Iceland Votes "Já" To Proposed News Haven 232
eldavojohn writes "The proposed rules shielding journalists harbored in Iceland are now official. It appears that sites like Wikileaks and Cryptome could have a friendlier home base. For those familiar with the Icelandic tongue, the voting results and legalese. Some of the details can be found at www.immi.is."
Re:is it just me? (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah, but you don't get ridiculous jail time for minor drug possessions. It's a tradeoff.
err, the rules are not yet official (Score:5, Informative)
The proposal to draft some rules is now official. The rules themselves will now be drafted by a committee, and then the committee will present them to the legislature, which may then in the future enact them. The proposal is indeed promising, as is the strong (unanimous) support for tasking the committee with fleshing it out, but what exactly the committee will come back with could vary quite a bit.
Re:Bandwagon anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
They did this because Wikileaks posted bank records for one of their failing banks which showed they were transferring billions of dollars out into safe havens as they were going down. Seeing as how the big bank fiasco tanked their economy they didn't take to kindly to this misappropriation of funds and decided Wikileaks was a good thing.
Re:EU membership will undo this (Score:2, Informative)
Because the EU is an anti-democratic, lobbyist-ridden clusterfuck.
Re:but just for people that look just like me! (Score:1, Informative)
Almost 20% of swedens population is of foreign origin, and that doesn't include the "paperless" or refugees that's not citizens.
Re:but just for people that look just like me! (Score:5, Informative)
Racially homogeneous? You have no idea what you're talking about. In Sweden, around 12% of the population are first generation immigrants, of which around 75% are from non-Western countries.
That's much higher than the average for Europe, with around 6% immigrants, and about the same as in the US (38 million first generation immigrants out of 307 million in 2009).
Looking at the largest Scandinavian cities, Oslo and Stockholm both have around 25% immigrants, most of whom are from non-Western countries. Compared to where I live in the US, I am the one living in a racially homogeneous area, with more than 96% crackers.
Re:is it just me? (Score:5, Informative)
Being half-Greek, I think you'll find that Greece's bankruptcy has more to do with being Greece than with being socialist. It's not even particularly socialist in practice. There's a huge private sector that pays effectively 0% taxes, and even the officially free health care in practice operates as quasi-private--- doctors work 2nd private practices outside their official jobs, and they uh, strongly suggest that you make an appointment with that one rather than with the free one. Oh, and they don't pay taxes on those private practices, either (cash-only payments, no receipts, no reporting).
If Greece were more like Sweden, where rich people actually pay taxes, public services that are officially provided are actually provided, etc., its budget, and the country in general, would be in better shape.
The Real Story (Score:5, Informative)
I would like to correct some popular myths that suicide rates are supposedly high in Scandinavia.
The following material illustrates that Scandinavia is at approximately the same levels as the US. In fact in some aspects the rates are lower in some Scandinavian countries. Norway has lower rates for male suicides than the US (15.7 vs 17.7).
Suicides per 100,000 people per year: [wikipedia.org]
Scandinavian countries:
Denmark 11.9
Norway 11.5
Sweden 13.2
North American countries:
United States of America 11.0
Canada 11.3
Nordic countries:
Iceland 11.2
Finland 18.8
P.S. Finland is not Scandinavian because of its ethnic, historical and cultural background. In my opinion Finland has much more in common with its eastern neighbor, Russia, and the Baltic states. The supposedly higher alcohol consumption and cultural differences could be explanations for their higher suicide rates.
Like Finland Iceland is not considered part of Scandinavia but the wider "Nordic" category due to differences in geography and language. The three Kingdoms (DK/NO/SE) share closer ties in a historical political, economic and cultural union.
Re:is it just me? (Score:3, Informative)
Which is why most of the Nordic states and all of the Scandinavian nations are not knee deep in debt. Yet the capitalist nations like the US and UK are. Someone has been brainwashed here and it's not me and the GP.
It seemed the "socialist" nations balanced the books and survived the GFC. BTW, I'm using your definition of socialism, which means any nations that has social services, Scandinavia is one of the most free markets you will ever encounter but you must be responsible for your products and services. This is why the SEK and NOK did not drop when the USD, GBP and EUR did in 2008, the AUD recovered completely by late 2009 (currently about 0.86 USD).
Wow, citation needed, I can vouch for Sweden, Australia and the UK that if it comes out of a woman with a pulse, it's considered alive.
I'd call you retarded but that would be a grievous insult to people with down syndrome.
Re:The Real Story (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, Finland has little in common with Russia and most Baltic countries as well.
Another similarly sized country they have most in common with? Hungary. Yes, the Hungary which is separated by the Baltic Sea, Poland and Czech from them. They are a completely distinct ethnic group the Finno-Ugric peoples [wikipedia.org], than about all the rest of europe (which is Indo-European).
It's a different culture, wildly different (and horribly difficult) language, different mentality. Most of countries around are either Slavic or German peoples, but these two are not nearly as far apart as some would believe, while Finno-ugric are far, far away. To give Americans a clue, German-Slavic-Ugrofinnic relation could be compared to Texan-Mexican-Chinese.