Iceland: 'Refugees Are Our Best Friends': In Iceland, Communities Campaign To House Syrians, Ease Europe's Migrant Crisis - by Erin Banco

Vala Magnusdottir sits in the small apartment she shares with her boyfriend, keeping close watch on her year-old son as he plays with his toys. She scrolls through her newsfeed on Facebook, looking for updates on an event she is attending.

The number of people joining this particular virtual event has grown by 3,000 overnight. All 13,000 attendees are committed to helping Syrian refugees find homes, clothes, shelter, food and work. This outpouring of support is all the more extraordinary because it comes from Iceland -- a sparsely populated, isolated island at the juncture of the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans.

"Icelanders grow up staying away from strangers. It is just the culture," Bryndis Bjorgvinsdottir, an Icelandic author and professor, told International Business Times. The movement to help refugees, and allow more into the country, is unprecedented.

Bjorgvinsdottir was inspired to create the Facebook group “Syria Calling” after one of her friends wrote a Facebook post outlining his desire to help Syrian refugees. Bjorgvinsdottir put out a call on Facebook Sunday asking for Icelanders to speak out if they wanted the government to do more to help those fleeing

Syria's bloody civil war. More than 12,000 people have offered to take Syrians into their homes, and signed a petition to put pressure on the government after it said only 50 migrants would be accepted this year.

"There was an explosion overnight with this group. Thousands of people wanted to be a part of it," Bjorgvinsdottir said.

Magnusdottir is one of them. The young mother from Keflavik, a small town on the southwestern tip of Iceland, said she doesn't have much, but that won't deter her from sharing what she has.

“It breaks my heart to see what's happening and I know I can help, and I will in any way possible,” Magnusdottir said in an interview with IBTimes. “We don't have a lot of money but we have food on our table and water, we have clothes on our backs and a roof over our heads, and we have each other. Some of these people are watching their children and parents die or suffer. I've started to save money as much as we can afford so I can maybe help someone.”

The campaign is part of a concerted effort to see refugees as people -- as individuals with skills to offer their host countries. In an open letter to Iceland's minister of welfare, Bjorgvinsdottir wrote, "Refugees are our future spouses, best friends, our next soul mate, the drummer in our children’s band, our next colleague, Miss Iceland 2022."

Note EU-Digest: This act by Iceland is worthy of many kudos - contrary to the lackluster reaction by many EU states,  who can't, or don't want to get their act together to assist in this human tragedy. Most of us in Europe call ourselves Christians but we seem to have forgotten a basic biblical principle found in 1. John 3:17-18 - "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth."  

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Russia: President Vladimir Putin deserves kudos for 2014 Sochi Olympics - a job well done

President Vladimir Putin

Even though most of us in the Western Press had initially used every possible occasion to be critical about a variety of issues surrounding  the Sochi Olympics project, the Olympics not only got off to a brilliant start, but also throughout the games showed to be a smooth and perfectly managed operation.

This was recognized by just about everyone afterwards.

Olympic Committee officials went to great lengths to praise these much-maligned Games in their closing news conference.

"They've done a phenomenal job," said USOC chairman Larry Probst, mentioning everything from smooth transportation to Vladimir Putin's presence throughout the previous 15 days. "Putin has really owned these Games," he said.

Like it or not, President Vladimir Putin deserves to receive Kudos, not only for these Olympic games, but also for doing everything in his power to turn Sochi into a household word and exposing a cultural, warm and friendly face of  Russia to the rest of world.

Indeed, Mr. Putin might not be everyone's friend - which great leader ever is- but he will certainly be viewed by historians later as the Russian leader who picked up Russia by the bootstraps, after it was down and nearly out when the Soviet Union fell apart, and turning it into the modern society it is today.   

According to Russian public opinion polls, Mr Putin not only remains popular - his popularity is even rising.  In the latest poll, taken in December 2013, by the independent research organization, the Levada Centre, 68 per cent of respondents said that if new presidential elections were held this they would vote for Putin. This was up by 10 per cent from December 2012.

Why is Mr. Putin so popular at home? The simple answer is that the Russian population of 144 million is much better off today than it has ever been. Real incomes have risen substantially over the past decade, and the share of the population living below the poverty line has fallen.

The range of available consumer goods is worlds apart from when the Soviet Union fell apart little more than two decades ago.  Many of the middle class Russian families are now taking vacations outside their country and in the summer you will now find Russians vacationers just about everywhere in the world with a large contingent  in Turkey and Thailand..

During his two terms as president, Putin signed into law a series of liberal economic reforms, such as the flat income tax of 13 percent, a reduced profits tax, a new Land Code and a new edition (2006) of the Civil Code. Within this period, poverty in Russia was cut by more than half and real GDP has grown rapidly.

Some of the main features of Putin's regime so far have been: development of a corporatist system by pursuing close ties with business organizations, social stability and co-optation of opposition parties.

In 2005, Putin launched National Priority Projects in the fields of health care, education, housing and agriculture. In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin proposed increasing maternity benefits and prenatal care for women. Putin was strident about the need to reform the judiciary considering the present federal judiciary "Sovietesque", wherein many of the judges hand down the same verdicts as they would under the old Soviet judiciary structure, and preferring instead a judiciary that interpreted and implemented the code to the current situation.

In 2005, responsibility for federal prisons was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice.

The most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision to modernize equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.

So far during Putin's government, poverty was cut more than half and real GDP has grown rapidly.

In a rare sign of emotion and patriotism, he once said in an interview with Time magazine: "Russia is an ancient country with historical, profound traditions and a very powerful moral foundation. And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people."

Kudos Mr. Putin, Sochi was a job well done.

EU-Digest