Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists? • Hacker News Board

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#21

Post by avar » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 1:49 AM UTC

sh1mmer wrote: post #17

avar wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many have some sort of same-sex unions, what Iceland did recently is eliminate all occurrences of "man and a woman" and replace them with "two persons" in their laws. Most countries that have same sex unions have a different set of laws for them, usually for religious and political reasons. The Church of Iceland opposed the recent change, but it lost that battle. Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay…

Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay head of state is also so openly incompetent :) Care to elaborate?

First of all, under normal circumstances she never would have been anywhere close to being prime minister. The only reason (seemingly) that she got the job was that after the collapse of the previous government the new leftist coalition needed someone to pass the buck to, and she was pretty much the only uncontroversial figure they had.

Her coalition government's only redeeming quality has been to suck less than their predecessors which facilitated the giant ponzi scheme which took down the economy. They're wasting a lot of effort on the equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

One shining moment of incompetence was the press conference right after the president announced that the Icesave debt repayment bill would go to a public referendum.

She announced (well, mumbled actually) that the government was "disappointed" in the President's decision to bring the matter to a vote in a rushed international press conference hours after the announcement.

What they should have done is explain calmly that this was part of the democratic process in Iceland, and how the result might affect any future debt repayment.

Examples like these and countless others have shown that her and her government can't think two steps ahead, manage PR and foreign diplomacy horribly, and generally seem more interested in their pet leftist issues (which they can finally shove through, now that they're in power) rather than solving the problems facing the nation.

But what do I care, I moved abroad shortly after this all went down.

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#22

Post by itistoday » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 2:10 AM UTC

Rod wrote: post #20

mvalle wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the US will ever invade Iceland. It will have massive consequences for the US government, it might be controlled by interest groups, but they are not all powerful, the people still do have a say. It will be much more difficult to convince a Kentucky farmer that the US should invade Iceland with it's white Christians, as supposed a strange-sounding nation with non-white non-Christians(sad, but true). And thoug…

(sigh) Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your mind? I never even suggested that!!! Did the MPAA / RIAA mafia need the U.S. military to invade Sweden to shut down The Pirate Bay's servers a few years ago? That's right, they didn't. They merely contacted their obedient, corrupted "friends" in Washington D.C., and had the U.S. government pressure the Swedish government, and the Swed…

> Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your mind? I never even suggested that!!!

You really don't see how your words could have been interpreted that way?

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#23

Post by Rod » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 2:51 AM UTC

itistoday wrote: post #22

Rod wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(sigh) Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your mind? I never even suggested that!!! Did the MPAA / RIAA mafia need the U.S. military to invade Sweden to shut down The Pirate Bay's servers a few years ago? That's right, they didn't. They merely contacted their obedient, corrupted "friends" in Washington D.C., and had the U.S. government pressure the Swedish government, and the Swed…

> Dude, seriously... who's talking about invading Iceland? Are you out of your mind? I never even suggested that!!! You really don't see how your words could have been interpreted that way?

No, I really, really don't see how my words could have been misinterpreted like that. I made it clear that, as Iceland depends too much on the U.S., it has no leverage and, thus, will be an obedient lackey whenever the boss tells it what to do.

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#24

Post by mbotta » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 7:02 AM UTC

avar wrote: post #21

sh1mmer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Jóhanna, it's sad that the first openly gay head of state is also so openly incompetent :) Care to elaborate?

First of all, under normal circumstances she never would have been anywhere close to being prime minister. The only reason (seemingly) that she got the job was that after the collapse of the previous government the new leftist coalition needed someone to pass the buck to, and she was pretty much the only uncontroversial figure they had. Her coalition government's only redeeming quality has been to suck less than thei…

right, so previous icelandic governments brought down the country by dancing to the tunes of the banks, but it's the current government that is incompetent and only shoves through its pet leftist issues.

how unbiased. leaves me wondering if those previous governments had any pet rightist issues of their own. something to do with banks, do you think? bringing down the entire economic system, perhaps?

pet leftist issues don't sound so bad after all. i should look up which they are. i might even like them.

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#25

Post by pbhjpbhj » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 8:52 AM UTC

electromagnetic wrote: post #14

wmeredith wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whatever. Good writers write for their audience. This article was written for an audience residing outside of Iceland.

I read a ton of articles that routinely use a persons first name, why suddenly should proper formality be artificially upheld in context of a culture that uses patronyms? They use first names as names, and in the context of an article they can use a first name without it getting confusing.

But in certain areas and with certain publications this clashes with house style. For example the tabloids/red-tops are happy to refer to Boris Johnson (London Mayor) as BoJo or simply Boris, the broadsheets would say Boris Johnson first and then use "Johnson" to refer to the person as using a first name is considered impolite and/or disrespectful in formal writing (which the broadsheets tend towards at least in non-editorial pieces).

More in depth or higher class pieces that are not expected to be widely consumed may well then go a step further and assume the reader has detailed knowledge of name systems (for example Chinese "Family Name, Given Name" ordering).

So to reiterate the expression of one of the parent posts they appear to be writing to their audience. Be offended or confused if you like.

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#26

Post by avar » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 9:15 AM UTC

mbotta wrote: post #24

avar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, under normal circumstances she never would have been anywhere close to being prime minister. The only reason (seemingly) that she got the job was that after the collapse of the previous government the new leftist coalition needed someone to pass the buck to, and she was pretty much the only uncontroversial figure they had. Her coalition government's only redeeming quality has been to suck less than thei…

right, so previous icelandic governments brought down the country by dancing to the tunes of the banks, but it's the current government that is incompetent and only shoves through its pet leftist issues. how unbiased. leaves me wondering if those previous governments had any pet rightist issues of their own. something to do with banks, do you think? bringing down the entire economic system, perhaps? pet leftist issue…

Perhaps you missed the part where I indicated that they were better than the previous government. They're just still a disappointment.

It's not like I'm some bitter right winger either, my views align more closely with theirs in theory. But in practice they're about the worst thing that could have happened after the crisis, sans the incumbents.

They've failed to enact any meaningful change to financial regulation or government oversight since they took power. They've failed to implement the government transparency that was widely demanded of them (e.g. doing secretive dealings with the IMF). The issue of changing the constitution is now dead in some committee.

As an example of something that's (still) being done right check out the election of the Best Party in Reykjavík. Their agenda (here in Icelandic: http://www.bestiflokkurinn.is/ur-starfi-flokksins/samstarfsy...) includes things that are actually relevant to improving short- and long term life for the population. They've set up an instance of a "shadow government" at http://betrireykjavik.is (running http://github.com/rbjarnason/open-direct-democracy), a fair amount of their policies are being drawn from there. So they're actually listening to their constituency.

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#27

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 2:17 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #26

mbotta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, so previous icelandic governments brought down the country by dancing to the tunes of the banks, but it's the current government that is incompetent and only shoves through its pet leftist issues. how unbiased. leaves me wondering if those previous governments had any pet rightist issues of their own. something to do with banks, do you think? bringing down the entire economic system, perhaps? pet leftist issue…

Perhaps you missed the part where I indicated that they were better than the previous government. They're just still a disappointment. It's not like I'm some bitter right winger either, my views align more closely with theirs in theory. But in practice they're about the worst thing that could have happened after the crisis, sans the incumbents. They've failed to enact any meaningful change to financial regulation or…

[deleted]

Re: Iceland passes the "Wikileaks law". What will it mean for journalists?

#28

Post by mbotta » Thu, Jun 17, 2010, 2:33 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #26

mbotta wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

right, so previous icelandic governments brought down the country by dancing to the tunes of the banks, but it's the current government that is incompetent and only shoves through its pet leftist issues. how unbiased. leaves me wondering if those previous governments had any pet rightist issues of their own. something to do with banks, do you think? bringing down the entire economic system, perhaps? pet leftist issue…

Perhaps you missed the part where I indicated that they were better than the previous government. They're just still a disappointment. It's not like I'm some bitter right winger either, my views align more closely with theirs in theory. But in practice they're about the worst thing that could have happened after the crisis, sans the incumbents. They've failed to enact any meaningful change to financial regulation or…

missed that part indeed - i apologise.

google translate helped me make sense of the pages you link to. do i understand correctly that they run the Reykjavik council? sounds like a down-to-earth party representing the interests of the people more than those of the corporations. unusual, that.

also, i like how they use open direct democracy. i wish there were more reporting about this.

all in all, this sounds a little like reverse disaster capitalism: seize the crisis to install laws that benefit the people. disaster socialism? ;)