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Saturday

Bjork rallies Iceland against B.C. natural resources company

CTV British Columbia - Bjork rallies Iceland against B.C. natural resources company - CTV News
Great new word: "Outvasion" - M

Icelandic singer Bjork is forcing a Canadian energy company with a business presence in her country to "hear the music" of Icelanders opposed to foreign ownership of their country's resources. The eclectic musician launched a three-day karaoke marathon on Thursday in the capital of ReykjavDik as part of her campaign "to win back the country's natural resources."

Vancouver-based Magma Energy Corp. (TSX:MXY) boosted its interest in Iceland's HS Orka power plant operations to 84.2 per cent last August and to 98.5 per cent the following month. The acquisition is not sitting well with Bjork and others who want Iceland's natural resources to be publicly owned and governed.

Bjork is trying to get 15 per cent of the population -- about 35,000 people -- to sign a petition that would force the government to consider revoking the takeover. More than 20,000 people have signed so far, and the singer says she is hopeful that the remaining signatures will be gathered during the karaoke marathon.

"For 100 years, good people protected our natural resources and public interest," the petition says. "In the 'outvasion' period, the sale of natural resources and irresponsible access to them began. Now it is time to stop that unfortunate development."

1 comment:

  1. 5 - a lot of the power generated will be going to an aluminum smelter in iceland. They are looking to expand that aluminum business, so future expansions of HS Orka would facilitate powering that. Taxes, money into infrastructure, employees etc etc all stimulate the iclandic economy in a positive way.

    6 - bjork is lying again when she says they're after ALL of the power on iceland, just geothermal. What she should be doing is rallying her own funds to purchase this first. That would leave iceland in a much better position. Rather than burn yet another bridge and provide yet another reason for people to not invest with iceland, and be left with a resource no one can afford to efficiently manage. Which brings me to 7...

    7 - who is going to grow and take care of this resource? Who's going to fund it? Is bjork going to stop singing and get into the drilling business? Or do you want to leave all the financial risk to a third party? This third party being magma, backed by a world-class drilling team and world leaders in the geothermal field. That's what a creditable business comes with. This comes hand in hand with efficiency, best friend of profits. Quicker profits means quicker stimulation into the iclandic economy through expansion buildings, new local jobs, new talent, new population to attract new business and more expansion. As it stands, No less profit is making it to icelanders than before, when it was privately owned. At least now they can buy into the company. More profit gained by quicker,efficient growth. All the construction contracts, parts, supplies, maitnence, icelandic jobs, fuel use, transportation, etc etc - pure profit for iclandic communities. Not to mention the tax on import/export, and domestic business activies. Outsourcing to iclandic firms for other projects. Everything that would maybe happen if managed otherwise.

    All the fuss points to assisting the iclandic community vs stealing from them. If the above doesn't shed light on on the situation for people...

    8 - Magma is a publicly traded company. everything they do has to be on public paper and viewable by the public.

    Other active investors for iclandic geothermal include china and india, neither of which are a public company and can keep the financials of any iclandic geothermal resource behind closed doors. More of a chance of duping the iclandic public. Zero chance for the global public to invest.

    So...if magma didn't take over, that leaves china and india as interested investors...which will cause Bjork to change her focus and her cause? How is she going to attack the integrity of them?

    Clearly iceland can't support this on their own...if they could they wouldn't be in this position in the first place. Actions like this will never attract a business culture. They just burn bridges with major players like Holland and the UK and now Canada.

    Following this story from day 1, I've come to the conclusion that bjork needs to go back to school if she is going to put herself in the middle of a political/business cause like this. Stick to making music, not rumors about relevant companies (pan american silver) and applying them to current companies, I have yet to see a shred of factual evidence come from bjork and her band of maybe 8000 actual followers (the other 40000 are most likely tampered with)...all said - she conveniently has an album dropping in a month or so...this whole being in the spotlight for a good cause is most likely a ruse. This seems to be making more news for bjork than a map or swan dress.

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