliester Darling have falsely and maliciously listed one of our banks as a terrorist organization in order to freeze the assets of that bank. This action has caused all money transfers in and out of Iceland to stop, causing the entire country to be damaged and the entire Icelendic population to suffer.
This is a clear violation of international law. By taking this action, Gordon Brown and Mr. Darling have instituted a Collective Punishment against the Icelandic people in violation of international law.
From today, we are taking into account every Euro of damage done to our economy as a result of this action. We are brining a lawsuit against Mr. Brown and Mr. Darling which is scheduled to be heard in the Hague.
We will not be falsely labeled as terrorists by anyone, and we will not have our economy destroyed and our citizens harmed by the actions of these reckless and lawless men.”
Its one thing to murder and abuse uneducated middle easterners; doing this sort of thing to Europeans is quite another. Or at least, thats the way it SHOULD be, and Iceland would most certainly win such a legal action.
It would mean that the nation of Iceland would be in line for huge reparations and compensation. It would be enough to not only compensate every Icelander, but to pay back the deposits of the British who had kept money with their banks (should they feel generous enough to return the money).
THAT ‘my friends’, is how you respond to such a violent, absurd and insulting action.
If the government of Iceland doesn’t have the balls to do it, the 73,596 people who have signed the petition at this site:
http://www.indefence.is/?pageid=545
Should mount a class action lawsuit, starting by paying €100 each into a fund to hire a crack team of lawyers to get the job done.
What you DO NOT do, put pictures of yourself up onto the internet, protest, demonstrate or do anything like that, thinking that that is going to solve anything. Its good for PR, but little else. Gordon Brown is a man who would mass murder millions of Iraqis for money. Any protest you could possibly launch would not be as great as the demonstration against the Iraq invasion in Britain, which achieved absolutely nothing. You know all about this since you read BLOGDIAL:
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We had this debate on BLOGDIAL before the historic march organized by StopWar. Demonstrations are pointless because they do not achieve their ends, and the people who go on them are nothing more than stupid monkeys; the people who organize them are actually working for the enemy. Time and time again we have said this, (and other stuff) and had it proved, sadly.
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The only way to attack these people (in this case) is through the international law. A humiliating judgement against Gordon Brown and Darling, along with an astronomical reparations and compensation bill would be pure justice for the Icelandic people, a warning that ‘terrorism’ laws are now discredited and woe betide anyone who uses them incorrectly, or even has them on their statues.
Finally, perhaps to energize the Icelandic people, the magical Björk could do a cover of the Slits’s ‘Number One Enemy’!!!