Party of 9

As I contemplate whether or not to haul my lazy punk ass down to Austurvellir to take part in the concert in support of the Rvk 9, I'm struck by an idea.

Remember when I promised to blog about good ideas.

See, the State is bound and determined to punish nine nigh-randomly chosen individuals in order to stifle future uprising, and though I hope against the odds that the 9 are released, many feel that they will likely be found guilty.

Now, if this happens, I think that in light of the over-crowding and expense currently crippling the Icelandic prison system, these nine should if sentenced at all, be sentenced to community service. To be precise, they should be "sentenced" to serve as replacement MP's for all those named as "culpably incompetent" in the recent government report, with full pay and benefits.

I'd call that justice.

9 black lambs to the slaughter

As the Revolution bellies up to the table and prepares to eat its young, I once again feel the need to break my already utterly shattered vow of Pollyannahood and let the rant fly.

At one o'clock today, an Icelandic court will hear the case against 9 protesters accused of "attacking the sanctity of Parliament".

9 black lambs are singled out of a flock of 30 so odd protesters that day, and out of the thousands who were routinely protesting all those long months. Singled out for attempting to walk through an unlocked door into a public building to reach a public seating area where the public has the right to observe its so-called servants work in the public interest. Parliament Security stops them, denies them access, and then attempts to physically block access and expel them. A scuffle breaks out and there are minor injuries on both sides. The police show up in seconds in an overwhelming show of force, one officer gets bitten whilst hurling a protester to the ground to be hogtied and chucked in the back of a paddy wagon. The 9 singled out for sacrifice at the alter of the sacred politic are charged with "attacking the sanctity of Parliament" and face a minimum sentence of 1 year's imprisonment, and a maximum of life (the maximum sentence for rape and murder is 16 years, and has to my knowledge never been imposed on a rapist).

They will likely be found guilty.

The whole situation sickens me, and raises some disturbing questions.

For starters, why these 9? Not one news report I've found has given any reason why only 9 of the 30 odd people involved are charged. While logically the two who managed to get to the viewing area and shout at the MPs to "get the fuck out of here" could be singled out, could it not also be because these 9 were members of the loose-knit black-clad mask-wearing groups who weren't protesting for new elections, weren't tied to existing political clans, and were in fact aiming for an actual revolution, instead of the pathetic coup d'etat we got instead? Why, in the midst of massive and disruptive protest, was the door to the viewing area unlocked? Had the protesters entered in stealth, clad in suits and Sunday best and telling the guards they were there to support the parties then in power, would they have been waved through? Could it be that the police, through whatever combination of incompetence, inexperience, and outright provocation managed to engineer all of the more "violent" incidents, decided to "allow" this protest to proceed in order to sweep in heroically and salvage their faltering support whilst tarring the protesters with the brush of treason? Why has the media, which has delighted in front-page photos of the banksters being arrested at this most conveniently distracting moment, hardly found the time to name the 9 individuals, let alone publish pictures and interviews (so far I've only found one interview, in today's paper, of one of these sacrificial black sheep)? Could it be that the powers that be, who rode into their current positions by latching on to the developing revolution like a tick to the hide, are hoping to appease the reactionary conspiracy theories of the ousted parties and "prove" they had nothing to do with the pot-pounding fire-lighting skril who did the ousting? Or could it be that they are quietly hoping to slip through a precedent that will make it easier to crush future protests?

30 members of the public push their way through a public entrance to a public building to reach the public seating area to give public servants a piece of their minds and they are charged with a serious crime. 60 some odd public servants sit for years in a public building "earning" public money while gifting public resources to political friends and family, lining their pockets with "campaign contributions" and "bullet loans" from bankster cronies, creating a "all animals are equal but some are more equal than others" pension plan, and eventually bankrupting an entire nation through a wicked brew of corruption, incompetence, and selfishness and these 9 black lambs are sent to the block, whilst the Judas goats go about their business, safe in the sacred confines of power, privilege, and ill-gotten wealth?

Where's that sledgehammer and can of gasoline?

Riding along in the car...

Throughout the recent spate of political and economic upheaval here on the LavaLump, there's been an unending series of analogies likening Iceland to a ship.

Which to me doesn't make sense anymore.

I mean, sure, Icelanders pride themselves on being sailors and fisherfolk but come on? A better analogy would be to a car, as gas-guzzling luxury SUVs first managed to surpass fishing boats and factory trawlers as symbols of Icelandic success, and then managed to be an embarrassing reminder of past excess.

So imagine the Icelandic government as a car.

Now, the old, Independence Party government would be a luxury SUV. Its bigger than strictly necessary, expensive to fuel, and full of pricey extras that while serving no real purpose make it look really cool.

Of course, there isn't enough room for everyone in it. Men sit up front, women in the back, and foreigners have to hang on to the roof-rack or cling to the bumper, even if they've paid for their fare share of the gas. The thing's covered with corporate logos.

At some point, it runs out of gas, breaks down, crashes into a wall, or some combination thereof.

And we all get out on the streets.

We light fires. We pound on pots and pans, blow horns, throw eggs and skýr and whatnot. The old car is broken, we want a new one.

Now, out there in the seething surging crowd of egg-chucking pot-banging fire-lighting folk, there are a lot of different and conflicting ideas about what kind of car we should get.

Some want to scrap the car idea and invest in a train, big enough for everyone to ride in.

Some want a police car, a big ol' paddywagon so they can feel safe and secure.

Some want a limo.

Some want a tractor.

Some want a tank.

Some want a smart new hybrid.


Some of us just think 'Fuck it, I'll ride a bike'.


What we get is the exact same car.

Sure, they let the women move up front, even put one in the driver´s seat. And sure, they let a few foreigners in, but oddly enough not the ones who´d already paid for the gas.

Mostly though, they just scrap the plan to armor-plate the thing and slap a new coat of paint on it.

Red and green of course.

If the Revolution ain't dead yet, its on life-support.

Tootin' me own horn.

Maybe it was my upbringing, maybe I have self-image issues, whatever. As a rule I'm more prone to make fun of myself than to brag, more likely to doubt myself than believe I can accomplish anything.

'Cept when I'm drunk of course.

Which kinda proves my point.

But despite the general malaise on the Lava Lump at the mo', I'm feeling surprisingly vindicated. I'm a trend-setter, practically a prophet.

For years now, I've been talking about the possibility of farmers converting their manure into a second cash crop, mainly methane.

For years now, I've been talking about major constitutional change being necessary, short of a complete revolution.

For years now, I've been one of the voices crying out in the new-liberal wilderness for the re-nationalization of fisheries.

Ditto crying out for the elimination of the parasitic state-sponsored middlemen in the food trade, instead advocating direct farm-to-customer sales.

I've told anyone who will listen how much more sensible employee-owned co-opts are.

I've pointed out time and again that nothing was going to change until people made their voices heard.

A few weeks after the Economic Collapse of DOOOMMMMM!!!!! my friend Jimmy and I founded La Brigada Negra Cacophonica, reasoning that if the powers that be won't listen, we need to pump up the volume. Admittedly, we were told to hush up at first, but people finally got the point after the ridiculous and downright embarrassing silent protests during the Xmas season, they finally pulled out the pots and pans and had themselves a revolution.

All these things have either come to be, or at least are on their way.

Now, unlike some, I stake no claim on having caused any of this. Hell, I doubt I even inspired or informed that much.

But its nice to know that I'm right almost as often as I'm wrong.

Wolves in Sheep's Clothing Crying "Wolf!"...

So it finally happened.

Yesterday, during a new session of Parliament, 30 some odd protesters attempted to get into the balcony reserved for members of the public in Alþingi. The guards barred access, but two pushed through and shouted at the Parliamentarians to get out.

At which point seemingly every police officer in Reykjavik spend to the scene to remove the protesters from the stairway where they had been stopped by the guards.

And a scuffle broke out.

State television as well as the newspapers report that two policemen were injured (bites and bruises) and one guard (bumped into a radiator). There are no reports, except from the protesters themselves, of injuries to protesters.

The cops didn’t gas anyone.

Of course they didn’t. The reek of corruption in that place makes pepper-spray a deodorant.

Now we’ll have to listen to the ruling class bitching and moaning about “violence”.

Why the quotes you ask?

Well, let’s just say that the Icelandic ruling class has a very peculiar definition of “violence”.

Like when a police car was driven through a crowd of environmental protesters, and one of said protesters was charged with ‘attacking police property” after slamming his hands on the hood of the vehicle. Never mind that the car posed a threat to life and limb, we can’t have “violent” protesters “hurting” police cars.

Or during the trucker’s protests last year. When several large trucks boxed in the Prime Minister’s (gas-guzzling luxury) car (illegally parked in a handicapped spot) while Geir attended a meeting about Iceland’s image. He got all high and mighty about it, telling the press in his best George Bush that the Icelandic State would not negotiate with people who use such “violent” tactics. This was pre Gas! Gas! BTW.

Then there were the Falun Gong protests of yesteryear, when the Icelandic police rounded up hundreds of dangerous protesters (apparently doing Tai Chi is “violence”) and either forcibly deported them or denied them entry to the country so as to ensure that a visit by a genocidal foreign president would not embarrass the country.

Back in 2001, there was the case of the admittedly rather wacky head of a rather wacky far-left party who was threatened with life imprisonment for making “terrorist threats” when he pointed out that thanks to a tiny cabal of Icelandic plutocrats signing the entire nation onto the Coalition of the Willing in direct opposition to the will of 80%-90% of the population, Iceland could expect to be a target for terrorist groups.

During the early stages of Rvk’s game of musical chairs with the mayoral seat, a large group of legitimately angry people filled the viewing platform at city hall and angrily and loudly denounced the markedly undemocratic events taking place. The papers immediately filled with politicos denouncing this “violent” attempt at overthrowing democracy.

Not to mention the environmental activists who slopped green skýr on some aluminum execs being charged with assault and terrorism or some such nonsense.

In the recent round of protests, the throwing of eggs and skýr and rotten fruit at the Parliament house have been called “violence” by members of the ruling class and their deluded supporters.

The only “violence” that might justify removing the quotes involved smashing in the doors to the police station.

But as far as I’m concerned, that’s not violence either. Property damage is sabotage at best, vandalism at worst, but as inanimate objects feel no pain and have no rights, one cannot inflict violence on them. Moreover, the property is question was public property, which was being used against a member of the public for political purposes, and therefore, to my mind, fare game.

On the other hand, apparently spraying a crowd with a chemical weapon designed and formulated to cause intense pain is not violence. It’s “keeping the peace”.

This is sadly true of any government anywhere, and one of the reasons I’m an Anarchist. All governments claim a monopoly on the use of force, thereby justifying violence against “their” citizens by claiming that they are “preserving public order” or “keeping the peace” or “weeding out undesirables” or “solving the Jewish problem”.

Meanwhile any civilian who defends themselves against the state, even if said defense poses no threat to the State (like when simply owning a gasmask during the ’98 Seattle WTO protests was criminalized to prevent people from preventing the police from gassing them) will be persecuted and prosecuted.

So when a group of protesters walk through an open door and attempt to enter an area reserved for the public, that’s “violence”, but when a group of armed men with dogs kick in doors (to which they could have got keys if they wished) handcuff people in a state of undress, ransack dwellings, confiscate money and ID, regardless of probable cause, that’s “keeping the peace”.

When a police officer gets bitten, or a guard shoved while preventing members of the public from accessing a publicly owned building, that’s violence. When people are thrown to the ground, pinned down, trussed up like Christmas turkeys and manhandled out of the building for standing up for their rights, that’s not “violence”. That’s “keeping the peace”.

Just like they did in Tiananmen Square.

The problem is that many of the very people protesting have been deluded into thinking that the very government they’re protesting really does have a monopoly on force, and so to prevent them from using it, hold ultra-peaceful protests the likes of which astound people from other lands, where the public is less fully domesticated than here. Protests that involve a lot of talking and sign-waving, but nothing much that will actually force a group of people who have stated flat out that they will not listen to the protesters to resign.

After all, its just skrilæti.

Icelanders tend to be very proud of being “peaceful”, after all, the only people here who want an army are a deluded fascist bootlicker with a uniform fetish and his supporters, who magically get re-elected year after year. But this love of “peace” is in fact a fear of confrontation, one that shows itself throughout Icelandic society. Icelanders, for example, tend to be very passive aggressive, preferring to voice their frustrations to a third party rather than taking it up with the party frustrating them.

Unless their drunk.

This leads to a very handy dynamic for those in power. All they have to do is wait until things get “a little out of hand”, and the public, afraid of “violence”, will stop supporting protesters and try to distance themselves from them. This happened after the Gas! Gas! incident, when a bunch of drunken teens and some legitimately angry truckers clashed with riot cops. Now, the cops got a black eye, coming across as a bunch of trigger happy incompetents, but the public, fearful of “violence” quickly went from supporting the truckers to whingeing about them.

The same could happen now.

And the hypocrisy of it galls. If I call for a hundred people to show up with shields and armor, no clubs, no sprays, no stones, guns, Molotov cocktails, or any other offensive weapon, just shields and armor to protect us against clubs and sprays and rubber bullets, I’d in all likelihood be accused of inciting people to violence. Meanwhile the cops petition for Tazer torture guns, attack dogs, bigger paddy-wagons and probably (very quietly) for water cannons for their neither confirmed nor denied “defense force” in order to “ensure the peace”.

Who the fuck is kidding who here?

I’m not afraid of violent protesters. The protesters I’ve met and talked to, marched with and chanted with, even the most radical among them are not violent people. They have no plans to burn down buildings or assassinate anyone. No one is bringing Molotovs. I feel considerably safer in the presence of my fellow protesters than I do walking down Laugarvegur on a rowdy night.

I do fear violent policemen. I fear men who are convinced that they not only have the right, but the duty to inflict violence on others, imprison them, and harass them. I fear that those who hold a hammer long enough will begin to see nails all around them. I fear the “superiors” such men answer too, and their willing help in the media, who could convince this nation that those fighting for political, economic, and social justice are somehow public enemy number one.

I don’t fear “violence”. I fear “keeping the peace”.

Snowed In

So I went to work this morning in blowing, crazy, sideways snow. I only made it about a third of the way before I gave up and hopped a bus. the white stuff (oh oh ohhh oh oh!) is piled up in drifts around the school, plastered to the sides of the buildings and busy forming massive icicles on the overflowing eaves.

The news has snowed me in too these days. So much I want to write about, but so little time.

On the good news side, the powers that be have decided to reform the rules surrounding temporary work and residence permits, finally registering the permit with the individual and not the company that applied for the job. This allows the individual to change jobs (though not without the requisite bureaucrazy) or to get fired/laid off without risking deportation, as was once the case. They are also looking into a much needed exemption for foreigners granted residency due to marriage or domestic partnership with Icelanders. As the law stood, if they broke up, or left (even in cases of abuse, although those were usually granted exceptions) they were subject to deportation. Thankfully they are writing the exceptions into law.

Which is all well and good, but still fails to address my main problem with these laws, mainly that they are aimed more or less soley at people from outside the E.U. (and Bulgaria, apparently Bulgarians are "too brown and too poor" to be lumped in with the rest of the E.U.). While E.U. citizens can come and go as they please, without having to somehow land a job before the arrive in the country, and they don't have to take mandatory Icelandic classes (which one usually has to pay for out of ones own pocket).

In the bad news department, the Ministry of Justice (can you say oxymoron?) is lobbying to change the current prison law to allow foriegners convicted of crimes in Iceland to serve thier time "back where they came from". This raises some very interesting points. Iceland has one of the most humane (not to mention leniet) prison systems in the world, meaning that an Icelander sentenced for drug dealing is much less likely to be shived for a pack of smokes than his American or Polish counterparts. So even if the foreigner involved only has to serve his Icelandic sentence (if they had to serve a sentence from one of thier home-country's courts, they'd be in deep shit. I mean, Icelanders get maybe 16 months for first degree rape, whereas a Yank can do 5 years for posession of marijuana) they are still being subject to a more heinus punishent for the same crime.

Ministry of Justice my ass.

Meanwhile, in a stunning display of Democrazy Inaction, Rvk's got its third government since the last election, one that does not enjoy the popular support of the previous usurpers. They had to empty the council chamber yesterday due to disruptive protests, the first time that's happened since the infamous Gúttóslag back in the 40's.

The new mayor is a Libertarian, one of the more unpopular parties in Iceland at the mo', and it looks like the old mayor, ousted in part over his party's involvement in some very complicated but very very shady business deals will then succeed the Libber.

The whole get-a-new-government-without-an-election thing bugs the hell out of me. I mean, how the hell is anything supposed to get done? Its not like governments are all that efficient when it comes to "running a country/city" to begin with, but when your going through mayors or prime ministers like there's no tomorrow, or playing techno-musical chairs with ministers (so that everyone can get a nice fat piece of that pension-fund pie), not much of anything gets done, and what does get done gets all kinds of fucked up because of all the random personnel and policy changes.

I also think that if you're going to have democracy (rule by the people) the people really ought to have a bit of fucking say! How about a recall vote? National or city referendum?

Nope. They've been elected, now all we can do is sit back and watch them fuck it up.

Of course, some people don't just sit back. They storm the council chamber and shout and protest and get kicked out, at which point some pompous fuck at the editorial desk writes an column about how they should be ashamed of themselves and should have spent their time waving picket signs (quietly, a discreet distance away) writing blogs, signing petitions, and writing letters to the editor.

Because that works. Yeah.