Icelandic Prime Minister On Trial.

While David Cameron and his "Caring Conservatives" force poor people to pay for the banking crisis and use it as an excuse to push insane ideological policies that no one wants, the Icelanders have put their former prime minister, Geir Haarde, on trial. There is little prospect that he'll be found guilty of anything - even in Iceland greed and stupidity are not crimes - but the trial stands a very good chance of throwing light onto how corrupt and deliberately unfair capitalism has become. Many politicians, placed into a similar position, would be bale to fairly claim that "I did nothing illegal." But that depends on what your definition of legal is. On a strict legalistic view the Nazi's didn't do anything wrong between 1933 and 1945 since they acted within the framework of their own laws. At Neuremberg they had to be tried on the entirely novel basis of "Crimes Against Humanity" under an international legal framework that had no real legitimacy. Over the last 30 years the political elite have gradually eroded the laws that in the past restrained them from doing anything really supid and reckless. They have made it so that their selfishness and greed have counterbalanced such principles as common sense and a sense of duty to your country. They've sold this idiocy to the rest of us on the basis of the neoliberal economic thesis that, during a time of famine, the cure is to offer the rich bigger meals. Iceland is about to lift the lid on this and let us all see what the elites have been up to at our expense over the last 30 years - if the story makes it past the "Guardian" that is.