tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34841457752807009392023-11-16T11:03:12.597+00:00Herring and Class StruggleBreiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-21836651150128987732022-10-22T23:09:00.000+01:002022-10-22T23:09:13.822+01:00The true cost of fish - remembering fishers lost at work<p>I recently started a new archive <a href="https://costoffish.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">The True Cost of Fish</a> dedicated to the memory of lives lost in subsistance and commercial fishing. I am collecting photos and information about existing memorials and publicising campaigns to create new memorials to lost fishers, anywhere in the world. Please get in touch if you have information to add to it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPKs-y-lvXN7l878zV6c1JQspwwugcks8zSYoatRqzPemPFayao04VS-3NBw4nYLFono6J0vCxIrPS4QPbuOqdjyYsf0Au46lSmlOZ0ANYcoY7JzykYPzoQiqFqayStBdchKKkqosewp5Nrew2Pp0t88TCce3oq3MrE9lUBUniPXVtXwrgSwaVDDIKUA/s4624/20220830_154144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2604" data-original-width="4624" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPKs-y-lvXN7l878zV6c1JQspwwugcks8zSYoatRqzPemPFayao04VS-3NBw4nYLFono6J0vCxIrPS4QPbuOqdjyYsf0Au46lSmlOZ0ANYcoY7JzykYPzoQiqFqayStBdchKKkqosewp5Nrew2Pp0t88TCce3oq3MrE9lUBUniPXVtXwrgSwaVDDIKUA/s320/20220830_154144.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span id="docs-internal-guid-35e7432d-7fff-ec6c-47fb-6409506012dd"><br /><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-3673856686349343272022-07-08T23:46:00.001+01:002022-10-22T22:25:07.546+01:00Same storm, different boats - Britain's fishing crisis after BrexitI recently wrote an article for International Socialism Journal, <a href="#">Britain's fishing crisis after Brexit</a> which looks at the problems faced by commercial fishers based in Britain. Many of the issues described will be familiar to anyone interested in fishing communities in Iceland, across the European Union and further afield. <br /><br />"Today, the British fishing industry faces a perfect storm of capitalist crisis, compounded by the effects of the pandemic and Brexit, overfishing and climate change. To understand how the industry got to this state, this article looks at what has happened to fishing, fishers and fishing communities in Britain since the Second World War, tracing the development of capitalist property relations, food production and retail. I focus on the development of the EU and its Common Fisheries Policy, because it has shaped the state of the industry today. I also consider why fishing still carries such political weight and what the real solutions are to ensuring that fishing has a sustainable future, providing both food and jobs that are safe and well paid."<br /><br />Read the <a href="https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3484145775280700939/367385668634934327#">full article here</a><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vOqAFoQWYrAz1t3KP49vZaXOjI_w3cwfoNRf6Y-FucAzSa_PdSjgyj6voGeOMCWE5Ro3e6enWxOEwTfYEyqWubgWv6um6s7VHD-DyvsH3ODOxfqX0-X200Ji87uXri963kV-l0mtD0l0GhJ6v5oH8nPfH3G-0KRoZauqIWGYkdQ9grN9q5VesDQsZQ/s233/ISJ174.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="233" data-original-width="170" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3vOqAFoQWYrAz1t3KP49vZaXOjI_w3cwfoNRf6Y-FucAzSa_PdSjgyj6voGeOMCWE5Ro3e6enWxOEwTfYEyqWubgWv6um6s7VHD-DyvsH3ODOxfqX0-X200Ji87uXri963kV-l0mtD0l0GhJ6v5oH8nPfH3G-0KRoZauqIWGYkdQ9grN9q5VesDQsZQ/s1600/ISJ174.jpeg" width="170" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-25093151132474481312021-08-01T16:11:00.022+01:002021-08-01T16:18:27.147+01:00Capitalism and the Sea ─ a review <div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXW4gELWQAMyPxwUJaCIThdExLDAt4qBhAuMGTSEIK-hkGZ71Ip9F1TPtCL4jGivt2yGoM9NMC2ciZd8XWyRVOmHGgPo3BxmBSbNghLg0GKa_Ai18u_7434GgBGYUW0v2Kb-CDYNk7_4Th/s293/CapandtheSea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXW4gELWQAMyPxwUJaCIThdExLDAt4qBhAuMGTSEIK-hkGZ71Ip9F1TPtCL4jGivt2yGoM9NMC2ciZd8XWyRVOmHGgPo3BxmBSbNghLg0GKa_Ai18u_7434GgBGYUW0v2Kb-CDYNk7_4Th/s16000/CapandtheSea.jpg" /></a></div>I reviewed <i>Capitalism and the Sea, the Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World</i> by Liam Campling and Alex Colás in the latest edition of International Socialism Journal 171. <div>Capitalism and the Sea is an engaging new study of capitalism’s transformation of the human relationship to the sea. It uses a Marxist approach to understand how capitalism constantly reinvents itself to maximise profit and, in the process, intensifies exploitation, privatises vast areas of the sea and commodifies the species that inhabit them. </div><div>My full review can be read <a href="http://isj.org.uk/big-business-high-seas/">here</a>.</div><div><div><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div></div>Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-28285915040543057532020-12-30T19:11:00.001+00:002022-04-03T14:26:19.799+01:00Byltingin í Rússlandi eftir Stefán Pjetursson - Part 3 continued - Brest-LitovskThis is latest installment (part four of the third chapter) of my translation of Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia by Stefán Pjetursson. This little book was published in 1921 by young Icelandic socialists who identified with the 1917 Russian Revolution and wanted to defend and explain it to the wider left and trade unionists in Iceland. I am posting it in mini-chapters because it is so long. <div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span><br /></span><span>The earlier chapters are available below ending with the second part of chapter three where the author explains bolshevism's relationship to Marxism particularly as it was summarised in the Communist Manifesto.</span><br /><br /><a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bylting-i-russlandi-revolution-in-russia.html" style="font-family: inherit;">My introduction</a><span> to Byltingin í Rússlandi</span><br /><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bylting-i-russlandi-sources-preface.html">Sources, Preface and Introduction</a> contain more about their reasons for writing.</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html"><br /></a><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html">Part One: Reaction and Progress</a></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-two.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Part Two: The Revolution</span></a><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/byltingin-i-russlandi-revolution-in.html">Part Three: Bolshevism</a>, a portrait of Lenin</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2018/08/byltingin-i-russlandi-revolution-in.html">Part Three: Bolshevism and Marxism</a></span><br /><br /><b>Reminder</b>: Byltingin í Rússlandi uses the New Style Russian calendar - the Gregorian calendar - introduced in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1918 which added thirteen days to the Old Style Julian calendar. However the author still refers to the revolutions in March and November (Old Style) not February and October and in the spirit of translating what the author wrote I have kept his dates in my translation.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><h3><span style="font-family: inherit;">Brest-Litovsk</span></h3></div></span>It worked well that it was Trotsky’s job to defend the Bolsheviks’ honour against other countries after the November revolution. One of the most important immediate matters before them was the peace treaty with the Central powers. Trotsky was there on behalf of Russia and everyone who attended the negotiations agreed that he displayed the greatest political talent. Admittedly, he could not prevent the Bolshevik leadership from having to sign bitter peace terms, but he did something else which caused the German leadership far more damage. Trotsky is a brilliantly eloquent man and he used the opportunity to strengthen Bolshevism in the German army. “While I was at the peace conference in Brest-Litovsk”, Trotsky once said, “I never forgot for a moment that I was with those who reviled the revolution and so I directed what I said to the international proletariat.”</div><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><br /></div></span>And the negotiators from the Central Powers agreed that he had spread revolutionary ideas so effectively among their armies in the east that they were then too unreliable to send to the front in France.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was, as we would expect, one of the Bolshevik leadership's first tasks to try to get a ceasefire between Russia and the Central Powers. This was managed some months after the November Revolution and negotiations began soon after in Brest-Litovsk. Immediately, Bolshevik delegates argued that the basic conditions for peace should be; no demands for annexation of land, no demands for the payment of war reparations—except inasmuch as small countries such as Serbia and Belgium should be paid compensation from international funds for the damage they had sustained. And last but not least, that subjugated nations had the absolute right to decide by voting, what state they wanted to belong to or whether they wanted to be completely independent and that such voting must be completely free. </div>The Central Powers’ representatives, Czernin and Kühlmann said that they would be willing to agree to the Bolshevik leadership’s main terms as the basis for peace, provided the Allies agreed.<br /><br />At this point Trotsky sent a message to the Allied leadership, which has since become famous. He explained the basic conditions the delegates at Brest-Litovsk had agreed to construct international peace. The Central Powers had at least agreed to drop claims to land they had conquered in the war.<br /><br />"It is no longer possible to say that the war continues to liberate Belgium, Northern France and Serbia,” because Germany has expressed a willingness to release these countries so the general peace can be agreed. Now the Allies have to disclose their peace terms. If they demand that the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, Galicia, Bosnia, Bohemia and the southern Slavic provinces of Austria get to decide their own future, then they must give the same rights to the inhabitants of Ireland, India, Indochina, Madagascar and many other countries, just as the Russian revolutionaries have granted that right to Finland, Ukraine and so forth. “Because it is obvious that to demand these rights for peoples within the borders of enemy states but not provide them to peoples within the limits of your own states, is the most despicable violent policy imaginable.” Trotsky finished the broadcast by demanding an answer within ten days, otherwise Russia would make peace with the Central powers.<div><br /></div><div>As might be expected from the Allied leadership, these reasonable demands were in vain, so the Bolsheviks had to negotiate with the Central Powers alone. Then the German and Austrian representatives took this as an opportunity to refuse to negotiate on the previously discussed basis. </div><div><br /></div><div><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-6f413b54-7fff-69d5-981c-f63a966ba84e"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Military service ends</span></span></h4><div>There was now a heated debate in Brest-Litovsk between Trotsky on the one hand and Czernin and Kühlmann on the other. The main disagreement was that the Central Powers refused to call the army home from the provinces they had annexed before peace was established. It was clear to Trotsky that this meant that neither Poland, Lithuania nor Courland [now part of Latvia] would be free to decide their own futures and they would be nothing but German vassals. After the parties argued over this through all of January 1918, Trotsky made an extraordinary bold move. On 10 February, he announced that he considered the war between Russia and the Central Powers over without any peace agreements being signed and ordered that the release of Russian soldiers from military service should begin.</div><br />The Germans responded to this remarkable event by resuming the war against Russia and as expected the Russian army was not able to resist. There was simply no choice for the Bolshevik government here; it had to accept the Central Powers' peace terms. The committee was sent back to Brest-Litovsk where it had to sign even tougher peace terms than the Central Powers had previously wanted. This was 3 March 2018.<div><div> </div><div>It was hard on the Russian revolutionaries to have to accept terms set by the advocates of the German and Austrian rich. Just before they signed the treaties they issued a speech protesting the terms of the peace. "We publicly declare, they said, "before German and Russian workers, before the international proletariat that we are forced to sign these terms by those who are stronger at this moment. That's why we sign this coercive peace and not because we agree to it at all.”</div><br />Trotsky himself took this very personally and left the leadership of foreign affairs.</div><br />The Allied governments took the terms of peace between Russia and the Central Powers very badly but could do little about it. They were still threatened on the battlefields in France and had to keep all their troops there. But immediately after the November revolution in Russia, the capitalists there gathered their side and began uprisings in many places. They started the cruelest civil war between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in Russia and kept it going unceasingly for three years. </div><div><br /><div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Civil War</span></h4>In Siberia and east Russia, a large army assembled under the leadership of a naval commander named Koltschak. His headquarters were in Omsk, in western Siberia and set up a regime there which he considered to be the only legitimate power in Russia. Another extremely powerful army formed in southern Russia. Its leaders for the first months were Kornilov and the Cossack leader Kaledin, but later they got another officer named Denikin who became particularly difficult for the Bolsheviks. Finally, in the Baltic countries there was a third rebel officer, Judenitsch [Yudenich].</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>When the Allies heard that civil war was burning in Russia, they saw a chance to turn the tables. They did all they could to arm the rebel army with weapons, supplies, funds and “good advice”. And to add even more to the Bolshevik government's troubles, they imposed a blockade on Russia’s ports, blaming the uprising in the Caucasus and beyond on the country’s borders. Finally, a British army landed on the Murmansk coast from the Arctic Ocean and was ordered inland. This was not enough for the Allies but they were given yet another opportunity to heap coals on the head of the Bolshevik government when Germany collapsed and the new states on the western border of Russia - Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine and Finland sought protection from the victors. It wasn’t long before they came under the Allies' protection until they got caught up in the war with the Bolshevik government.</div><br />All these enemies who had encircled Russia were now set on overthrowing the proletarian government and it probably wasn’t said that its prospects looked good when capitalism’s troops invaded in the summer of 1918. It is worth mentioning here that this was the summer that the former emperor Nicholas and his family were killed by the local government in Yekaterinburg. They feared that he would fall into the hands of the rebels close to the city and later be used to unite the opposition against the proletarian government. Such was the fate of the last emperor of the Romanov clan.</div><div><br /></div><h4 style="text-align: left;">The Red Army</h4>In 1919, the rebel armies advanced from all directions and it appeared likely that this tremendous organization, backed by the strongest capitalist powers in the world would quickly bring down the Bolshevik government. Yet its power grew with the danger. <br /><br />Trotsky seized the challenge to come up with an army to defend the revolution and it went well. The "Red Army" which he mostly created and is mainly made up of workers, defeated one rebel commander after another. First Judenitsch [Yudenich] and Denikin then Koltschak and after that the other warring parties weren't able to deal with the Bolshevik government. It took the opportunity and made peace with each of the Baltic countries and by the summer of 1920 Poland was their only enemy in that direction. The British army in northern Russia had hardly covered themselves in glory and was taken home some time later. But in Southern Russia, it was Wrangel, a general of great reputation that collected the remnants of Denikin’s army at the behest of the Allies, particularly France and made the only serious attempt yet to overthrow the proletarian government.</div><br />Here however, the tables turned because when it came to it, Wrangel's troops could not withstand the Red Army. After a month of fighting in the autumn of 1920 they were completely scattered, ending the Russian Civil War. Some time before this war with the Poles had mostly stalled. The Allies were preparing incitement of people in eastern Europe to go to war against the Bolsheviks. Now they themselves lifted the embargo and prepared to trade with Russia and urged the Poles to seek peace with the Bolshevik government. In March 1921, the peace treaties between the Poles and Russia were concluded and it could finally be said that the Bolsheviks were free from attacks by foreign enemies. <br /><br />It is almost incomprehensible to people here what the Russian proletarian government has done to defend the cause of the revolution from this astonishing association of domestic and foreign capitalists. The new policy must have given Russia a great deal of power. It is obvious to everyone and that power can only be explained by the sense that the Red Army and the Russian people have that they are defending something worth the effort. Only enthusiasm for the cause of revolution has been able to give the Red Army its recent superiority over the “white army” that capitalism sent from all directions to annihilate the Russian government - the guardian of world revolution.<br /><br />Yes, the Russian Bolsheviks view themselves as the guardian of the world revolution. "What is happening in eastern Europe," said Zinoviev, president of the Communist International’s Executive Committee, "is just the beginning. That's where the world revolution begins." <br /><br />And from Russia it will spread, they say. Even if capitalism exerts all its power it won’t be able to suppress the communist movement. It was precisely in those years, when the workers' republic of Russia was surrounded on all sides by a hostile band of capitalists, that the Communist parties around the world grew rapidly. But one of the main conditions for the working class to be able to take power is that the revolution must be carried out in at least all developed countries.<br /><br />This is what Marx said and this is what the communists in our day have fully understood. In Moscow on 4 March 1919 they formed the “Third International", so that communists around the world would have common leadership in the struggle against capitalism. <br /><br />The "Third International'' has set itself the goal of overthrowing capitalism around the world with international revolution and build on the ruins an international republic of workers’ councils. The president of the executive committee of the organisation is Zinoviev, one of the most energetic men among Russian Bolsheviks. <br /><br />He burns with zeal for international revolution. He has declared holy war against capitalist oppression and he calls down righteous punishment over the heads of the slow-moving social democrats and their union the “Second International", which completely failed the cause of the people in the world war - just when it mattered most. <br /><br />In one speech from, "Third International", Zinoviev says: Proletarians! Look back! Behind you are the bodies of your brothers fallen in the bloodiest and most criminal war ever. And then look into the future! <br /><div><div><br /><div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-mOk-ObXdWWwhtZumtgqqvOsuJ9OiDk0Rrti8skrQ1gzHrAQ5tFkgaERFqNbsk5mn5v9ucWX4OX5UR_pVxBEzgsIq7JTua2O8-CVJE40YHifbwrXQANXQW1kJk86kJpwzQr6UDQqYu9Lc/s820/Zinovievspeaks.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="820" data-original-width="511" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-mOk-ObXdWWwhtZumtgqqvOsuJ9OiDk0Rrti8skrQ1gzHrAQ5tFkgaERFqNbsk5mn5v9ucWX4OX5UR_pVxBEzgsIq7JTua2O8-CVJE40YHifbwrXQANXQW1kJk86kJpwzQr6UDQqYu9Lc/s320/Zinovievspeaks.jpeg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grigory Zinoviev speaking in 1918</td></tr></tbody></table></span><br /><br />“What can you expect from the bourgeois dictators, as long as they hold power? What else but new wars, new taxes, famine, and boundless slavery? Proletarians must defend themselves from this at all costs. The Third International calls on the proletariat in all countries to make the final decision and cut away their weapons and power.” <span style="font-family: inherit;"><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></span></div></div></div>Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-59221406533805976672019-07-26T22:39:00.004+01:002020-12-30T14:24:04.636+00:00Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia, part three (continued) Bolshevism and a portrait of Trotsky<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is latest installment (part three of the third chapter) of my translation of Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia by Stefán Pjetursson. This little book was published in 1921 by young Icelandic socialists who identified with the 1917 Russian Revolution and wanted to defend and explain it to the wider left and trade unionists in Iceland. I am posting it in mini-chapters because it is so long. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The earlier chapters are available below ending with the first part of chapter three, which describes Lenin and what the author knew and understood about Lenin's character and politics.</span><br />
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<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bylting-i-russlandi-revolution-in-russia.html" style="font-family: inherit;">My introduction</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> to Byltingin í Rússlandi</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bylting-i-russlandi-sources-preface.html">Sources, Preface and Introduction</a> contain more about their reasons for writing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html"><br /></a><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html">Part One: Reaction and Progress</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-two.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Part Two: The Revolution</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/byltingin-i-russlandi-revolution-in.html">Part Three: Bolshevism</a>, a portrait of Lenin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2018/08/byltingin-i-russlandi-revolution-in.html">Part Three: Bolshevism and Marxism</a></span><br />
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<b>Reminder</b>: Byltingin í Rússlandi uses the New Style Russian calendar - the Gregorian calendar - introduced in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1918 which added thirteen days to the Old Style Julian calendar. This is why the author refers to the revolutions in February and October as the March Revolution and the November Revolution. I have kept the author's dates in my translation.<br />
<br />
<br />
Part Three: Bolshevism and Marxism finishes;<br />
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“The manifesto ends with these words: Communists disdain to hide their views. They declare publicly that their goal will only be achieved by tearing down the old system. Above you—who now hold power—looms the Communist Revolution. The Proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. But they have a whole world to win.<br />
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Proletarians of all countries, unite! <br />
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<h4>
Part three continued: Bolshevism and a portrait of Trotsky</h4>
<br />This is the basis of the entire program laid out by Marx, on which the Russian Communists—the Bolsheviks—and all other Communists in the world stand. They are all revolutionaries. They say that the working class—the proletarian class, will never get their rights other than by revolution. <br /><br />How could anyone possibly think, asks Lenin, that the capitalists now at the height of their militarism, that recently set off six years of universal slaughter to strengthen capitalist oppression, when theft of land and all the various violence of the bourgeoisie has reached its high water mark in the peace of Versailles—how can anyone think, if he looks at all that has happened, that the rich would fulfil the demands of the working class?<br /><br />It is simply betraying workers to tell them it’s true and getting them to trust it enslaves them. How can anyone believe that it is possible to get rid of capitalist oppression peacefully? <br /><br />Who believes it now, when it everyone knows that the capitalists of the most educated countries of the world have not hesitated to allow the killing of millions of people—workers and peasants—just to satisfy their greed for money and addiction to power. Who will believe it now when he has seen Russian, Hungarian and Finnish capitalists didn’t hesitate to send thousands, or rather millions to their death to win back individual property rights over land and means of production, which the proletariat had taken off them so that ordinary people needn’t starve without the barest necessities? Are people to lack even enough food to survive?<br /><br />Now what if people ask “Isn’t it better for the working class to use legal methods to try to improve society peacefully?” This is impossible, says Lenin. <br /><br />The rich have always had ways to keep the working class under the yoke though some laws have been passed to improve its conditions. They have replaced old forms of oppression with new ones which are masked but still cruel. No, for all the slow improvements, what exists are individual property rights over land and production—the source of wealth. It is what underlies the oppressive power that the rich have vastly increased. Capitalist oppression—wealth in the hands of individuals—is the greatest evil that we have to be rid of. <br /><br />But what happens when we start to move against it? The rich grab weapons to beat the proletariat down. No, it is unthinkable, argues Lenin, that the working class will be able to rid itself of the capitalist yoke other than by revolution.<br /><br />The proletariat—the working class—has to take power into its own hands. For a long time the capitalist system has shown its unwillingness to protect mankind from the evils of poverty. The dictatorship of the proletariat will have to solve the humanitarian crisis itself. It cannot be avoided. The proletarian government must establish iron-hard discipline; it will have to smash class differences, deprive the rich of individual rights over land and production and operate all industry for the benefit of ordinary people. It will have to dismantle the old bourgeoisie at all costs so that it cannot fight against nor wreck the new order.<br /><br />The only way to achieve all of its plans is to reorganise production for people’s needs and to teach people to work together. But the dictatorship of the proletariat won’t last long, it is only the preparation for the future order. When ordinary people have taken control of industry and it has been made impossible for the old capitalists to return to be a ruling class served by the masses, then state power becomes unnecessary. <br /><br />The state dies a natural death when there is no political power but control over production. Then Communism will rise up—the future order. There will no longer be any classes, no grinding poverty, no idlers. There will be no oppressors and no oppressed. Everyone will own everything and work together. The causes of strife between individuals, classes or nations will disappear. In the same way that classes merge into each other, nations will be working as one. Borders will be ripped up. Blind competition and fighting will cease and in its place will be empathy and co-operation. <br /><br />This is the apex of the vision of the Bolshevik program. </div>
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<h4>
Trotsky</h4>
<div>
After these few words about Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ program, we must mention Trotsky, who with the single exception of Lenin has become the most famous of all the Bolshevik leadership. <br /><br />His real name is Leiba Bronstein, but he took the pseudonym Trotsky during his years of exile. He was born in 1877 of a Jewish family in the ghetto in the district of Kherson. Jews hadn’t had a moment’s peace in Russia under the emperors as Trotsky learned in his youth. He soon suffered the hardships of the persecution of Jews and because he was so ambitious took it hard that he should be made to pay for his ethnicity. He arrived at Odessa University as a precocious 22 year old but was never just studying. Soon he was involved in student protests and came a cropper like many others in Russia when he came to the attention of the authorities and in 1902 was sentenced to four years exile in Siberia.<br /><br />Well Trotsky didn’t think much of imprisonment so after a while he escaped. It wasn’t part of his plan to be kept from working in Russia, quite the contrary. Now he focused his energies on the revolutionary movement and was important in the Petrograd uprising in January 1905. It was for this that the authorities seized him again and sent him back to Siberia. But this time Trotsky didn’t reach the intended destination. Halfway there he tricked his way out, escaped and got out of Russia. He then lived as a refugee in very difficult circumstances.</div>
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He travelled widely in the war years but wasn’t well received everywhere because he never missed any opportunity to oppose the war. Eventually he went to America and was there in March 1917<a href="file:///C:/Users/sarah/AppData/Local/Box/Box%20Edit/Documents/y+zYPGeq1ke7OQ8hW07lsA==/Byltingin%20%C3%AD%20R%C3%BAsslandi%20-%20Bolshevism%20pt3%20cont%20and%20a%20portrait%20of%20Trotsky.docx#_ftn1">[1]</a> when the revolution began in Russia and all Russian exiles were allowed home. He was so poor that he could not have got home, if his friends hadn’t come to the rescue and given him the money for the journey. When he got home, he joined the Bolsheviks and quickly became one of their most influential leaders. The part he played in the preparation of the revolution has already been described and can be referred to above. </div>
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Don’t be thinking that Trotsky is anything special to look at, or more than the average man. He is described as a little yellow in the face, high nose, twinkling dark eyes, short moustache and goatee beard, a high forehead with the hair often falling over it. He is of average height and moves very rapidly but his character is most important. <br /><br />Trotsky has great character but he is also quick-tempered and decisive and hasn’t spared himself any hardships to become part of the team ending with one of the most difficult tasks of the Bolshevik government—the military. Trotsky created the “Red Amy”—the defensive militia from the revolutionary Russian proletariat that has brought all its domestic attackers and foreign enemies to a standstill. Trotsky has become the Bolshevik man of many troubles because the man is very talented and was formed to be where the battle is fiercest. <div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFU055MZQ8gcJVj2pSGxGu3o4Dx-iBQst4DmWFnhQ5SSjqxyyCDcHWjpPtACfdJLS0hNt8bNQR65IJhoUBD2crpQRiyJ-HphAKUAmHBkr-deOQXyz8xLDXGxufIps4Mt0I56n_ZO_mrKLI/s1600/DL_trotsky.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="413" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFU055MZQ8gcJVj2pSGxGu3o4Dx-iBQst4DmWFnhQ5SSjqxyyCDcHWjpPtACfdJLS0hNt8bNQR65IJhoUBD2crpQRiyJ-HphAKUAmHBkr-deOQXyz8xLDXGxufIps4Mt0I56n_ZO_mrKLI/s320/DL_trotsky.jpg" width="220" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trotsky - photo used in original</td></tr>
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<br />Some have accused him of being consumed by ambition and that he enjoys being in charge but such an allegation is unfounded. Others have said that he has never been a team player and has worked tirelessly for the accomplishment of his own ends. But it will become clear in future that Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders bear equal responsibility for their policies. They will never beg capitalism for mercy and it should not expect mercy from them. “If we are forced in the end to go”, said Trotsky, “we shall at least slam the door so hard behind us that the whole world takes notice.” <div>
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Trotsky also says that there is little risk of Bolshevism in Russia being suppressed, “the world war has so accelerated the collapse of capitalism that we Bolsheviks are invincible (but) the enemies that have encircled us must be broken up by proletarian revolution.” <div class="MsoNormal">
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-34835085128160407132018-08-04T23:15:00.001+01:002019-07-28T13:15:11.570+01:00Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia, part three (continued) Bolshevism and Marxism<span style="font-family: inherit;">This is the continuation of part three of my translation of Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia by Stefán Pjetursson. This little book was published in 1921 by young Icelandic socialists who identified with the 1917 Russian Revolution and wanted to defend and explain it to the wider left and trade unionists in Iceland. I am posting it in mini-chapters because it is so long. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The earlier chapters are available below ending with the first part of chapter three, which describes Lenin and what the author knew and understood about Lenin's character and politics.</span><br />
<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bylting-i-russlandi-revolution-in-russia.html" style="font-family: inherit;">My introduction</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> to Byltingin í Rússlandi</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bylting-i-russlandi-sources-preface.html">Sources, Preface and Introduction</a> contain more about their reasons for writing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html"><br /></a><a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html">Part One: Reaction and Progress</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-two.html"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Part Two: The Revolution</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/byltingin-i-russlandi-revolution-in.html">Part Three: Bolshevism</a>, a portrait of Lenin</span><br />
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<b>Reminder</b>: Bylting í Rússlandi uses the New Style Russian calendar - the Gregorian calendar - introduced in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1918 which added thirteen days to the Old Style Julian calendar. This is why the author refers to the revolutions in February and October as the March Revolution and the November Revolution. I have kept the author's dates in my translation.</div>
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<h4>
Part Three: Bolshevism and Marxism </h4>
Lenin and the other Bolsheviks follow the essentials of socialism as laid out in the teachings of Karl Marx. Let’s say a few words about those here. Nowadays, states throughout the developed world suffer intolerable capitalist oppression. This system is built on a relatively small group of of rich people that has control over land and the means of production and takes the working class—which is called free—to serve itself. <br />
<br />
What the working class gets paid for its work is generally no more than is strictly necessary to live and work. All the other dividends of production are taken by the rich. Vast accumulation is achieved by taking more and more of the value of the working class’s work into their own pockets. Working people don’t own anything—they are proletarians; they have nothing but their ability to work for capitalists and so they have to work for the bourgeoisie, the employers. <br />
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In reality, isn’t this just the old slavery masked?<br />
<br />
As long as the bourgeoisie hold the means of production, workers will be subject to whatever conditions, or disadvantages that this group of people inflict on them. Otherwise they and their family will starve. Mankind is increasingly being divided into two classes - bourgeoisie and proletarians - oppressors and the oppressed.<br />
<br />
But the bourgeoisie who control the means of production, also have to compete for the control of the world market. So they also have to compete with each other. This stupid battle uses all kinds of shameful weapons—treachery, deceit, all sorts of underhand behaviour and worse. It is true that competition pushed people to find continually newer ways to produce cheaper goods than before. But who profits because they have taken up new and better machines? Not the working class, not ordinary people, just the bourgeoisie. <br />
<br />
The development of production has meant better machines that usually make workers redundant, because as machines improved they need fewer and fewer workers to control them. Workers have to struggle with unemployment and all kinds of poverty and distress. Their conditions and their welfare are of little concern to employers and the bourgeoisie on easy street.<br />
<br />
But when the majority of people get so little for their work, hardly enough to get by on, it is no wonder that they cannot buy much. The result is the majority of manufactured goods in the world don’t sell. It causes a deep crisis in the markets, even large companies go bankrupt and unemployment and hunger follow. There is nothing to be done about this, no matter how large the company is. <br />
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The bourgeoisie cannot control recessions. Time passes, production grows and they become obscenely rich. In reality, employment and production grows over their heads. They don’t have control over it. For the majority, the workers this situation is intolerable and finally the workers—the proletariat—rose against the bourgeoisie and overthrew their power with revolution. The revolution now happening in Russia will soon spread worldwide, say the Bolsheviks. </div>
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<h4>
Communist Manifesto</h4>
There is probably no clearer way to explain the teachings of Karl Marx, theoretical father of the Russian communists—the Bolsheviks—and the entire world’s communists than by reproducing here extracts from the Communist Manifesto, which was published in 1848 and written by Marx himself with his comrade Engels.<br />
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“The history of all past ages is the history of class struggle[1]. The oppressed and the oppressors have continually fought each other, in secret and openly. Each time the fight has ended, either in society being transformed by revolution or with both sides being ruined.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Bourgeoisie</span></h4>
Bourgeois society that rose from the ruins of the feudal order has not wiped out class differences. It has created new classes in place of the old ones, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle. But there is something special about the modern age of money. It has simplified class divisions. All human society kind is being divided into just two opposing classes—the rich and the proletariat. <br />
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Of course the bourgeoisie has created a revolution in production methods and transport but as soon as it rose a new social structure formed. Great industry and trade has put power in the hands of the money men. Governments now are nothing but committees of people that exist to look after the common interests of the rich. <br />
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The bourgeoisie has wrought great changes. Human dignity has been turned into cash values, it has established a ruthless free trade. The need for ever larger markets because of growing production has driven it to conquer the whole world. But by creating a world market, human consumption and production have become international. In place of the old needs, satisfied by each country’s own production, rose new wants that for satisfaction require the products of the most distant lands and regions. <br />
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Instead of the limited area which each nation satisfied before, there are now global business connections meaning that nations become more or less dependent on one another. Meanwhile spiritual values are becoming the same in every country. All of which leads to the national divisions between people gradually disappearing.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Over the last century dominated by the bourgeoisie, they
have created forces of production greater than all the preceding generations
managed. But the bourgeoisie is like a magician who can no longer control the
demons he has conjured up. For decades, the history of industry and commerce
has been nothing but the history of the rebellion of productive forces against
production, against property rights, which in their which modern form is the
basis for the existence of the bourgeoisie and their rule. In this respect, it
is enough to point to the trade crises, which repeatedly threaten to ruin our
entire society. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The weapons with which the bourgeoisie defeated feudalism
are now turned on them. But they haven’t simply made the weapons by which they
will eventually be destroyed, they have also created the army to wield them—the
workers, the modern proletariat.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The Proletariat</span></h4>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The workers get barely enough from their work to eke out a
living and remain human. They are not just the slaves of the bourgeoisie; with
each passing day they are enslaved to the machines, the foremen and
particularly to individual capitalists. And what makes this oppression all the
more vile is that its goal is merely the gratification of the avaricious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">As soon as the proletariat was formed, it began to struggle
against the bourgeoisie. At first individual workers fought them, then all the
workers in the same factory, then all those in the same kind of work in one
area. At this stage, the workers are spread out through the country,
unorganised and in competition with each other. But with the development of
industry, the proletariat multiplies and it becomes more and more concentrated.
As its strength grows so it feels that strength more. The struggle between
individual workers and employers gradually becomes class struggle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The workers
create associations against the bourgeoisie. They band together to win
acceptable wages, they even create societies for rebellion and riots erupt. But
although the workers in these battles sometimes get their specific demands met,
this is not the greatest gain they win. No, their organisation, strengthened
after each bout is the most valuable fruit of struggle at this stage. And
finally improved communications strengthen their union so that small, local
battles become almighty class struggle.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The proletarian owns nothing. His family life is nothing
like the family life of the bourgeoisie. Every country is oppressed by
capitalism, no one country is better for him than another. He does not know the
sense of national pride. The Law, traditions, religion—are all in his eyes,
cloaks of the bourgeoisie. They use them for their own ends, to strengthen
their own financial interests. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">All classes that took power in past centuries have tried to
maintain their position by imposing their system on the masses. The proletariat
cannot just take power unless they abolish the existing system. They have
nothing themselves that they need to secure; they have to tear down all the old
privileges. All previous systems have served the minority or at least its
interests, but the proletarian movement fights for the common interest and
serves the overwhelming majority of people. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The proletariat cannot get its rights; it cannot gain a
freedom separate from the whole system that weighs down on it, without that
system exploding. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">What is the relationship now between communists and the
proletariat?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Their goal is the same as all other proletarian parties: To
gather the proletariat together in one class, overthrow the power of the
bourgeoisie and take control on behalf of the proletariat. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The capitalists are terrified that the communists will
abolish individual property rights. But let’s be clear, in our societies’
individual property rights do not exist for nine tenths of the population. And
the remaining property rights of the few only exist because the majority have
nothing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">You accuse us of wanting to abolish individual property rights that
are inextricably linked to the majority of people having nothing at all. You
accuse us of interfering in your right to own. Well that is what we are going
to do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Communism does not strip anyone of their right to personal
property. But it does strip from people the ability to use such assets to crush
others. It has been claimed that all desire to work will disappear and
everything will be ruined when individual property rights are abolished. If
that were true, society would have collapsed long ago from human sloth, because
nowadays those that work own nothing, while those that do own something are
precisely the people who don’t work.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It is claimed that Communists desperately want to destroy
the fatherland and eliminate patriotism. But workers do not have a fatherland.
It is not possible to take from them something that they do not have. Division
of human beings into countries will gradually disappear when capitalism is
overthrown. In all likelihood divisions will disappear completely when the
proletariat has taken power. International proletarian revolution, at least in
developed countries is one of the necessary conditions for gaining its freedom.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">When individuals stop oppressing and impoverishing each
others, so will states. When all hostility is over between classes, there
cannot be any hostility between countries. When the proletariat has taken
power, it will focus first on taking capital away from bourgeoisie and will
nationalise the means of production, to make them assets for everyone. So when
the class distinctions have gone and all production is in the hands of ordinary
people, then the state will cease to be a political power. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Political power in
reality is nothing but the power of one class to oppress others. But when the
proletariat gathers together in one class to fight the bourgeoisie, when by
revolution they take power into their own hands and end the old systems of
production, then they will immediately lose all the conditions for class
distinctions as well as the particular attributes that make them a special
class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The old system of classes and class distinctions will be
replaced by a human society where the free development of each individual is
the condition for the free development of all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The manifesto ends with these words:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Communists disdain to hide their views. They declare
publicly that their goal will only be achieved by tearing down the old system.
Above you, who now hold power, looms the Communist Revolution. The Proletariat
has nothing to lose but its chains. But they have a whole world to win. <br /><br /><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Proletarians of all countries, unite!</span></div>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-37322978105123355122018-04-13T22:14:00.000+01:002018-04-13T22:14:20.770+01:00Iceland, circumcision and the evolution of racismThe bill that proposes to ban male circumcision in Iceland is a racist attack on Jews and Muslims and needs to be understood in the wider development of racism across Europe. It is also part of the “rise of racist discourse” in Iceland, criticised by the United Nations last year. <br /><br />Progressive Party MP Silja Dögg Gunnarsdóttir, who headed up the bill claimed the bill is intended to protect children and has nothing to do with religion. There has also been a lot of talk about mutilation as though female genital mutilation (FGM) and male circumcision are in anyway similar. Since the bill was laid before the Icelandic parliament in January this year, 400 doctors in Iceland have signed a statement supporting the proposed ban and according to one poll 50 percent of people in Iceland support it. <br /><br />Male circumcision has nothing to do with the horrors of Female Genital Mutilation. For Jews and Muslims it is a practice integral to their faith and identity and every year millions of boys around the world are circumcised without it causing health problems. If the bill is passed it will become a crime to circumcise a boy under 18 years old for religious reasons with a maximum of six years in jail.<br /><br />Politicians and people with power or influence in the country are using racism to protect and enhance their position and have been doing so for at least the last five years. <br /><br /><h4>
Cultural centre </h4>
Back in the summer of 2013, Reykjavik City Council promised to provide a plot of land for Muslims in Iceland to build a cultural centre with space to hold prayers, provide education and foster community support. The land was to be free but the community itself would have to raise money for the building. <br /><br />Four days later, Reykjavik’s former mayor Ólafur F. Magnússon wrote an opinion piece in Morgunblaðið newspaper equating Islam with terrorism. He urged Icelanders to oppose the mosque that would threaten, “Our national culture and security”. The Progressive Party wasn’t likely to win seats in the City elections at the time, but the Party’s leader, Sveinbjörg Birna Sveinbjörnsdóttir also criticised the City Council’s plan and her Party’s Facebook page became a focus for opposition to a mosque and race hate. <br /><br />The Party then won two seats on the city council in the elections. Its Chair, the then Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, kept quiet even though one of Party’s deputy MPs, Þorsteinn Magnússon, resigned because he and Sveinbjörg Birna appeared happy to use racism to gain votes.<div>
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Racist attack</h4>
Later that year racists left a nasty pile of severed pigs heads and torn pages of the Muslim holy book, The Koran daubed with red paint at the site of the proposed mosque. Óskar Bjarnason who was photographed and interviewed by Icelandic newspaper <a href="http://www.visir.is/g/2013131128942/-vid-vorum-bara-ad-motmaela-mosku-tharna-">Visir </a>admitted that he and about 20 other people had done this to stop the mosque. He added that next time they would use blood not paint. Despite this admission and the obvious threat of violence, shamefully Benedikt Lund of Reykjavik City Police said there was no evidence to investigate the hate crime because the City Council had cleaned the heads away.<br /><br />We have seen this process of developing racism and Islamophobia all over Europe since the financial crash in 2008 and we know where it leads. There are far-right and fascist members of parliament in Greece, France, Hungary and last year 94 members of the far-right The Alternative for Germany (AfD) were elected to the German parliament. Of these, “at least half are <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/45540/Fury+as+Nazi+MPs+enter+the+German+parliament">Nazis </a>or have links to the Nazi scene like the Identitarian Movement.” <br /><br />Victor Orban has been elected Prime Minister for the third time in Hungary this week with a vicious anti-immigration and Islamophobia campaign. The Nazis in Jobbik came second.<br /><br />The slogan of anti-fascists across Europe is Never Again because we understand that the Nazis and fascism were not an aberration. And the murderous machine they built that perpetrated the Holocaust was the result of concrete situations and their ideology. We understand that if we don’t fight racism and fascism, it can happen again.<br /><br />War, poverty and political crises in the Middle East and Africa have driven hundreds of thousands of migrants to search for a better life in Europe. Some people have made it as far as Iceland, in some cases believing that they would face less racism than in Southern Europe or Scandinavia. <br /><br />Anti-racist activists, advocacy groups and growing public support in 2014 in Iceland supported the refugees and asylum seekers. But then a story broke that linked a prominent asylum seeker to violent crime. Campaigners smelt a rat and after protests and an inquiry we learned that a Minister’s aide confessed to the leak. Reykjavík District Court said that, “ the sole purpose for leaking the memo was ‘to impugn the reputation’ of the asylum seekers in the face of growing public protest over their treatment.” <br /><br />Since then websites set up to support Syrians refugees have been inundated with race hate. Just the month before 70 asylum seekers were deported last year, the national broadcaster <a href="http://www.ruv.is/frett/vidines-heilbrigdiseftirlit-gagnrynir-adbunad">RÚV </a>reported that conditions in the Víðines asylum centre as dirty and damp with too little food that was barely-heated. To reach the Immigration Service in Reykjavik the refugees have to walk for almost an hour to the nearest bus stop. And all this despite articles saying <a href="http://icelandreview.com/news/2017/11/19/more-immigrants-needed-iceland">Iceland needs more immigrants</a>. <br /><br />But refugees resettled in small towns have been welcomed with overwhelming solidarity and ordinary Icelanders have tried to protect immigrants from the abuses of the state, including dawn raids and people being dragged out of churches. <div>
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A victory</h4>
Today they have scored a victory. Protests saved an Afghan father Abrahim and his 11 year old daughter Haniye from deportation and today the little family were finally granted asylum.<br />
<br />This shows strong campaigns can push back racism in Iceland but there also needs to be more understanding of anti-Semitism and its effects, including this bill to ban circumcision. It is great to see Iceland’s Catholic Bishop speak up to defend Jews and Muslims but the greatest social weight in Iceland is its trade unions and its time they stood up to this bigotry. <br /><br /><div>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-17228780967785764532018-01-21T21:45:00.002+00:002018-01-21T21:46:31.744+00:00Capitalism and the restructuring of fishing and fisheries across the world When anthropologist Jane Nadel-Klein described how "capitalism can create and then dismisses a way of life", she was talking about the fishing villages of east Scotland. But the same could be said of any of the tens of thousands of fishing communities that developed fishing and fish processing industries over the last century from Iceland to New Zealand. The "dismissal" of these fishing villages has been part of the restructuring of global capitalism known as neoliberalism in response to the falling rate of profit since the end of the long post Second World War boom.<br />
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The restructuring of fisheries was intended to increase the profitability of commercial fishing, which it most certainly has for corporations and large boat owners, as the page from <a href="http://www.statice.is/publications/iceland-in-figures/"><i>Statistics Iceland</i> </a> below shows. The total catch from Icelandic fisheries in 2016 was almost half a million tonnes less than in 2005, yet it was worth twice as much as the 2005 catch had been.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDfyAkH8B_4S8Vjo8uAPQz0LOA0DHqju65VEJSY56-rgK0q8gUw5fuv7s0V-LGIjU_HRtiBpruOdVX5Wb1UXFRmA4pOdqqgYH2roaiPrvj7YOd0tQ6Fy239LW5d600sno8YwVuMgCcpto4/s1600/Fisheries+2005-2016-page-001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="650" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDfyAkH8B_4S8Vjo8uAPQz0LOA0DHqju65VEJSY56-rgK0q8gUw5fuv7s0V-LGIjU_HRtiBpruOdVX5Wb1UXFRmA4pOdqqgYH2roaiPrvj7YOd0tQ6Fy239LW5d600sno8YwVuMgCcpto4/s640/Fisheries+2005-2016-page-001.jpg" width="440" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b>The increase in value of Iceland's total fish catch 2005-2016</b></td></tr>
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The resulting destruction of many fishing communities has been a by-product of consolidation of capital, privatisation of fisheries, over-fishing, the imposition of Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) in the name of sustainability and the financialisation of quotas into commodities in their own right. All of which has led inexorably to the closure of factories and fewer small boats being able to make a living for their crews and owners.<br />
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Nadel-Klein's book <i><a href="https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/view/44819/Fishing+for+Heritage%253A+Modernity+and+Loss+Along+the+Scottish+Coast">Fishing for Heritage</a> </i>was published in 2003 and since then anthropologists have been looking in depth at the results of this process in different areas of the world. Penny McCall Howard's superb book <i>Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea </i>focuses on the people "working the ground" in the prawn fisheries of the west coast of Scotland, to investigate how capitalism and its drive for profit is systematically wrecking the fisheries and the livelihoods of the fishers. I have reviewed <i><a href="http://isj.org.uk/fishers-under-siege/">Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea</a> </i>in the latest edition of International Socialism Journal.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Environment, Labour and Capitalism at Sea<br />
by Penny McCall Howard</td></tr>
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Fiona McCormack's <i>Private Oceans: The Enclosure and Marketisation of the Seas</i> examines how Individual Transferable Quotas work in New Zealand and Iceland and considers Hawaii where ITQs have not yet dislodged a fisheries management system based on maximum annual catches. The book ends in Ireland with examples of the effects of the Common Fisheries Policies from Donegal and the island of Árainn Mhór. I recently reviewed <i>Private Oceans</i> for <a href="http://climateandcapitalism.com/2018/01/10/private-oceans-the-enclosure-and-marketisation-of-the-seas/">Climate and Capitalism</a> and while it contains a lot I disagree with, the book is full of fascinating detail and the voices of the fishers at the sharp end of neoliberal restructuring.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKwfrNPqYsHhiKeCykeyMiqSwl_pbosa3xf6JORBj8YpPBA9QwaYYMJIFps_Gzi0Pmp5nOxbB_XmvKmUJFsq9qG4vuMenFhRipNPm_2N_oCIuMk9IMQ4uZlYrNM-Wa6v8hbBLYnYv_7Q5/s1600/Private+Oceans.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDKwfrNPqYsHhiKeCykeyMiqSwl_pbosa3xf6JORBj8YpPBA9QwaYYMJIFps_Gzi0Pmp5nOxbB_XmvKmUJFsq9qG4vuMenFhRipNPm_2N_oCIuMk9IMQ4uZlYrNM-Wa6v8hbBLYnYv_7Q5/s320/Private+Oceans.jpg" width="202" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Private Oceans: the Enclosure and Marketisation of the Seas<br />
by Fiona McCormack</td></tr>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-77023515561647141632017-09-12T20:58:00.000+01:002019-07-27T23:20:07.281+01:00Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia, part three Bolshevism and a portrait of LeninThis is the beginning of part three of my translation of Byltingin í Rússlandi - The Revolution in Russia by Stefán Pjetursson. This little book was published in 1921 by young Icelandic socialists who identified with the Revolution and wanted to defend and explain it to the left in Iceland. I am posting part three in mini-chapters because it is so long. The first part describes Lenin and what the author knew and understood about Lenin's character and politics.<br />
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Bylting í Rússlandi uses the New Style Russian calendar—the Gregorian calendar—introduced in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1918 which added thirteen days to the Old Style Julian calendar. This is why the author refers to the revolutions in February and October as the March Revolution and the November Revolution. I have not changed the dates back in my translation.<br />
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<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/bylting-i-russlandi-revolution-in-russia.html">My introduction</a> to Byltingin í Rússlandi<br />
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The <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/bylting-i-russlandi-sources-preface.html">Sources, Preface and Introduction</a> contain more about their reasons for writing.<br />
<a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html"><br /></a>
<a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-one.html">Part One: Reaction and Progress</a><br />
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<a href="https://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/bylting-i-russlandi-chapter-two.html">Part Two: The Revolution</a><br />
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Part Three: Bolshevism</h3>
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<br />Lenin</h4>
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The 1917 November Revolution ended the bourgeoisie’s grip on power in Russia. Under the red revolutionary flag the proletariat—the workers—had risen against them and burst their fetters. Under the red flag the Bolsheviks changed their future and overthrew the capitalists. Now the proletariat held power. <br />
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Footnote in the original:<br />
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“The word öreigi, (in foreign languages proletariat) according to Marx and other socialist writers, refers to all those who have nothing to live on but their own work, they own neither the means of production nor do they employ workers. Therefore the proletariat is not just manual workers but also other waged workers such as civil servants, office workers and many others. In this book the word has the same meaning.”</blockquote>
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The dictatorship of the proletariat was no longer a future dream—their leaders held power. They made no secret of their intention to break with the old system they said it was condemned to death. A new social order was coming that would change everyone’s quality of life so that they would be able to enjoy full maturity of mind and body.<br />
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They were also perfectly clear about how difficult this would be. The Bourgeoisie still had a large following to command in Russia. They rose against the dictatorship of the proletariat and armed themselves across the country. The old bureaucracy refused to obey the Bolshevik government. Russian ambassadors around the world refused to recognise it and despite being sacked and replaced, the problem was not solved as foreign governments refused to acknowledge the new ambassadors. </div>
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Great property owners stopped paying tax, made a huge fuss in the papers and in meetings and used all kinds of armed violence to wreck the revolution. And the internal chaos was compounded by the invasion of the most destructive foreign enemies. Of all the agreements ever made, probably none was more difficult than that made by the Bolshevik government about the war. It was supported by the proletariat—the people, who bore the hunger and filth and soldiers who defended them against powerful domestic and foreign enemies whose armies were well armed and supplied. </div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />Many would have been discouraged at such a prospect but not the Bolshevik government. With the gargantuan effort that only extreme danger can spur, they fought all their enemies at once to save the revolution and crush the opposition. In this great battle the entire revolutionary party was united. Many of its prominent people have proven to be the most heroic, but there are two who have been head and shoulders above the others and are the best known abroad. These men are Lenin and Trotsky, so it is appropriate to sketch their lives, work and teaching. </span></div>
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Lenin whose real name is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov was born on 23 April 1870 in Simbirsk on the Volga. He is Russian and can trace his family to nobility, though his immediate forbears have been neither wealthy nor particularly badly off. When he was quite young he went to the Gymnasium school at Simbirsk and from there at 17 he went to the Kazan University. He soon learned about the grim reality of the authorities’ injustice when he hadn’t been in university a year and was thrown out for being part of a political student group involved in some minor fracas in Kazan. Lenin had been one of the most liberal students and for that he was expelled. That same year, his brother Alexander was executed in the capital for being part of a conspiracy against the Tsar, Alexander III. Despite this blow, Lenin did not allow himself to be discouraged. Now he began to think seriously about politics and quickly became a radical socialist. <br />
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In 1891 he came to the capital city and there read law but besides his studies, he put his heart and soul into spreading the socialist message writing many newspaper and magazine articles which were distributed surreptitiously. There was no freedom of the press and the authorities would have seized such articles if they had known they were spreading socialist ideas. <br />
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In 1895, Lenin was one of those trying to develop connections with industrial workers in the capital to improve their conditions. Then the Russian authorities decided he had been quite enough of a thorn in their side and arrested him with various other workers’ leaders. Lenin was sentenced to three years exile in Siberia and after exile was banned from major Russian cities, university towns and industrial centres. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lenin arrested 1895 [not in original]</td></tr>
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It was clear that the authorities did not want to give him any chance to work amongst Russian workers. Though it was a difficult decision, Lenin chose to live abroad. Despite not being able to live and work at home because of the authorities’ injustice and violence, he focused all his energy on working for the victory of the working class, not just in Russia but around the world. </div>
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Although he was in central and western Europe for the first 16 years of the 20th century he was in constant touch with the socialists in Russia and was one of the most influential members of their party. He wrote a great deal on many subjects in these years and published more than one newspaper. Some of what he wrote was smuggled into Russia and distributed widely. </div>
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Lenin was a radical socialist from the start, he believed that revolution was the only way and refused to work with the bourgeoisie. Shortly after the turn of the century, this was the sharpest dispute in the Russian Socialist Party and why it split. At the meeting to discuss the matter, the majority agreed with Lenin and so were called Bolsheviki (those of the majority). It is Lenin who is the foremost theorist of Bolshevism, which in reality is only socialism in its most radical form. So when riots and strikes broke out all over Russia during the Russian-Japanese war, Lenin saw an opportunity for the working class to get started. He returned home and stayed in the capital for a while—it was then that he met Trotsky, one of the most important leaders of the Petrograd workers. </div>
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It is well known that this revolution was crushed and reaction and oppression triumphed. The authorities used the opportunity to take revenge on people at the forefront of the struggle for freedom, whose only choice was to flee the country or risk being killed. Lenin went into exile but continued to work for his party. He had some good friends and supporters in those years, which have now become famous such as Zinoviev, Lunacharsky and Kamenev. These people went to great lengths so their strategy could be followed in Russia with newspapers, articles and the like. </div>
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Lenin had little choice about how he lived in his exile years, but he did not much mind since he has never been known to look after his own interests. The most partial and ignorant of his opponents accuse him of selfishness and other low character flaws. Part of their campaign of lies is to damage Lenin in the eyes of the world and especially of ordinary people who all the fat cats fear will turn to follow the Bolsheviks’ strategy.<br />
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<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">World War</span></span></span></h4>
<span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />When the world war began Lenin was in Galicia<a href="file:///C:/Users/sarah/AppData/Local/Box/Box%20Edit/Documents/mXEVYqPbmUmKIpJ2s_TpDQ==/Bylting%20%C3%AD%20R%C3%BAsslandi%20Chapter%20Three.doc#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;" title="">[1]</a></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span>and it appears that the Central Powers made no attempt to impose restrictions on him. It could well be that it occurred to the various authorities that the foremost theorist of the Russian revolutionaries could be useful to them. What is certain is that Lenin went to Switzerland without hindrance but the authorities made a mistake. <br />
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It is more likely that Lenin would gain a substantial following among ordinary people in Central Europe and elsewhere, than become a politician of the Central Powers. He has never been and never will be useful to their infamous methods.<br />
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><br />In Switzerland, Lenin published a newspaper and made no secret of his wanting to see Russia lose the war. He said that the people of Russia would only be harmed by new conquests but on the other hand, he was sure that losing the war would at least wreck the Russian monarchy. Otherwise of course, Lenin was of one of the fiercest opponents of the war and one of the leaders of the group of socialists that set up the Zimmerwald meeting in September 1915 in Switzerland, to oppose the war and impress on ordinary people in the warring countries that to keep fighting was to spill their own blood to enrich capitalists and strengthen the chains that capitalism had laid on them. <br /><br />Lenin was right when he thought that the defeat of Russia would bring down the monarchy. As already mentioned, the March<span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span><a href="file:///C:/Users/sarah/AppData/Local/Box/Box%20Edit/Documents/mXEVYqPbmUmKIpJ2s_TpDQ==/Bylting%20%C3%AD%20R%C3%BAsslandi%20Chapter%20Three.doc#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><span style="font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 12pt;"> </span></span></span>1917 revolution began when the war had been going for 32 months and Russia had lost many men and a great deal of land. The new authorities decided to give all exiles the opportunity which Lenin took to come home. It has since been repeatedly said that the Germans paid as much as they could for his journey and that he must have taken their money. It is probably true that the Central Powers hoped that Lenin would work for peace if he got home. But for Lenin to have taken money from them and become an agent of central European fat cats is incredibly unlikely. And of all the incidents pointed to later as such, not once has it been the peace treaty between Russia and the Central Powers because for so long Lenin was famously one of the most implacable opponents of the war waged throughout the world. <br />
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It is understandable that the capitalists put this story about with many others to undermine his influence, because capitalist oppression has hardly ever had a more dangerous enemy than Lenin. When he came home, Lenin threw himself into work with the Bolsheviks’ supporters and quickly became foremost amongst those who insisted that the revolution must continue until bourgeois rule was secure. The revolution, he said, could not succeed until the proletariat had taken all power into its own hands. And he worked entirely to this end. No other man has worked as energetically to seize all power from the capitalists and lay the foundations of a new classless order. <br />
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Few, who saw Lenin, would imagine that he is the outstanding man that he really is. It would not be said that he was much to look at. The Russian monarch’s secret police had described him in their files like this; </div>
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“Short, thick, short-necked, round and red in the face, shaven with a moustache and goatee beard, small nose that turns up slightly at the end, penetrating gaze, bald, high forehead; nearly always carries a raincoat on his arm, has various hats or caps, walks in a determined fashion”. </blockquote>
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We may add to this description that he has a black goatee, small moustache and deep wrinkles on his forehead that have been carved by the tremendous effort and worry that have been loaded on him in the last few years. <br />
<br />
Lenin is always good tempered and smiling but under this harmless exterior lies limitless self confidence, exceptional intelligence, steel hard concentrated will and great resolution. These fine commanding talents of Lenin’s are rarely, if ever used in overbearing or raging at subordinates or committee members as is often the case for people who hold similar positions. No, he avoids issuing orders—it is usually enough to advise his fellow committee members, since they assign so much importance to what he says. <br />
<br />
To tell the truth Lenin has to carry little of the routine. It is said that his home life is exemplary and he is well married. He is so frugal that it is alarms everyone—those who know him and equally many of his opponents, he is amazingly unselfish in every way. <br />
<br />
Lenin is not a sentimental man. Coldly and calmly, he worked to achieve the ends to which he has sacrificed his life. He has shown unswerving courage in the struggle against those who would hinder the proletariat’s progress under his leadership. Lenin did not hesitate for one moment to forge the way by whatever means necessary and though he is not at all vengeful, he is dauntless and relentless in the struggle to bring capitalist oppression to its knees.<br />
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/sarah/AppData/Local/Box/Box%20Edit/Documents/mXEVYqPbmUmKIpJ2s_TpDQ==/Bylting%20%C3%AD%20R%C3%BAsslandi%20Chapter%20Three.doc#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> In 1917 Galicia was the largest and most northerly region of the Austrian Empire and straddles what is now the border between Poland and Ukraine—not to be confused with the region of Galicia in northern Spain.</div>
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<a href="file:///C:/Users/sarah/AppData/Local/Box/Box%20Edit/Documents/mXEVYqPbmUmKIpJ2s_TpDQ==/Bylting%20%C3%AD%20R%C3%BAsslandi%20Chapter%20Three.doc#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "calibri" , "sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a> The first Russian revolution in 1917 began when women demonstrated on International Women’s day for bread and peace on 8 March (23 February OS). </div>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-68051278639437950422017-05-01T20:30:00.000+01:002017-05-01T20:37:39.414+01:00Happy May Day - the international workers holidayHappy May Day everyone, here's a 1931 May Day march led by Iceland's Communist Party in Reykjavik.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0xW8qqvQR3ZuBoZrqTmqN9VKjVeBZvLFyk5CMiKDElUK2kBMjJtVb3-J7IlI4FLAiRrhpnazCY5mkYsOst_XpJrpprAKsp_1WGex7W9KbpwQIJoWxDdl41h1VFbDDzt8Czfx_DmHIMAmD/s1600/001.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0xW8qqvQR3ZuBoZrqTmqN9VKjVeBZvLFyk5CMiKDElUK2kBMjJtVb3-J7IlI4FLAiRrhpnazCY5mkYsOst_XpJrpprAKsp_1WGex7W9KbpwQIJoWxDdl41h1VFbDDzt8Czfx_DmHIMAmD/s400/001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-1276692492548156122017-04-28T17:46:00.001+01:002017-05-01T21:12:48.205+01:00International Workers Memorial Day - Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living<div class="MsoNormal">
Today—28 April—is International Workers Memorial Day when workers
and their trade unions round the world, remember everyone killed at work. It’s
a day to mourn the dead and demand better health and safety, better conditions and
that if the worst happens that employers accept responsibility and pay proper
compensation to workers’ families.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The history of fatal and serious accidents for every
countries’ workers is very long. In Iceland, the highest numbers of deaths were probably amongst fishers—men and women—who were most likely to drown or die of cold. But
farm workers also got killed collecting “scurvy grass” from cliffs, which was needed for
its vitamin C. Women, whose work was washing clothes in rivers or geothermal hot
water pools, drowned or suffered fatal burns.</div>
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Terrible conditions and weather caused accidents and often
people assume these are historical events and don’t happen now. But in February this year one man was hospitalised and another
died when hydrogen sulphide and carbon monoxide got into their accommodation through the water supply of the fish factory that employed them in Reykjanes, South West Iceland.</div>
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A worker running the Bæjarins bestu hot dogs kiosk in
Reykjavik last September narrowly escaped being crushed when a crane from the
building site adjacent collapsed against the door of the small building. The
timber that the crane was carrying landed in the carp park next to it and Bæjarins
bestu’s staff member had to get out by climbing through the window.</div>
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And in April last year fisherman Ólafur Jóhannes Friðriksson
died when he fell overboard from a fishing boat in Húnaflói bay, Northwest
Iceland.</div>
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It is easy to say accidents will always happen, but they are
much more likely where workers are pushed to speed up, where companies cut
corners to save money or small fishing boats lack the latest safety equipment. Internationally there is a growing problem of
suicide among workers and small farmers driven to despair by overwork and too
little pay.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Trade unionised work places are safer workplaces. But to
drastically reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries suffered at work, we are going to
have to challenge the system that puts profit before safety and ordinary people’s
lives, wherever they are.<br />
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-51556073398275374492017-03-16T21:21:00.003+00:002017-03-18T19:12:11.590+00:00When news of the beginning of the 1917 Russian Revolution reached Iceland<br />
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Copenhagen 15 March 1917[1]</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Last Sunday revolution began in Russia. Parliament refused
the Emperor’s order to dissolve. An elected committee of 12 MPs declared itself
the new regime in Russia. The new government arrested all politicians loyal to
the Emperor. Thirty thousand troops and people of Petrograd support the new
government. In three days the new government has taken power in Petrograd and
announced nationwide that the revolution is necessary to secure transport and a
national food supply. Petrograd's food shortages have caused the revolution.
The Duma (Russian parliament) established an executive committee with Rodzianko
as chair. General strike in Moscow.</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Icelandic newspaper <a href="http://timarit.is/files/11802988.pdf#navpanes=1&view=FitH">Morgunblaðið </a>published
the telegram with news of the first victory of the Russian Revolution—the fall
of Tsar Nicholas—on 17 March 1917, two days after the bloody dictator
abdicated. That day, the most radical left wingers of the Social Democrats in
Reykjavik set up the Reykjavik Union of Socialists, Jafnaðarmannafélag
Reykjavikur to work for socialism in Iceland.</div>
</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6Vu_KpyfGhz3K_Fx0BNYv8lpYoRELNbpR5HChluYgrEVtchsgYmQZthGgSPeaeX5pUvzkBLUvVz6Px1wlfXxHfEBYBciJAmmTocmPgYaTBB7lztIg6mQp_OLZjEo23AETE0Qoi_p7Iuy/s1600/MB17031917.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje6Vu_KpyfGhz3K_Fx0BNYv8lpYoRELNbpR5HChluYgrEVtchsgYmQZthGgSPeaeX5pUvzkBLUvVz6Px1wlfXxHfEBYBciJAmmTocmPgYaTBB7lztIg6mQp_OLZjEo23AETE0Qoi_p7Iuy/s400/MB17031917.jpg" width="271" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The fall of the Russian dictator (left) and the price of bread (right), <br />
push adverts off the front page</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Socialist ideas were not new idea in Iceland. The first left
wing paper published there— Alþýðublaðið, The People's Paper—edited
by Pétur Georg Guðmundsson, came out in 1906 and socialist
newspaper Dagsbrún, edited by Ólafur Friðriksson, started in 1915.
Dagsbrún was bought in 1917 by Iceland’s Social Democratic Party,
Alþýðuflokkurinn which was set up in 1916 to represent the trade unions, but
almost immediately some of its members were discussing setting up a more
radical group of socialists within it.<br />
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Russia’s revolution was the impetus they needed. Einar
Olgeirsson says in his memoir, Kraftaverk Einnar Kynslóðar that the
founding meeting of Jafnaðarmannafélag Reykjavíkur was held in Bárubúð, the
hall owned by the Seaman’s Union, Báran, on Vonarstræti, where Reykjavik City
Hall is now. The group grew rapidly with a mixture of people who called
themselves social democrats, communists and others who were somewhere in
between and included lots of seamen<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_ftnref1">[2].</a></div>
<br />
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Many of those joining Jafnaðarmannafélag Reykjavíkur went on
to become leading socialists nationwide and in the trade unions. Einar
Olgeirsson who was then 14 years old, became a leading member of Iceland’s
Communist Party (ICP) founded in 1930 and was elected an ICP member of
parliament.</div>
<h4>
<br />The First World War</h4>
Despite the initial popularity of the First World War in Europe, its reality—the mass slaughter of young working class men, hunger and the indifference of their rulers meant that socialist ideas were spreading. In Iceland, news of the war was followed closely in the newspapers and newsreels in Reykjavik's cinemas, such as Gamla Bíó where the film, <a href="https://youtu.be/xQ_OZfaiUlc">Battle of the Somme</a> was shown three times a day from Sunday 11 March 1917. The film was made in 1916 shortly after the battle by Britain's War Office official photographers as propaganda for the Allies, but it shocked its audiences with the reality of the slaughter. <br />
<br />
The war was also a disaster for ordinary people in Iceland. By 1914 the country’s economy was integrated into the world markets that the war had smashed up. Salt fish exports to Spain were disrupted, unemployment, hunger and shortages of essentials including heating oil, grew with the British and German attacks on shipping. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://timarit.is/files/11802754.pdf#navpanes=1&view=FitH">Morgunblaðið </a>reported the calculations of the quarterly statistical paper Hagtíðindin of the price increases in Iceland's staple goods—80 percent on average, since the beginning of the war. <br />
<br />
Price rises July 1914 – January 1917<br />
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<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Bread</div>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
65 %</div>
</td>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Cereals</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
99%</div>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Garden fruit & vegetables</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
72%</div>
</td>
</tr>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Other fruit</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
71%</div>
</td>
</tr>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Sugar</div>
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<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
116%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Coffee</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
16%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Tea, chocolate, cocoa</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
41%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Butter and fat</div>
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<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
73%</div>
</td>
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<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Milk, cheese and eggs</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
106%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Meat</div>
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<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
88%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Bacon & salted lamb</div>
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<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
69%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Fish</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
90%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Salt</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
62%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Soda and salt</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
87%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Kerosene</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
67%</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 140.1pt;" valign="top" width="187"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Coal</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; width: 42.5pt;" valign="top" width="57"><div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
172%</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As the war dragged on, <a href="http://timarit.is/files/10062063.pdf#navpanes=1&view=FitH">Dagsbrún</a>,
defined cheap as "an ancient word, no longer in use" and buying sugar
as, "to stand about idly without success".</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Thousands of Icelanders were colder and hungrier and wanted to change their
lives.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
News of the first week of the revolution reached Iceland in
bits and pieces—the Russian emperor was in prison, his brother Michael had
taken his place, an article considered the profound effects this must have on
the Duma, the token parliament, which now, it said, held power. What about
Russian politicians, Rodzianko, the serious thinker and his enemy the
reactionary Protopopov? And Nicholas wanted to hand power to his young son.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
In the first weeks of the revolution it appears that Icelanders didn't know
that women in Russia marching for peace and bread on International Working
Women's Day had sparked the movement that toppled the Tsar. Icelanders in
Denmark may have heard, but letters home were censored by the British
military. Still a Reykjavik newspaper quoted the paper of the Young Socialists
in Stockholm saying Russia wanted to make an independent peace with Germany and
had sent officials to Switzerland to negotiate.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Then the provisional government announced that political prisoners were to be
freed, there was to be free speech and freedom of the press. A
representative government would be established with free general elections and
the old police force would be replaced by a citizens militia answerable to
parliament. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kerensky, the minister of justice said that the old
government would be held accountable for their crimes against the people but
none of them would be condemned without a trial.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The allied powers, the news said, welcomed the revolution
because they wanted to see Russia waging the war efficiently. The London papers
embraced the new developments and only saw a risk in riled up Russian workers
being distracted from war production. Leaders in England sent telegrams to the
provisional government about it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiDqt3hWJpj-l1cnbUBMzZrN3WUatWdzBN0GcfrHVbqCjB3QuOiPaWnEVPPY3oGVzzCnyzFE7uwPtC_1W6p5CLeGSLqBTikAAYBHsM4POU9asHDjX0voBsQZuRx-3AFvinO0damw6G4hv1/s1600/Women+march.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiDqt3hWJpj-l1cnbUBMzZrN3WUatWdzBN0GcfrHVbqCjB3QuOiPaWnEVPPY3oGVzzCnyzFE7uwPtC_1W6p5CLeGSLqBTikAAYBHsM4POU9asHDjX0voBsQZuRx-3AFvinO0damw6G4hv1/s320/Women+march.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Women march for bread and peace in Russia 1917 <br />
on International Working Women's Day,<br />
23 February Old Style and 8 March New Style </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">
</span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The shock waves from revolutionary Russia in that first week
gave millions of people the hope that life could be better than poverty and
endless work. In underdeveloped Iceland, with its few small towns, isolated
farmsteads and fishing stations, the revolutionaries' ideas and victories were
to become the catalyst for trade unions, socialist and communist groups to
mushroom in its poor soil.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In future posts, I'll be looking at the Icelanders who travelled to
revolutionary Russia to learn from it and how their experiences came to
shape generations of militant workers in Iceland.</div>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="ftn1">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="file:///C:/Users/sarah/AppData/Local/Box/Box%20Edit/Documents/HavLxpubu0mZZn4F7VSs_g==/The%20Russian%20Revolution%20begins%20and%20Icelands%20socialists%20seize%20the%20time.docx" name="_ftn1" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="line-height: 115%;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Russia used the Julian or Old Style calendar until 24 January 1918, which was 13 days behind, so 15 March in Europe and the United States was 24 February in Russia. To change to the Gregorian calander or New Style, add 13 days. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif; font-size: x-small;">[2] One
Miraculous Generation, Kraftaverk Einnar Kynslóðar, Mál og Menning, p30.</span></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-57020745867734050782017-02-12T23:33:00.002+00:002017-02-16T17:20:28.342+00:00Eight week fisheries strike bites hard as Iceland's establishment gets rattled<div class="tr_bq">
Icelandic fishers have been striking for two months and a report published yesterday by Iceland's Fisheries minister, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir shows just how much fishing is really worth to the government and employers.</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwMlNOoz6gNZAxrLUDo5X64SEacDdRN1PW3rTrLbZS3t3hqWkSwCpoHNKaBzwF1jq-mc8kQQoJhk13fQCKO_9SlEBZWDg13e2Qeh6iLezWQDwKtacHUxabz1e51VNGVNISthyYPwZYfUvk/s1600/Bldamannafundur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwMlNOoz6gNZAxrLUDo5X64SEacDdRN1PW3rTrLbZS3t3hqWkSwCpoHNKaBzwF1jq-mc8kQQoJhk13fQCKO_9SlEBZWDg13e2Qeh6iLezWQDwKtacHUxabz1e51VNGVNISthyYPwZYfUvk/s320/Bldamannafundur.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption">Fisheries minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The <a href="https://www.atvinnuvegaraduneyti.is/sjavarutvegs-og-landbunadarmal/frettir/mat-a-thjodhagslegum-kostnadi-verkfalls-sjomanna">report</a> notes that since the start of the strike on 14 December 2016:<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<ul>
<li>The production and export of fresh whitefish has dropped by 40-55 percent and export revenue is down by 3500-5000 million Icelandic króna (ISK)</li>
<li>Some 312 million ISK in unemployment benefit has had to be paid out and contributions to the unemployment fund paid by workers are down by 126 million</li>
<li>The treasury is losing tax and fishing fees</li>
<li>Central and local government income has been hit by 3,565 million ISK, of which 2,998 million would have come from fishers and 567 million from fish processing workers </li>
<li>If the strike were to continue over the capelin fishing season it would cost the economy a further billion ISK</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The report also notes how much fishing workers are sacrificing to fight for their terms and conditions, as their disposable income has dropped 3,573 million ISK and the fish processing workers' income is down 818 million. If the <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/if-workers-were-to-punch-their-weight.html">fishing unions had united</a> and stayed out indefinitely as planned from 10 November last year, the workers' could have won weeks ago. But it looks as though Iceland's ruling class is trying to find a way to end the strike and save face.<br />
<br />
Páll Magnússon, head of the parliament, the Alþingi, Industrial Affairs Committee was interviewed by state broadcaster RUV last week. It was remarkable enough that he said that the government could intervene without banning the strike. Iceland governments have made fishing strikes illegal before but it appears to recognise now that the well of bitterness beneath this strike is too deep to risk banning it. Instead he suggested that fishers' food allowance could partly be treated as a travel allowance and not fully taxed.<br />
<br />
Former Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture Gunnar Bragi
Sveinsson, also raised the idea of reinstating fishers' tax breaks. These tax breaks, before they were abolished, went some way to recognise that fishing is hard and dangerous and makes huge amounts of profit for exporters and processing plant owners. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/icelands-fishing-strike-casts-wide-net.html">Remember president of seafood producers Samherji, Þorsteinn Már Baldvinsson</a>? He <a href="http://www.samherji.is/is/frettir/la">wrote</a> an article saying Icelandic fishers earn £100,000s a year and are better off than their Norwegian counterparts. He was also Chair of Glitnir investment bank when it went belly-up in 2008 and an <a href="http://www.frettatiminn.is/thorsteinn-mar-og-helga-hafa-fengid-3-5-milljarda-fra-samherja/">article</a> published in Iceland last year said that Þorsteinn Már and his ex-wife Helga S. Guðmundsdóttir had been paid some 3.5 billion ISK over the last six years from the company Steinn Ehf. which holds their shares in Samherji. These enormous profits, journalist Ingi Freyr Vilhjálmsson said amounted to nearly 6.5 percent of 2015's budget for the National Hospital in Reykjavik and almost 65 percent of the revenue of Iceland's National Radio or the wages of 13,500 people on the minimum wage in 2016.<br />
<br />
The CEO of Grimsby fish market Martyn Boyers knew this <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/icelands-fishing-strike-casts-wide-net.html">strike would hit profits quickly</a>, back in November 2016 he said,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is not permanent, but it is a bad thing. Because of the way the system works we have fish on its way. It won't affect this week but it will the week after. The biggest issue is we don't know how long it will be. Will it be a day and they'll be back fishing tomorrow? Could it be a week?, A month? It will not be permanent, but the way business works now there won't be a really good period to cover the bad.</blockquote>
Boyers also pointed out that Norway, Ireland and Scotland would not be able to fill the gap left by the strike and said that the Grimsby Fish Merchants Association would be trying to put pressure on the Icelandic government to get the employers and unions to end the strike. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whatever pressure they have tried has not worked. Boyars was quoted in an article in British newspaper <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/feb/11/first-courgettes-now-cod-iceland-trawler-strike-to-hike-fish-prices">The Guardian</a> yesterday.</div>
<blockquote>
Since January we have had virtually no Icelandic fish. We are currently down 75% on Icelandic fish in weight terms over the last five weeks. It’s putting pressure on jobs in the supply chain and availability in shops.</blockquote>
The Guardian is a middle class newspaper, which explains why the article is mostly most worried about the price of fish and the shortage of courgettes in Britain due to cold weather in Spain. Leaving aside this editorial idiocy, Fisheries minister, Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir's report may have be intended to load pressure on the strikers but it also clearly shows that this strike can be won.<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Previous articles on Herring and Class Struggle about the strike can be found here -<br />
<br />
<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/icelands-fishing-workers-vote-and.html">Iceland's fishing workers vote and strike again</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/icelands-fishing-strike-casts-wide-net.html">Iceland's fishing strike casts a wide net</a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/afram-sjomenn-indefinite-trawler.html">Áfram Sjómenn - The indefinite trawler fisheries Strike in Iceland is on</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/if-workers-were-to-punch-their-weight.html">If workers were to punch their weight, Iceland's fishing strike</a></div>
Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-69506345529911847522016-12-22T20:38:00.000+00:002016-12-22T20:44:53.600+00:00Iceland's fishing workers vote and strike againIceland's fishing workers have voted again to reject the deal negotiated between the employers' association of fisheries companies, SFS and the unions in <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sjomannasamband/?hc_ref=SEARCH">Sjómannasamband Íslands</a>. <br />
<br />
On a 67.7 percent turnout—743 of the 1,098 members of Sjómannasamband Íslands eligible to vote, over 75 percent (562 members) voted to reject the deal. Some 23.82 percent—177 voted to accept it and the indefinite strike restarted from 8pm, 14 December.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The issues at stake include crew levels, the cost of work clothing, holidays, accident and sick pay, the price paid for the sailors' share of the catch and the amount of the value of the catch that the employers are able to keep to cover fuel costs. And the trawler owners do not want to pay for the workers to travel home when they land away from their home port.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The next negotiation meeting is expected to be on 5 January 2017. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If the strike were to continue, fish workers in factories in Iceland and the Westman Islands could be laid off, although they will be able to get unemployment benefit to tide them over. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But the factory workers and the fishers have the same interests against the owners/employers, because their work is the source of all the <a href="https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/10936/How+the+capitalists+make+their+profits">profit </a>made by the fisheries companies from fish on the world market. We should remember just how rich their work makes the owners, as I noted in an earlier <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/icelands-fishing-strike-casts-wide-net.html">post</a>, </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
An <a href="http://www.frettatiminn.is/thorsteinn-mar-og-helga-hafa-fengid-3-5-milljarda-fra-samherja/">article</a> published
in Iceland last month says that Þorsteinn Már and his and his ex-wife Helga S.
Guðmundsdóttir have been paid some 3.5 billion ISK over the last six years from
the company Steinn Ehf. which holds their shares in Samherji..this amounts to nearly
6.5 percent of last year's budget for the National Hospital in Reykjavik..or the wages of 13,500
people on the minimum wage in 2016.</blockquote>
<div>
So it would be in the interests of both the fishers and the fish factory workers for the factory unions to ballot and the workers to come out on strike in solidarity with the sailors and to improve their own pay and conditions.<br />
<br />
Anything is possible. Solidarity and victory to the strikers. Áfram sjómenn!</div>
<div>
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-79222837118479482142016-11-27T22:55:00.004+00:002016-11-28T06:38:15.262+00:00If workers were to punch their weight - Iceland's fishing strike Just four days after Iceland's fisheries strike began on 10 November, articles reported that deals had been agreed and the strike was off. Iceland's National Broadcasting Service, <a href="http://www.ruv.is/frett/sjomannasamningur-i-hofn">RÚV</a> reported that a contract had been signed between the Icelandic Fishermen’s Association, Sjómannasambands Íslands and the employers association, Samtaka.<br />
<br />
Immediately, a furious row broke out as two of the largest fisheries unions - vélstjórafélag Grindavíkur and Sjómannafélags Íslands (SFÍ) refused to sign the deal. Jónas Garðarsson, head of <br />
SFÍ accused Valmundur Valmundsson of Sjómannasamband Íslands of breaking unity by meeting secretly with the employers.<br />
<br />
The members of Vélstjórafélag Grindavíkur and Sjómannafélags Íslands made up some 40-50 percent of the striking seamen and they stayed out. But because trawlers are often run by workers in different unions, some boats went back to sea leaving the strikers behind.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The proposed deal involves better money for protective clothing, holidays and guaranteed wages but Jónas said that his union's lawyers were sure that the deal cut sick leave in half. Sjómannasambands Íslands denied this saying that sick leave is regulated by law. This matters so much because fishing is dangerous and it is easy to get injured. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The fish dealers were enormously relieved.<br />
<br />
Martyn Boyers, chief executive of Grimsby Fish Dock Enterprises, which operates Grimsby Fish Market, <a href="http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/icelandic-fishing-strike-that-posed-threat-to-grimsby-s-seafood-supply-called-off/story-29894427-detail/story.html">said</a>,<br />
<br />
"I'm reassured about the coming week's supply now... It was never going to be a long strike, they need to work."<br />
<br />
Yet only a few days before in the Grimsby Telegraph, he had been explaining how contingency plans had been made and the strike posed no threat to the market's supply. So employers and markets insisted that the strike would have no effect, but they were ready to send representatives to Reykjavik to get the government to lean on trade union negotiators.<br />
<div>
<br />
Negotiations continued between the employers and the two large unions that hadn't signed up. There was also the problem of too few crew on herring and other pelagic trawlers. This appears to have been kicked into the long grass with a proposal for an independent study that will be carried out over a year into the numbers, safety and the length of hours worked by crews on these boats.<br />
<br />
By 16 November, Sjómannafélag Íslands and vélstjórafélag Grindavíkur had also signed a deal that would be binding for two years and suspended the strike. Sjómannafélag Íslands said it was able to sign as the sick leave for its members would remain unchanged.<br />
<br />
The seamen - fishers and engineers are now being balloted on the deal, with the results due on 14 December.<br />
<br />
This strike had been building for a long time, with no negotiated deal since 2011 and 90 percent of those who voted, voted to strike indefinitely. This suggests a level of dissatisfaction among the fishers and trawler engineers that is unlikely to be solved by these deals. But even if the deals are accepted by the majority, much more could have been won by these workers who have barely flexed their muscle and yet whose fishing make billions of krona in profit for the employers and dealers.<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
</div>
Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-8548962002083689222016-11-14T00:38:00.001+00:002017-02-12T22:54:56.140+00:00Iceland's fishing strike casts a wide netWe are often told that workers have less power and their jobs are more precarious because of globalisation. Employers, whether banks, car factories or call centres frequently insist that if a government doesn't give them tax breaks and the workers won't work for the least they are offering, then they will simply move their business and infrastructure to another, cheaper part of the world. But the current fishing strike in Iceland of around 3,500 workers shows that globalisation can mean that workers have more power, not less.<br />
<br />
The fish landing dock and market in Grimsby on the east coast of Britain is open 24 hours a day, all the year round and some 75 percent of the fish auctioned there is caught by Icelandic boats. So as the <a href="http://www.grimsbytelegraph.co.uk/all-eyes-on-iceland-as-fishermen-s-strike-threatens-seafood-supply/story-29887716-detail/story.html">Grimsby Telegraph newspaper reports</a>, if Iceland's fishing strike continues it will quickly starve the market of the fish it must have to make money. There will be fish arriving tomorrow that have already been caught, but on Monday 21 November there will be a serious shortage if the strike continues.<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0sKr42EJM3-yEiPqPB8xOuHcAfRD8AnHdcEhlxbOgSThpzmLiTMzv2Kuw8EYeI5mDC0CARboHTHUCc5dtBcGMevwXAHbByHTmhOKXq-OVVaJeJVAUyCGOtJx1WRrcORmPrK3LF5JyfDfk/s1600/Grimsby2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0sKr42EJM3-yEiPqPB8xOuHcAfRD8AnHdcEhlxbOgSThpzmLiTMzv2Kuw8EYeI5mDC0CARboHTHUCc5dtBcGMevwXAHbByHTmhOKXq-OVVaJeJVAUyCGOtJx1WRrcORmPrK3LF5JyfDfk/s320/Grimsby2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grimsby's refurbished fish market</td></tr>
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The Grimsby Telegraph says that representatives from the North East are already planning to go to Reykjavik if the
dispute isn't settled quickly. It quotes the Chief executive of market operator Grimsby Fish Dock
Enterprises, Martyn Boyers, </div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"This will resolve itself, it is not
permanent, but it is a bad thing. Because of the way the system works we have fish on
its way. It won't affect this week but it will the week after. The biggest issue is we don't know how long it will be. Will
it be a day and they'll be back fishing tomorrow? Could it be a week?, A month?
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It will not be permanent, but the way business works now there won't be a
really good period to cover the bad."</blockquote>
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Boyers also points out that Norway, Ireland and Scotland won't be able to fill this gap. And the Grimsby Fish Merchants Association will be trying to lean on the Icelandic ambassador to put pressure on the Icelandic government to get the employers and the unions to end the strike.</div>
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Various Icelandic companies operate in Grimsby including Icelandic Group which owns Coldwater, and Saucy Fish Co., and the shipping companies Eimskip and Samskip. Icelandic Group also owns Seachill which is based in Grimsby and claims that the situation has been developing for a long time so it has made contingency plans and the dispute will have no affect on them. It will be interesting to see where its fish is going to come from if the strike continues for any length of time.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibuZ5xdHNnIOs4krn7B1HTgQBiigkwI6Am_k3FEBh8SUPg0ppISqqW6BBFQs6bQTKT42o2cv5br5jP2uBIP0Y77IaGwoGZdY7kjtxe60iJsSv-Y4T1TUeBm5-vv-pzJvEVmECCAtOYOQGP/s1600/Grimsby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibuZ5xdHNnIOs4krn7B1HTgQBiigkwI6Am_k3FEBh8SUPg0ppISqqW6BBFQs6bQTKT42o2cv5br5jP2uBIP0Y77IaGwoGZdY7kjtxe60iJsSv-Y4T1TUeBm5-vv-pzJvEVmECCAtOYOQGP/s320/Grimsby.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Grimsby fish market</td></tr>
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Fresh and frozen fish is enormously valuable and each fisher makes large amounts of profit for the owners. But you wouldn't know it from listening to the owners who whine that fishers and trawler workers are extremely well paid and have nothing to complain about.</div>
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The president of seafood producers Samherji, Þorsteinn Már Baldvinsson has written an <a href="http://www.samherji.is/is/frettir/la">article</a> here in which he explains that many Icelandic fishers earn £100,000s a year and are better off than their Norwegian counterparts. He has less to say about how hard they have to work to earn the money, how long they are away from their families and how tough the conditions can be. He has nothing to say about the long boring trips when little fish is caught, which will happen more often as fish stocks suffer from environmental degradation and the effects of global warming.<br />
<br />
It is also worth knowing that Þorsteinn Már Baldvinsson was Chair of Glitnir investment bank when it went belly-up in 2008. And an <a href="http://www.frettatiminn.is/thorsteinn-mar-og-helga-hafa-fengid-3-5-milljarda-fra-samherja/">article</a> published in Iceland last month says that Þorsteinn Már and his and his ex-wife Helga S. Guðmundsdóttir have been paid some 3.5 billion ISK over the last six years from the company Steinn Ehf. which holds their shares in Samherji. Journalist Ingi Freyr Vilhjálmsson points out that this amounts to nearly 6.5 percent of last year's budget for the National Hospital in Reykjavik, almost 65 percent of the revenue of Iceland's National Radio or the wages of 13,500 people on the minimum wage in 2016.<br />
<br />
We can be certain of two things here - that whatever the fishing workers want the employers can certainly afford and that they won't stop squealing about it until they are forced to pay up.<br />
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Áfram sjómenn!</div>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-43977511389129531642016-11-10T23:58:00.000+00:002016-11-27T20:20:28.870+00:00Áfram Sjómenn - The indefinite trawler fisheries Strike in Iceland is on Iceland's trawler fishers and marine engineers began an all-out strike tonight at 11 pm after talks broke down a little after 9 pm this evening without a new deal between the fishing unions and employers.<br />
<br />
In this video tonight Valmundur Valmundsson of Iceland Seamen's Union, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=sj%C3%B3mannasamband%20%C3%8Dslands">Sjómannasamband Íslands</a> announces that the strike is going ahead. He thanks everyone for their support and says they must stick together in this fight.<br />
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<iframe allowtransparency="true" frameborder="0" height="550" scrolling="no" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fsjomannasamband%2Fvideos%2F360226047650043%2F&show_text=1&width=450" style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" width="450"></iframe>
<br />
Sjómannasamband Íslands (SSÍ) and Marine Engineers in VM Félag vélstjóra og málmtæknimanna rejected the deal proposed by the Association of Fisheries Companies in August this year. This deal meant trawler workers could get wage cuts of up to 15 percent as the ship owners offloaded new taxes and fuel charges onto the fishers and engineers.<br />
<br />
An agreement has been reached on the prices to be paid for fish but not on the numbers of crew on each vessel. The Union says there are already too few crew and any fewer would be dangerous.<br />
<br />
Last month, fishers in the Iceland Seaman's Union voted by 90 percent to strike indefinitely, if the employers didn't come up with a better deal.<br />
<br />
When the ballot ended, 339 members of VM, the Icelandic Union of Marine Engineers and Metal Technicians had voted, a 71.8 percent turn out. Some 90.8 percent voted to strike with only 26 members voting against.<br />
<br />
Fishers in the Iceland Seaman's Union, SSÍ voted by almost 90 percent to strike on a 56 percent turn out.<br />
<br />
<b>Áfram Sjómenn</b>Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-10187904410469875142016-11-09T11:58:00.000+00:002016-11-09T12:31:08.236+00:00Celebrating a militant workers movement, Gúttóslagurinn 9 November 1932Eighty four years ago today when Iceland was in the grip of the world economic depression, an explosion of working class anger that became known as Gúttóslagurinn - the battle of Gúttó, erupted at a Reykjavik town council meeting.<br />
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It was the second of two decisive events that year which meant that for the rest of the 1930s employers and state authorities in Iceland were on the back foot against a militant workers' movement.<br />
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In Reykjavik 1932, with 28,000 inhabitants, where 25 percent of working men were unemployed, the town council included some of the establishment's most important people; the Chair Petur Halldorsson, Jakob Moller the Bank Inspector, Jon Olafsson, the bank manager, the doctor Maggi Jul Magnusson and the only woman on the council Gudrun Jonasson. The council intended to rubber stamp its plan to slash the wages paid out for dole work and abolish the hard won coffee break.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqbfW0EZdLwA7ENc49g14HVBaExkJrezfVhyphenhyphen3Kcv6uGdHCD_uy41gzTAm1yNEjSMbCeu0WiYKcKkG3RWG35hcYjmEupNi63pXPho5uW1v9cTB7Cwju5IQKVwhenSXy3Q4p6ppHD5bSjoog/s1600/Gutto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqbfW0EZdLwA7ENc49g14HVBaExkJrezfVhyphenhyphen3Kcv6uGdHCD_uy41gzTAm1yNEjSMbCeu0WiYKcKkG3RWG35hcYjmEupNi63pXPho5uW1v9cTB7Cwju5IQKVwhenSXy3Q4p6ppHD5bSjoog/s320/Gutto.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Outside Gúttó, possibly on 9 November 1932</td></tr>
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Working class anger and organisation in Iceland had been growing for years and by 1932 the communists were leading a united campaign against wage cuts and poverty involving trade unionists, the Social Democrats, Alþýðuflokkurinn and a mass of ordinary workers. Wages had fallen in rural areas where organisation was weak but in 1930 to 1931 communists had organised against violent employers to establish union wage rates.<br />
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In July 1932 the town council decided that wages would have to be cut despite months of protest. They had to make some concession to popular anger and a "dole work" programme began in the summer. But it was only for 200 men and was mostly pointless quarry work without any thought of building anything, or even repairing existing roads. The men worked for around six hours a day for an hourly rate of 1.36 krona (kr), but only men with the largest families got work most days in the week. Even with work, 8 or 9 kr a day meant slow starvation.<br />
<br />
<b>Militant Trade unions</b><br />
Dagsbrún, the Reykjavik General Workers Union and the Seaman's Union presented the council with their demands, including a scheme for work creation and infrastructure development and for free food, gas and electricity for the unemployed, who should then not have to pay tax. With an argument that sounds familiar today, the council's majority response was to insist that wage rates were too high and men were unemployed because the unions were preventing them from taking the available jobs at reasonable wages. One very rich councillor, like an aged Marie Antoinette, helpfully added that when he was young and times were hard he had managed by eating catfish instead of cod.<br />
<br />
Outside this meeting police battered people struggling to get in to hear what was happening. To add insult to injury the authorities were using the hated Extras, so-called "white troops", unemployed workers hired as police assistants to attack picket lines. Half starved men demanding a right to live fought back.<br />
<br />
In the following days workers were jailed for riot, incitement and refusal to answer the court's questions. A Danish King's Decree of 1795 was used against five trade unionists and communists to jail them "at his majesty's pleasure on bread and water". One of the five, Indriða Garibaldardóttir, refused to recognise the court's legality as it was being used by the ruling class as a political weapon against the working class. She pointed out that in the recent banking scandal, government ministers had investigated and then found themselves not guilty. She refused to eat any king's bread, started a hunger strike and was joined by the other four.<br />
<br />
Hundreds joined a protest march and every night there was a mass meeting outside the jail with a further march of 4,000 people. A few days later the authorities, too nervous to hold them any longer, released the five into the seething atmosphere of Reykjavik.<br />
<br />
The campaign continued through the summer at union meetings and in the communist and SDP newspapers. Dagsbrún and other unions - including Framsókn, the Reykjavik women workers' union, held a mass meeting and protest march. Speakers from both the Social Democrats and Iceland Communist Party urged workers to go to Gúttó, the Good Templars House where the council was to meet, to block the plan on 9 November.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Communist paper, Verkamaðurinn The Worker<br />
describes the police attack on the crowd</td></tr>
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The council was so sure that the meeting was only a formality that the wage cards were already printed up with the new, lower dole work rate.<br />
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<b>Shocked ruling class</b><br />
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By ten in the morning thousands of angry people filled the square and the streets outside Gúttó. SDP councillors spoke against the wage cut and the Conservatives were heckled and jeered. When lunchtime was called Guðjón Benediktsson, the leader of the Communist Unemployed Workers Committee, demanded that the wage cut be thrown out and the councillors stay until they agreed. The police escorted the Tories out with the promise that everyone in the building would be allowed back in after the break. The only woman councillor, Guðrún Jónas, did not come back, nor did the despised Extras who had been deployed in the morning and seen that they were massively outnumbered.<br />
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After lunch only a few of the protesters got back into the building before the meeting restarted. A loudspeaker had been set up outside to relay the meeting so people outside could hear when the police attacked the audience "to clear the entrance". The response that followed shocked Iceland's ruling class. In an explosion of anger the protesters chased the councillors out, smashed the windows of government buildings all over town and fought pitched battles against the police. Gúttó, as the symbol of the authorities' class hatred, was wrecked. Hundreds came to a meeting that night to hear that the wage cut had been overturned. At that moment of victory they did not press their demands, but the arrests made after 9 November had to be abandoned a few days later.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZY6tD0OS_bqQUOSbbcw0AJlgyDhty-vmzdKdr_npvleDe1w_R8XvRgzzfV-axiv8z0my_zdZAq7e784fKuTbTjMe0Iz7KzXYfk-XSDiz_chFOHvH5cwxvrwtuqVrAeDcyeZZNxc2lg2br/s1600/MB10Nov1932.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZY6tD0OS_bqQUOSbbcw0AJlgyDhty-vmzdKdr_npvleDe1w_R8XvRgzzfV-axiv8z0my_zdZAq7e784fKuTbTjMe0Iz7KzXYfk-XSDiz_chFOHvH5cwxvrwtuqVrAeDcyeZZNxc2lg2br/s320/MB10Nov1932.jpg" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The day after, Tory paper Morgunblaðið reports <br />
Gúttóslagurinn as a mindless attack on cops and councillors </td></tr>
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The authorities spent the rest of the decade blaming each other for the battle of Gúttó. A united front had "stood up in the hair" of the Conservatives and beaten back a government that argued financial crises had a life of their own, were not an inherent characteristic of capitalism itself and meant working class people to pay for them,<br />
<br />
<br />
Material in this article originally appeared in Socialist Review <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/330/icelands-bosses-hot-water">Iceland's bosses in hot water</a><br />
<br />Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-20831638715711854732016-10-17T20:53:00.001+01:002016-10-18T21:35:23.577+01:00Fishers and marine engineers in Iceland vote for all out strikeFishers in the Iceland Seaman's Union, Sjómannasamband Íslands (SSÍ) and Marine Engineers in VM Félag vélstjóra og málmtæknimanna have voted by 90 percent to strike indefinitely. If their employers, the ship owners don't come up with a better deal the strike is set to begin on 10 November.<br />
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The trawler workers are angry that they haven't had a decent deal from their employers in the Association of Fisheries Companies since 2011. Ship owning bosses have been trying to shift the costs of taxes and fuel onto the workers by getting them to accept wage cuts of around 15 percent.<br />
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When the ballot ended at noon today, 339 members of VM, the Icelandic Union of Marine Engineers and Metal Technicians had voted, a 71.8 percent turn out. Some 90.8 percent voted to strike with only 26 members voting against.<br />
<br />
Fishers in the Iceland Seaman's Union, SSÍ voted by almost 90 percent to strike on a 56 percent turn out.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZaPl5_E5tfu3CTs2Zvke_1q9bwm2I7OcxQab3J6QAEivKJ66TVpFtt-0CEVAypyFvEFPAQtLEVA1nCazDdFRd0EXjCUD5wIbK5qwZZkDUV0y_iLMNYuAmvPBBA3enm7HaB3ZexEF1nafe/s1600/Iceland+vessel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZaPl5_E5tfu3CTs2Zvke_1q9bwm2I7OcxQab3J6QAEivKJ66TVpFtt-0CEVAypyFvEFPAQtLEVA1nCazDdFRd0EXjCUD5wIbK5qwZZkDUV0y_iLMNYuAmvPBBA3enm7HaB3ZexEF1nafe/s320/Iceland+vessel.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Do you want a 15 percent pay cut? </td></tr>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-15673529523414086072016-10-09T23:24:00.002+01:002016-10-09T23:53:44.122+01:00Icelandic fishing unions heading for all out strike?This month's issue of British magazine <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/">Socialist Review</a> has published my article on the crisis in the British fishing industry under the title, <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/417/how-fishing-became-killer-issue">How fishing became a killer issue</a>. Many of the problems described here are blamed on the Commons Fisheries Policies of the European Union (EU) but in Britain's case they have been exacerbated by years of neoliberal government policies and the lack of trade union organisation for ordinary fishers.<br />
<div>
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Iceland and its fishing industry is not in the European Union and its fishers are unionised but they have still suffered falling wages and are facing more cuts from a new decision agreed in September by the Appeals Committee of Seamen and Fishers, úrskurðarnefndar sjómanna og útvegsmanna.</div>
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But union members voted by 66.4 percent to reject this deal that means more wage cuts. The unions, including many in the Association of Seaman's Unions of Iceland, Sjómannasamband Íslands, (SSÍ) as well as VM Félag vélstjóra og málmtæknimanna, the Icelandic Union of Marine Engineers and Metal Technicians are now balloting on whether to go out on indefinite strike.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Icelandic trawler þerney</td></tr>
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The ballot closes at 12 noon on 17 October and if it is agreed then the strike is set to begin on 10 November. The question will then be whether the Icelandic government outlaws the strike as it has done so many times before. If it does, then the workers will either have to put up with falling wages or defy the government, which workers in Iceland have also done before.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/sjomannasamband/?fref=hovercard">Sjómannasamband Íslands announces the strike ballot on its facebook page</a></td></tr>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-30279329327228229722016-09-08T23:13:00.001+01:002016-09-08T23:13:24.288+01:00Moonstone - the boy that never was<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Mánasteinn, drengurinn sem aldrei var til, the novel by Icelandic author Sjón, was published recently in English, in Britain as Moonstone, the boy who never was. My <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/416/moonstone">review </a>of it has just appeared in September's <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/">Socialist Review</a>.</div>
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This short, beautiful novel tells the story of Máni Steinn Karlsson, a movie-obsessed teenager living with his one ancient relative in an attic in the centre of Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1918. Máni Steinn, roams the small town looking for the odd jobs available to a boy who struggles to read and planning which film he will see next. It is a story of young people struggling to be free in a small society under pressure from the shortages of the First World War, the eruption of volcano Katla and soon, from the lethal Spanish flu.<br /><br />Read the <a href="http://socialistreview.org.uk/416/moonstone">review here</a>. The book is currently available in hardback or ebook from <a href="https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/">Bookmarks the socialist bookshop</a> and will be out in paperback in February 2017.Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-68981771999294086262016-08-09T00:01:00.000+01:002016-10-31T21:49:39.254+00:00The Northern Garrisons - The British Army writes from Iceland, 1941<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Iceland occupied Part One<br />
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During the Second World War the British Ministry of Information published a series of pamphlets called, <i>The Army at War</i>. These were propaganda to inform and cheer the readers in an accessible, often witty way that was meant to show that the war effort was planned and coherent. The pamphlets were designed to keep people at home in touch in an official way, with what their loved ones were involved in abroad but could not discuss in letters home.<br />
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The Ministry of Information employed talented writers and these pamphlets can be moving and poignant. The Northern Garrisons by Eric Linklater is all this about the troops based in the Orkney and Shetland Isles and gives an honest sense of the terror of sailing in the Atlantic convoys being hunted by enemy U-boats. Linklater also, I think, tried to charm angry Icelanders who were deeply unimpressed at the British occupation from 1940.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Northern Garrisons pamphlet, published 1941</td></tr>
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The British government had tried to recruit Iceland, "as a belligerent and an ally", from 9 April 1940 when Germany's forces under the Nazi's invaded Norway and Denmark. It said that Britain could help Iceland maintain its independence by providing an occupying force but Iceland was neutral and had just effectively declared its independence from Denmark after the Nazi's had over run Denmark, so its government refused to co-operate. That didn't stop the British Navy landing Marines in Reykjavik in the early hours on 10 May 1940.<br />
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Linklater was not in the landing force and says about his journey to Iceland, </div>
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To travel speedily and well, one should attach oneself, if possible, to a General. There was a General, whose duty was taking him to Iceland when mine also pointed there, and being ordered to join him I crossed the Atlantic in the rapid luxury of a Sutherland flying-boat.</blockquote>
This journey with a three course lunch including steak and kidney pie, took six hours and 55 minutes. He notes that when Iceland Force, as the Allies named it, arrived in Iceland, "they were not received - as ingenuously they had expected - with open arms."<br />
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The Icelanders were displeased by the occupation of their country and, being unable to prevent it, they decided to ignore it. To ignore it as far as possible, that is. They assumed towards our troops an attitude of frosty indifference, and our troops, being friendly people, and so sure of the virtue of their cause that they could not see how anyone should doubt it, were sorely puzzled by this reception.</blockquote>
Linklater describes Reykjavik which then had a population of about 40,000 people and politely flatters the locals.<br />
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A generation ago the houses were nearly all of wood - farm buildings of turf - but concrete has now taken the place of timber, and now there are rows of new houses all built according to modern notions of simplicity and functionalism, a rank of windowed cubes with a shelf on each to catch the sun.. There are little hat shops.. with an elegant sample or two of the latest fashions from New York; and there are book shops, half a dozen of them, that put to shame the illiteracy of many an English town of greater size; and there are flower shops where, you may discern a sheaf of roses, a pot of hydrangeas, that have been grown in greenhouses warmed by the hot springs of this icy and volcanic island.</blockquote>
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An interesting town, with a brand new university of its own, a National Theatre - not wholly finished yet - and a statue to Leif Ericsson, the Icelander who discovered America.</blockquote>
The pamphlet describes Icelanders as having been flattered for some years by the attentions of German universities who studied Icelandic culture and the Sagas, For this reason, it says a previous generation of Icelandic students who studied in Germany had a nostalgic fondness for Germany with little idea of the realities of the Nazi state. The younger generation, it says, had been courted with cheaper university courses and there was a widespread admiration for German "efficiency". It is true that the relatively few Icelanders then able to go to university, considered Germany to be the European capital of culture, but most Icelanders knew precisely what the Nazi's regime was. Widely circulated leftwing Icelandic newspapers had reported the behaviour of the Nazis all through the 1930s when political polarisation meant some Icelanders admired Nazism and hoped to use it to contain Iceland's own trade unionists, socialists and Communists.<br />
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The thaw in relations between the troops and Icelanders, Linklater says, was due to the good sense of Icelanders, the good behaviour of the troops and the good market the British forces provided for Icelandic produce. Iceland had obviously lost it's European markets for fish and sheep produce and Linklater points out how much money the British Army poured into the country in one way or another, including the payment of overtime, for which Icelanders were presumably meant to be grateful.<br />
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All the local produce is bought - mutton and milk and fish - and local labour is paid high wages. In March of this year (1941) about £30,000 was paid out in wages; and like his British confrere, the Icelandic labourer is properly compensated for his wounded conscience when he agrees to work on the Sabbath day: 4.50 kronur an hour to be precise; three shillings and fourpence in English money.</blockquote>
This work on the army bases was known as Bretavinna - British work - although everyone agreed the money was good, it was also considered to be boring, menial and degrading to work for the occupiers. But the camp to the south east of Reykjavik was in an area where work was hard to find and people often had to take whatever work was available, even Bretavinna.<br />
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Linklater didn't see it that way as an apparent note of irritation crept in at Icelanders' lack of appreciation of the situation,<br />
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Camp after camp has been sited far less conveniently than it could have been had we shown less care and regard for the small and scanty fields of the Icelandic farmer.</blockquote>
Clearly, Linklater had no idea what those insignificant fields represented in years of labour, self independence and self respect to the farmers.<br />
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To combat boredom and loneliness and provided a bit of news from home, the Iceland Force bought an hour a day of its time from the Icelandic radio broadcasting service and made their own programmes. They also got the local brewery to make stronger beer for the troops. Linklater says, "Icelandic beer is the depressing sort known as near-beer", by which he meant that it was almost alcohol-free, as ordinary alcoholic beer had been illegal in Iceland since 1915. And the brewery couldn't keep up with the troops' demand.<br />
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Many members of Iceland Force would have agreed with Linklater when he described, "a fjord, bleak and barren.. and a narrow little village sitting nakedly on a hillside. The houses were white and the hill was white with snow. It all looked very cold and comfortless." An officer who had been in Iceland for nearly a year said appreciatively of the same village:<br />
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That's rather a nice little place, isn't it? It must be quite a sun-trap in summer.</blockquote>
The British troops and Air Force, who were joined in July 1940 by Canadian troops, stayed until Americans troops arrived in 1941. The United States was still technically neutral until it joined the war in December 1941 but the Americans' presence in Iceland by agreement with the Icelandic government, meant that British troops were freed up to fight elsewhere. The continuing occupation divided Icelandic society politically and would, in 1948, cause an explosion of protest against Iceland joining NATO, The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.<br />
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When Britain's Ministry of Information published The Northern Garrisons in 1941 it was fighting for "hearts and minds" when the Second World War was still in the balance. The German Nazi forces had stormed through Europe to the North Sea coast facing Britain and occupied the Channel Islands. The Russians had not yet beaten General Paulus and the Sixth Army at Stalingrad and it was not at all clear that the Allies would win.<br />
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The British government were trying with this pamphlet to reach a mass of ordinary people who on reading it, they hoped, would pass it on to friends and family and feel more involved. It was designed to be a morale booster for the troops in the Northern Garrisons and the British government may have hoped that English-reading Icelanders would also read it and feel part of the wider war. But Icelanders had been fighting for self-determination from Denmark and its servants for too long to be so easily reconciled to this occupation.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Inside cover of The Northern Garrisons: The Army at War</td></tr>
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<br />Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-52728812559729012142016-06-19T21:33:00.000+01:002016-07-04T21:43:56.526+01:00For Cod's Sake - Iceland's cod wars with Britain 1958-1976: exhibition at Vikin, Reykjavik's Maritime MuseumThis small vibrant exhibition looks at the three 20th century Cod Wars, þorskastríðin in Icelandic, when Icelandic and foreign trawlers, Icelandic coastguard ships and British gunships, rammed and shot at each other each as Iceland struggled to expand its protected fisheries. Trawl nets were cut, men threatened and one man died as Iceland fought long skirmishes in Landhelgisstríðin, the war for territorial waters against all comers.<br />
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Using film footage, newspapers, photographs and cartoons the story builds from 1 September 1958 when a new Icelandic law expanded its fishery zone from four to 12 nautical miles (NM) (22.2 km). The exhibition is not triumphalist or nationalist but inevitably this is a story of a very small country fighting off Britain with a population over 254 times larger. [Pop Iceland 1976 - 220,154 and Britain - 56.21 million]<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">Heath and the stubborn cod, from Stuttgater Zeitung reprinted in Þjóðviljinn newspaper, 30 May 1973</span></td></tr>
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<b>Föðurland vort hálft er hafið, half of our home is the sea</b><br />
New technology meant that bigger catches were becoming easier to get and overfishing began to outstrip the ability of the most popular species, including cod to replenish themselves. In 1952 the old international three mile exclusion zone had been extended to four nautical miles in Iceland but it was clear that the four mile exclusion zone was routinely flouted because the catch was much more valuable than the fines imposed by the courts.<br />
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All members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) fiercely opposed the extension of Iceland’s exclusion zone—they couldn’t do much about the Soviet Union claiming a 12 mile zone, but the fish-rich water around little Iceland were accessible to dozens of countries and they had no intention of giving up any of it.</div>
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Within two days of the new law, a British trawler, Northern Foam, from Grimsby was caught fishing in the expanded exclusive zone. Nine men from the coastguard vessels Þór and Maríu Júlia were sent to take control of the trawler—but ended up not quite prisoners on the British frigate Eastbourne for 12 days because the trawlers refused to come quietly and the coastguards refused to take their men back.<br />
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By the following April, <a href="http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1959/may/06/trawler-arctic-viking-shelling">the British government</a> was protesting that the crew of þór had fired live shells at the British trawler, Arctic Viking and that Maríu Júlia, “repeatedly executed dangerous maneuvers in attempts to obstruct British trawlers while on the high seas” <span style="font-family: "calibri" , sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></div>
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Iceland appeared determined not to back down and other countries wanted the same limit so by 1961 British government accepted the 12 NM limit. But this zone was never going to have been large enough to preserve fish stocks, nor for Icelanders to keep a substantial share of the fish profits and in September 1973 it again extended its fishing limits to 50 NM—93 km.</div>
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<b>“Við semjum ekki, við sigrum þá - "We won’t settle, we will beat them"</b><br />
Necessity being the mother of invention, the Icelandic coast guards began to enforce the new exclusion zone with net cutters designed to slice off the foreign ships’ trawls if they fished within the new exclusion zone. The wire cutters were old mine sweeper equipment with added road grading blades. The captains of the foreign trawlers raged that it was dangerous to cut a trawl—any wire or rope springing back would kill the man it hit. </div>
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The Icelandic coast guards argued that it wasn’t particularly dangerous because the trawl was cut so deep that the tension was released into the sea itself. To prove the point, on 18 January 1973 they cut the nets of eighteen trawlers and British boats were forced out of the Icelandic fishing zone unless they had the protection of the Royal Navy.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trawl clippers, made out of old mine sweeping gear modified with road grading blades, Vikin Maritme Museum</td></tr>
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What was probably much more dangerous was ships ramming each other. British Navy ships rammed Icelandic coast guard ships to prevent them from cutting trawls while the Icelandic trawler Baldur, refitted as a coast guard ship, was so successful at damaging British trawlers that British skippers called it the can-opener.<br />
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<b>Killed</b></div>
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Engineer, Halldór Hallfreðsson died by electrocution on the Coast Guard vessel Ægir, as he was holding a welding torch when the ship was hit by a large wave. The British frigate Apollo was blamed for his death as Halldór was repairing the damage Apollo did when it rammed Ægir on 29 August 1973.</div>
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The exhibition uses vivid footage of the British journalist Norman Rees who reported from the Þór in 1976. See some of it here.</div>
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<b>Three-day Millionaires</b></div>
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The exhibition also includes the work of historian Alec Gill who has interviewed and documented the lives and industry of Hull’s “Three-day millionaires”, the fishermen who worked the Icelandic fisheries until 1976. His invaluable work, done on a shoe-string, records in great detail the ordinary lives and culture that grew out of the Hull fishing industry centred on the community in Hessle Road. </div>
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His series of documentaries on DVDs are available <a href="https://bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/">here</a>. This is what the British fisherman were fighting to preserve and what they lost when some 3,500 fishermen and many more men and women on land lost jobs with the Icelandic 200 mile exclusion zone.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Documenting the lives and work of a vanished culture</td></tr>
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<b>A nation united? </b><br />
Each Cod War ended in a negotiated settlement, involving Nato, various foreign ministers and even Presidents Nixon and Pompidou. Many people in the Icelandic fishing industries were unhappy at the outcomes, especially in the 1970s when mass meetings and demonstrations protested the deals made, which included a limited numbers of foreign boats being allowed in to the exclusion zones. Many people couldn't see why any foreign boats should be allowed in. </div>
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As with every struggle in history, there is a fight here for interpretation. The exhibition notes that historian Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, who is currently favourite, with just over 55 percent in the polls for the Icelandic presidential elections held next week, wrote an article in 2011 on the Cod Wars and how they are remembered. </div>
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"The Cod Wars are an important part of Icelander's collective memory. They are said to be a fine example of the resilience that the nation can display when it is confronted and evidence of Icelander's international relevance. Some of this is true, but the history is somewhat more complicated when reviewed closely. The unity is exaggerated, little is made of the fact that Icelanders had to negotiate victory and it perpetuates a misunderstanding about Icelander's initiatives in relation to the Law of the Sea. This results in the myth of united heroes and the real picture fades in the shadows." </blockquote>
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Guðni T Jóhannesson and the class he may soon represent like to argue that progress in the world comes from international law. For them, unilateralism and the vehement determination of ordinary people is difficult. For everyone else, it should be apparent that international law is very often made to reflect and contain the struggles of ordinary people. <br />
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The victories of the Cod Wars did not solve all the problems of the Icelandic fishing industries and few thought they would. The exclusive fishing zones were effectively privatised and still overfished. As quotas were cut to preserve stocks, they became transferable, were sold and concentrated in fewer hands. Factories closed and the villages that depended on them shared Hull's fate of unemployment and the closure of services as families and young people left to find work. But the Cod Wars were also fought for the self-determination and the independence of ordinary people in a small country frequently used as a pawn between Washington and Moscow.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmT4qPf1dAofc9tNAHJT4A2w36UFFst0XEYClL_fjRbr2sva9LnfOSjVltwR5OWOOVaMmXEj6gn79PcqZnkN4fw3lJsoW-ypOpTGCbPbJJd3IG9DaOFjcblHlLd7O7fRTWpcR_T-OLjuMB/s1600/tm-odinn-621_1397041719.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmT4qPf1dAofc9tNAHJT4A2w36UFFst0XEYClL_fjRbr2sva9LnfOSjVltwR5OWOOVaMmXEj6gn79PcqZnkN4fw3lJsoW-ypOpTGCbPbJJd3IG9DaOFjcblHlLd7O7fRTWpcR_T-OLjuMB/s320/tm-odinn-621_1397041719.gif" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Coastguard vessel Oðinn fought in the Cod Wars and is now docked in Vikin</td></tr>
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For more on the Coastguard vessel Oðinn and its rescue of Hull fishermen <a href="http://herringandclassstruggle.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/solidarity-at-sea.html">click here</a>.And <a href="http://isj.org.uk/two-books-that-swim-against-the-tide/">here </a>for more on Capitalism and the destruction of fisheries.<br />
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The exhibition runs until end of August 2016, for further information see <a href="http://borgarsogusafn.is/en/reykjavik-maritime-museum/exhibitions/cods-sake">Vikin Maritime Museum</a></div>
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Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-75610446241282655542016-05-29T21:39:00.000+01:002016-05-29T21:39:56.538+01:00Celebrating diversity in ReykjavikReykjavik city celebrated its 18th annual Multiculturalism Day yesterday with a march and afternoon of music, food and information about the different nationalities now living in Iceland. The marching band was led off by Vikings which neatly made the point that Iceland is a nation of immigrants.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Reykjavik's Multiculturalism Day 2016</td></tr>
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The organisations represented in the event in Harpa cultural centre included people from Afghanistan, Cuba, Mexico, Thailand, the Philippines, Morocco, Poland, Lithuania, Belorussia, Japan, Nepal, Nigeria, Kenya, New Zealand Colombia, South Korea, Muslim and Christian groups and many others.<br />
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Reykjavik is a very diverse place these days but celebrating inclusion cannot be taken for granted and events like these are only part of the ongoing battle against racism and bigotry in Iceland.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">For some lovely photos of the whole day go to Helgi Halldórs photos <a href="https://www.facebook.com/hallihall/media_set?set=a.10209371198586135.1073741888.1509045957&type=3&__nodl">here</a><br />
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Meanwhile, the major chain of bookshops Penninn Eymundsson is prominently displaying the viciously Islamophobic Islam, a national plague by Norwegian journalist Hege Storhaug.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Islamophobia on sale in Iceland</td></tr>
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Storhaug was formerly on the left and says she was involved in anti-racist campaigns but has recently built a lucrative career from whipping up racism against Muslims. She says she began her campaign when she discovered that there were forced marriages and "honour killings" in Norway. Instead of seeing the obvious point that no group or culture is free of violence against women and condemning it for what it is, domestic violence, she began her bigoted offensive against Islam and all Muslims in the name of women's rights and freedom.<br />
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Norwegian Muslim women who choose to wear the hijab or niqab, of course, bear the brunt of the racist attacks against Muslims in the streets that books like these encourage.<br />
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So Penninn Eymundsson is fuelling hatred and profiting from it by selling this rubbish. It's going to take more than music, dancing and lovely food to challenge this bigory.Breiddalurblomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12678919253891181831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3484145775280700939.post-4411593072685788402016-05-03T23:36:00.002+01:002016-05-03T23:42:16.818+01:00No, no, no, no, that's not going to be the case...When elections for the President of Iceland are held next month, it would be great if that person was someone who remembered what it is like to live as an ordinary person in Iceland, paying taxes, saving for holidays, not being married to a multi, multi millionaire - that sort of thing. The current President, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, who is standing again is still the favourite by a long way but then he assured CNN News that his family would not be found anywhere near the tax haven scandals that have engulfed leading politicians in the ruling coalition. He had to do a very sharp u-turn when the news about his rich wife's super-rich family and their money in the tax haven got out.<br />
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Here's a little mashup from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJGO7MGypzHYF7c6P6cLWoA">Sveinbjorn Palsson</a> of Ólafur Ragnar impressing on us just how much he will never be found in any such scandal. It won't be long til we know what the voters think.<br />
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