Video: Iceland protest ends in clashes

[loki]

Protesters in Iceland's capital Reykjavik have clashed with police during a demonstration over the handling of the financial crisis.

Several hundred protesters gathered outside the city's main police station to demand the release of a man jailed in a previous demonstration.

Five people were injured when police used pepper spray to disperse the group after some tried to storm the building.

Iceland faces a sharply contracting economy over the financial collapse.

The group outside the police station broke away from a much larger group of several thousand people who had gathered outside parliament to demand the government's resignation.

Some in the group tried to storm the police building.

The man they wanted to release was later freed, after a fine he owed over a previous demonstration was paid.

There has been a series of protests in Reykjavik calling for the government to resign over its handling of the economy.

The banking system collapsed in October and the currency, the krona, has lost half its value in the past year.

Iceland's government was forced to take over three of its biggest banks last month when they could not keep up with billions of dollars of debt taken on to finance overseas expansion.

The government has taken out $4.6bn (£3.1bn) in loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and four of its Nordic neighbours to stay afloat.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7744355.stm

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

MASS STRUGGLE NEEDED TO CHALLENGE CAPITAL, COMMUNISTS INSIST

'Barack Obama's election in the US represents a significant victory for the mass progressive and labour movement and a serious defeat for the warmongering neo-conservatives', Communist Party international secretary John Foster declared at the weekend.

'As US imperialism reorientates itself towards a softer, multilateral and hegemonic strategy, that people's movement needs our solidarity for new battles over trade union rights, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and Cuba', he told the CPB executive committee.

Analysing the international economic crisis, Mr Foster highlighted 'the contradiction between the process whereby monopoly capital extracts super-profits and the state helps redistribute wealth in favour of the super-rich through deregulation, privatisation and anti-trade union laws'.
'Ruling class strategy has been to make the mass of people poorer and dependent on credit, undermining the sustainability of economic demand as financial markets speculated in huge volumes of "fictitious" capital', he explained.

Britain's Communists urged the labour and local community movements in Britain to mobilise around a left-wing programme of demands including a substantial increase in real wages, pensions and benefits; the building of 100,000 energy efficient council houses in 2009; a freeze on domestic fuel prices at their January 2008 level; public ownership of the energy, public transport, banking, insurance and private pension sectors; controls on the international movement of capital; closure of all offshore tax avoidance centres under British jurisdiction; massive investment in a state-owned renewable energy sector; and progressive taxation measures including a wealth tax on the super-rich and windfall taxes on monopoly profits.
'An example of workplace or local community resistance to redundancies, repossessions and disconnections could spread like wildfire', Mr Foster insisted.

The Communist Party executive committee also urged support for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign's lobby of the Westminster Parliament on Wednesday, November 19, and pledged solidarity with the ongoing battle for abortion rights in Northern Ireland.

[Thinking Man's Idiot]

Iceland protest calls on ministers to quit

(Sunday 23 November 2008)







TEN thousand Icelanders marched on parliament on Saturday to press senior ministers to resign for "selling the country" to the International Monetary Fund.



The demonstrators, who demanded early elections, accuse Prime Minister Geir Haarde and central bank governor David Oddsson of failing to regulate the banking sector.

Iceland's overextended financial system collapsed last month and the country's currency, the krona, has lost half its value since January.
The government recently took over the country's biggest banks to prevent them from collapsing.


Together, they owe more than £40 billion, about six times the value of Iceland's annual economic output.


Reykjavik accepted a combined $2.1 billion (£1.4bn) loan from the IMF last week, making Iceland the first western European country to be "rescued" by the US-dominated body since Britain in 1976.


One protester climbed onto the balcony of the parliament building in Reykjavik and hung up a banner reading: "Iceland for Sale - $2.1 billion."


Others held up a banner reading: "The IMF will crush education, welfare, health care and democracy."


One of the speakers at the rally, law student Katrin Oddsdottir, warned the government that people would storm the parliament and other government buildings if it failed to call new elections within a week.


"Peaceful protest will do in peacetime, but there has been an attack on the Icelandic constitution and democracy in Iceland," Ms Oddsdottir said.


"We will carry you out!" she stormed, adding: "The Icelandic people will not be subjugated."


After the rally, protesters broke into a police station to demand the release of a demonstrator who was detained on Friday.


Police used pepper spray in an attempt to prevent them from entering the station, but at least 20 people managed to get in.


The confrontation ended when police freed the man after someone reportedly paid his outstanding fine from a previous demonstration.


When Mr Oddsson was prime minister from 1991 to 2004, he pushed through a neoliberal programme of privatisation, tax cuts, reductions in spending and deficits, central bank independence and exchange rate flexibility.


His government privatised Iceland's top banks at the beginning of the decade and slashed corporate tax rates from 50 per cent to 18 per cent.
The current government was elected last year and does not need to call elections until 2011.

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[StuartG]

I hope that the Icelandic people don’t scapegoat their Government over the collapse of their economy. All roads lead back to Rome, or is it London and the Rothschild banking empire? That is the hope of the International Banking Cartel who have seen Iceland prosper more over recent years compared to many other countries even though their fishing trade is not what it was. The banking Elite have centralised their Capitalist-Cartelist-Fascist control very rapidly and since September have been drunk on their luxury holiday wine so much recently that people should see beyond the façade of Capitalist-collapse. Iceland must now become self-sufficient and international business must NEVER take over their energy industry. It's all they've got left and if they play it right they may eventually recover. I cannot see how people can come to the conclusion that the collapse is inevitable due to built in weaknesses in how the Western banking system operates. It is to the benefit of the Super-Elite more than the Elite and the poorest of the rich including the masses lost out more than anyone. There were many businesses dissolving into nothing but many were taken over by the Big Banks. Barclay’s had a bad time? I don’t think so. Lehman's? The top always manages to escape the worst and although there were changes at Lehman's I'm sure Barclay's could explain to their customers what they were doing in the weeks running up to the collapse.

THE ROTHSCHILD'S ARE LOOKING TO THE NEXT TWELVE MONTH'S:
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/crisi...s18nov08.shtml

http://www.prisonplanet.com/cost-of-...-trillion.html

Where's this money really going?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...e-bankers.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...taxpayers.html

I thought the Royal Bank of Scotland were not doing so well. But then a BIG PARTY may make them feel much happier.