THEY DID NOT TELL US
My Catholic upbringing drummed into me the Jesuit difference between acts of commission and those of omission. Law school repeated the same principles.
Commission is doing an act that causes harm. Omission is failure to perform an act. Especially one that would be expected by a normal sane person in the ordinary course of events.
This column is concerned with omission. The culprit the United States mainstream media. The big guys. Television, newspapers and magazines. Those owned and controlled by major corporate conglomerates which include in their make up banks. The story to be told involves the apparent failure of the media to report news that might be unfavorable to their corporate owners.
The days of news people owning television, newspapers and other media outlets are long gone.
Examine for example the ownership of the major television companies in the United States. NBC used to be owned by General Electric, then General Electric and Comcast, and now Comcast alone. ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Companies. CBS used to be owned by Westinghouse. It is now owned by National Amusements and Viacom. CNN is owned by Time Warner and Turner Broadcasting. Fox is owned by 21st Century Corp. and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox entertainment Group.
The story to be told involves Iceland. It is a tale not heard by most Americans to this day. Only a handful were aware. I did not know.
Iceland had banking problems of its own in 2008. The banks had inflated the value of Iceland’s banks internationally. They screwed around with the numbers to make the banks look better than they actually were. Things caught up. The bubble burst. Most of the banks were heading for bankruptcy.
Does the too big to fail argument sound familiar? The government of Iceland wanted to bail the banks out. With taxpayer dollars, of course. The people of Iceland said no, emphatically no, and never.
A revolution occurred. It started on the same day in 2008 when Obama was being sworn in. The people took to the streets. The rebellion was called the “Pots and Pans Rebellion.” The people were banging pots and pans together as they marched.
The Icelandic people were so vocal and adamant in their position of no bailout for the banks that three months later the entire government of Iceland resigned. The President and all of Parliament. The government had been taken down.
Did you hear any of this? See it reported on TV? Read it in the newspapers? Most Americans did not. At the same time, all of the rest of the world knew and were openly discussing it. It was front page news in all European newspapers. Foreign television was rampant with the details. CNN’s European group reported everything as it happened. Not America’s CNN. Silence.
Credit should be given where credit is due. The New York Times provided a small handful of piecemeal stories. Not front page stuff. The Times danced around the details. It reported that the fall of the government was caused by mayhem beyond Iceland’s borders.
Note again that the U.S. media failed to report the street protests, the Pots and Pan revolution, and the resignation of the entire government.
A new government was elected. No time was wasted in correcting the situation. Iceland’s feeling was that what had occurred should never happen again. Corporate greed could not be permitted to rear its ugly head ever again.
Recall the U.S. position that banks were too big to prosecute. Not in Iceland. They arrested and prosecuted bank officials and politicians alike. And sent them to jail. Just last week one of the bank fraud cases came to a conclusion. Four executives of the Kaupthing Bank were sentenced to jail. Without probation. One was the Chairman of the Board. Involved financial fraud. They had loaned an individual money to buy just over 5 per cent interest in the bank. A no no.
The Icelandic people believed their Constitution was ineffective. It no longer worked for the people. They wanted a new one. They put together a large number of citizens to rewrite the Constitution. People, not politicians. It took four years, but is now the law of the land. The primary thrust was to prohibit corporate fraud. They spelled it out in the Constitution. It was clear to them that corporate greed was destroying the country and had to be stopped.
While all this was going on in Iceland, where was the U.S. media? No word was heard from them. A cover up in form and substance. Why? It is thought by some including this writer that corporate ownership of the media some how influenced the news people from reporting what was happening in Iceland. The news was not in the best interests of the corporate conglomerates. Most of whom included banks in their ranks.
This silence was going on at same time the United States was experiencing its own bank problems. The U.S. bank mortgage frauds started coming to light in 2007. Imagine had the U.S. government been of the opinion as the people of Iceland that the banks were not too big to fail nor too hard to prosecute. The U.S. people had they known of Iceland’s happenings might very well have acted as Iceland did. Protest, react to a government that was not responsive to the will of the people, jail the bankers and politicians who supported them, and rewrite a new Constitution that would not be so favorably interpreted by the courts in favor of corporations. I am confident that under such, corporations would not have been deemed persons as the U.S.Supreme Court did a few years ago where political contributions were involved.
The American people share in the blame. We stood around like puppets and believed what our leaders, including the President, were telling us. We did not question. We did not act. There is a lesson to be learned here.
What galls me is the banks continue to screw around to the detriment of the American public. They do what they want, when they want. I have always subscribed to the position that if just one major bank CEO was tried, convicted, and sent to jail, the rest would back off. However, our government has told us first the banks were too big to fail and then too big to prosecute.
What can I say? The impropriety is obvious. The media turned its back on the people’s right to know. The difficult thing to accept is that they got away with it.
Everyone is defecating on the 99 per cent.
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Thanks Louis for an excellent article. I have been saying for more than 30 years that the so-called main stream allegedly liberal media is not liberal at all, being under the control of corporations, as you so correctly point out. I truly envy the people of Iceland for their activism and involvement in their government, it’s too bad that Americans can’t be as involved, but that, of course, would require a level of intelligence that those in power here in America do all they can to prevent. Anyway, thanks again….
A comment from an Icelander on Lou’s article:
“Thanks for the link, very interesting; my amendations are below each statement:”
Iceland had banking problems of its own in 2008. The banks had inflated the value of Iceland’s banks internationally. They screwed around with the numbers to make the banks look better than they actually were. Things caught up. The bubble burst. Most of the banks were heading for bankruptcy.
“Iceland had three big banks, all of which went bankrupt in October 2008. While the banks’ assets were placed In a state of receivership, the Icelandic state guaranteed domestic deposits (like mine!) but set up emergency currency controls to prevent capital flight, pegging the Icelandic Kronar so that it was no longer a floating currency. The bank owners and boards were changed and new banks were established and would henceforth be subject to government oversight and partial government control.”
Does the too big to fail argument sound familiar? The government of Iceland wanted to bail the banks out. With taxpayer dollars, of course. The people of Iceland said no, emphatically no, and never.
“The Icelandic government managed to get the IMF to provide emergency funds in order to get the economy back on its feet, which has helped Iceland to achieve a relatively painless recovery, unlike for example Ireland’s fate. The funds have already been mostly repaid and it was done with Icelandic taxpayers’ dollars.”
A revolution occurred. It started on the same day in 2008 when Obama was being sworn in. The people took to the streets. The rebellion was called the “Pots and Pans Rebellion.” The people were banging pots and pans together as they marched.
The Icelandic people were so vocal and adamant in their position of no bailout for the banks that three months later the entire government of Iceland resigned. The President and all of Parliament. The government had been taken down.
“The Center-Right governing coalition was the target of the protests and they did indeed indirectly prevent the government from signing a contract with the banks’ international creditors, mostly from Holland and the UK. The contract would have made Icelandic tax payers responsible for the now bankrupt banks’ debts in those countries, which would have quite possibly devastated Iceland for generations with stifling levels of debt. The President kept his office, which although it is mostly a ceremonial post, enabled him to veto the Center-Right goverments’ contract. The President claimed he was bowing to the overwhelming pressure from the protesters and repeated the veto for another contract which followed, much to the relief and approbation of the Icelandic public.
A New Center-Left coaltion with a new Prime Minister (Openly Gay Woman, by the way) was confirmed by voters in the following election of 2009. While many of the formerly-ruling Parliamentarians were voted out or resigned, most managed to keep their seats. Some of the leading protesters were subsequently elected and have become very influential.
Ironically, after the Center-Left ruling coaltiion’s rehabilitation of the economy, budget cuts and other forms of austerity lost them the following election, ushering in yet another Center-Right coalition but with fresher faces this time, which was elected largely on promises to lower taxes and reduce families’ house-loan debts (again, like mine).
On a final note, it gives me tremendous satisfactions to relate that some of the top Icelandic ‘captains of Finance’ have been indicted and convicted of illegal activities: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25349240
The following is an excellent and very concise overview of the financial crisis from the Icelandic President:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/icelands-saga“
Thanks so much for speaking about this, Mr. Petrone and thanks to Ms. Leigh for the factual follow-up. The ever-shrinking concentration of media ownership has been going on for some time and has reached crisis proportion. The silence on the Iceland story is a glaring example of this dangerous perversion of our first amendment by the marriage of corporate, finance and lawmakers. Thanks, also, to the Supremes for giving the thumbs up on Corporate Personhood. The jig is up and our goose is cooked unless we get out on the streets and do our own pots and pans banging as the Icelanders did.