Looking at the comments to the last post, I realize that maybe I have drawn a picture of Iceland as a poor nation of fishermen.
While in the early decades of Icelandic independence there existed indeed besides fishing and processing of fish for export only a domestic service- and food-processing-industry in Iceland, the country now has diversified it´s industrial production even before the privatization of the banks.
Starting in 1969 three Aluminum smelter plants have been build by foreign corporations. The last one built by Bechtel and owned by Alcoa was opened in 2007. Together they have a capacity of melting 720 million ton of Aluminum per year.
There are companies developing new technologies. Some of them had been doing quite well internationally before the crash. For instance, a company for artificial limbs and other orthopedic tools. This company has gotten a very good international reputation.A smaller company produces hard- and soft-ware for medical measuring instruments.
We´ve got a pharmaceutical plant which exports even to the US, we´ve got a clothing company, exporting coats and jackets made from high-tech fiber for out-door walking and mountain climbing.
Then there are several software-companies. We´ve got one of the largest online strategy game developed by a domestic software company: “EVE Online”. And then there is a steadily growing tourism industry.
But in spite of all these new export industries, revenue for fish-products still make up 70 % of all foreign trade revenues.
Part of the problem is, that while the fishing industry injects all it´s profits into the Icelandic economy, those large Aluminum plants do not. In fact many Icelanders complain about how little those plants really do for the country.
While Icelandic greenhouse farmers are burdened with normal energy prizes and prize rises adjusted to the current high inflation rate, the Aluminum corporations had made contracts for extra cheap energy prizes with the former government.
The other industries are still too small to compete with the fishing industry. However they make up a growing part of the labor force. It is their owners and their workers´unions that push for EU membership to gain better access to foreign markets, to foreign investment money and loans, and to a stable currency.
But if Iceland joins the EU, it will have to surrender it´s fishing quota and fishing waters to the EU administration in Brussels. How much of those fishing rights the European Union will return to Iceland based companies, is still unknown.
For these reasons the Icelandic people, as well as their government and their opposition parties are divided right in the middle on the issue of EU membership, about 50% favoring each side so far.
Loosing the fishing waters to Brussels will mean that Iceland would have to develop it´s “green” energy resources. Plans have been drawn by the former government to build dozens more power-plants, turning most Icelandic water-falls into power-plants and inviting more foreign corporations with high energy needs into the country. To gain as much revenue for the country as the fish used to, Iceland would need a larger labor force, increased immigration.
In 2004, a politically well connected reporter for the German magazine “der Spiegel” did a series of articles on Iceland. He predicted that the “Icelandic miracle-economy” outside the EU was not sustainable, and that in 50 years time the Icelandic language would be extinct.
Iceland has no castles or any similar cultural monuments. What Icelanders are most proud of, are their the old writings. And what they see as their most precious cultural inheritance, is their language .
Now, Icelanders do realize that some immigration is inevitable and also necessary. In the last 40 years they have made quite an effort to make the country more livable, planting trees, importing arctic plants from Canada to change volcanic ashes into fertile soil (at least for grass). Much of it is done by the youth during their summer-school holidays. More people are able to live here now than did in earlier times.
But Icelanders have also made great efforts to integrate the immigrants, using large resources to teach the language, while sometimes rather aggressively pushing it down people´s throats (at least in schools to the immigrant children).
This has worked quite well so far. After only a few years in the country most immigrant children use Icelandic as their primary language even in talking to their own parents.
With so much effort put in to preserve it, until now it seemed near impossible that this so highly cherished language could ever disappear.
Only a rapid mass-immigration without any more resources available to integrate the immigrants and their children into Icelandic society could cause such a disappearance. If the country has to surrender it´s fishing waters to the EU and in exchange would market it´s energy resources to international corporation, a mass-immigration-policy would be necessary.
But no matter what happens, somehow I feel still confident that in 50 years time, the then living Icelanders will say to those who have inherited the “Spiegel”-Archives:
“Look at us, we are still here. There are more of us now than 50 years ago. We are also a bit more diverse in creed and ancestry.
But still it´s us, in our own country, speaking Icelandic.
Það erum við, en til, talandi íslensku.”
The banksters and their masters targeted Iceland for looting through extreme leveraging in order to panic the Icelandic population into subjugating themselves to the boss class controlled EU. It’s more shock doctrine. If Icelanders reject EU, some “terrorism” will have to be instigated in Iceland.
Joe Gall
I surely hope, they won´t go so far.
I am Irish. A word of warning concerning EU membership. It does not prevent economic meltdowns. Look at the PIGIS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Ireland, Spain).
The EU is lying. And the Spanish government is lying to everybody…
Since Ireland joined the EU, we have seen one asset surge and bust after another. We have seen more layers of bureacracy. Our media has steadily become more delusional and less-informed.
In particular, our politicians have become steadily more corrupt. In fact they are extremely corrupt – and their solution to everything is to go looking for an EU bailout.
The EU is a proxy for French interests. That is the way the EU has functioned for forty years. And that is the way it is continuing. I agree with free trade between countries. But the EU is very good at shunnning countries that do not give it favourable terms.
There is a rush to get into Iceland into the EU. Next the French will be dropping in for a call to refuel their submarines. So much for your fish.
Republic of the healthy sceptic
I see EU membership the way you do. I´m opposed to it. I don´t know, if the EU protects French or German or British interests, but I do know they are corporate interests, especially the interests of financial corporations.
As for Canada, I don´t know about the future, but the current government is too close to the United States. And it looks as if the US-elites have designs on incorporating both Canada and Mexico in the near future in an EU-like structure with a common currency.