When in Rómaborg...

I'm in a pissy mood.

Not angry, not enraged, not activated.

Just pissy.

Early Icelandic "spring" tends to bring this on. It teases you with a few fine days and then dumps more snow on your sunny dreams, while assignments and finals loom like storm clouds over the month of May.

It makes trivial trials harder to bear, like getting cussed out by my corpulent upstairs neighbor for keeping my recyclables, or in his words, trash, in "his" part of the heat-room. Never mind that I keep that place so much cleaner than before I moved in (what with removing the rank and rotting rubbish that my landlady tended to throw in there, being to lazy to take it out herself), sweeping regularly, and all that. Never mind that I cleaned up the building scrap he threw out of his second story window into the front lawn. Never mind that I keep the walkways and driveway snow free so his elderly mother doesn't break a hip getting to her taxi, or that he's left an old TV on my porch, keeps a rusty old car packed full of boxes in his driveway, and has never lifted a figure to help clean the place up.

I moved my recyclables out to the garage. I'd spent weeks getting it cleaned up and organized last summer, so I could use the covered space for remodeling work. Its now full of my landlady's daughter's stuff.

All this is annoying. But what has finally pushed me over the edge is, as usual, politics.

As usual.

The revolution is dead.

Actually, it was still-born.

As soon as the old government fell, everyone seemingly gave up. After all, we have the chance to elect the same old parties into power under the same old corrupt rules! Yay!

And while folks continue to struggle, while unemployment grows, banks continue to crash, businessmen award themselves bonuses while cutting employee pay, the "revolutionary" government of red/green beaurocrats passes laws to re-criminalise strip clubs, makes noise about re-criminalising boxing, and continues to "work" with the IMF.

The police, bless 'em, focus on expelling asylum seekers, hunting down marijuana farms, and confiscating poker tables, while the útrassavikingar continue to drain the country dry, siphoning cash off to tax-paradises while the powers that be argue about gender quotas.

Það er vont en það venst.

Oh sure, the peacenixs still got out to protest the 60th anniversary of NATO, and (here I'm not criticizing in the least) a series of protests has pointed out Iceland's self-serving and stealthily racist policy on asylum seekers, but is anyone planning anything in solidarity with the G20 protests?

Apparently just me.

So I sent out the call on the internets. And showed up to find the square empty. Walked around, listening for the rhythmic sound of pots pounded with spoons and the clang of house-ware revolution. I stood over the spots where you can still see the scorching from January's fires, now slowly filling in with half-frozen spring grass. I sat down with my pack full of improvised noise-makers and folded up signage, smoked my pipe, and fought the urge to just give up.

I don't blame anyone for not showing. Its not like I made a particularly coherent or moving call. Its not like I gave folks time. I sent the thing out last night around 9.

Hell, I showed up an hour late.

Because my corpulent neighbor needed me to shift my recycling so he could fit his fat ass into the boiler room and fiddle with the valves.

Apparently 45C wasn't hot enough for him.

I'm starting to see why Icelanders are so prone to self-serving stoicism. Its so much easier to roll with the punches than try to punch back...

When in the course of human events…

It’s been a strange couple of months over here on the Lava Lump. Exhilarating, infuriating, frightening, inspiring, but most of all, tantalizing.

I’ve long complained about the tendency of my adopted countrymen to bend over and take blatant injustices without comment or public complaint. Oh sure, they’d complain in private, or in longwinded obtuse articles to the newspapers, but the rarely if ever simply took to the streets in force to demand justice.

Now they have.

Sadly, as proud as it makes me, as much as it fills me with a sense of solidarity and wild, apocalyptic joy, it all-to-often seems too little too late.

Judging by the reactions of the various ministers (including the ruling duo, the Prime Minister and Minister of State) at Monday’s open meeting, the ruling elite of Iceland not only don’t much care what we think of them, they don’t give a flying fuck what we think.

Sitting on their massive pension funds (that they half-jokingly “reformed” last week”), secure in their sense of superiority, they have the unmitigated gall to claim that they and they alone can solve this mess they are largely responsible for causing. They claim that the newly activated public that flooded Haskolibio and fills the square in front of Parliament every Saturday “doesn’t represent the will of the people”. What’s worse, they claim that they “cannot” step down as they and they alone are capable of carrying out the financial aid package from the IMF.

Hiding behind the skirts of a corrupt capitalist vulture is not fucking leadership people.

Hell, if the IMF is going to pull out if the current government steps down, that makes it all the more desirable.

Meanwhile, its becoming increasingly clear that the banks, and by “the banks” I mean the clique of bankers and financiers that control them, were doing some incredibly shady deals, deals that in just about any other country would have them up on charges facing serious jail time. They loaned themselves and their cronies money to buy shares in their own banks, with no collateral save the shares purchased in order to artificially inflate the worth of said banks.

And the government helped them out, by neither investigating, nor, as far as I can tell, even bothering to pass any regulations against such dubious dealings.

The end result is that the capitalist class and the ruling class joined hands to sell the Icelandic public in to debt slavery at the hands of a non-representational, undemocratic cabal of banking and corporate interests called the IMF.

Enough already!

People are loosing their homes and livelihoods while the government scrambles to shore up the crumbling corrupt banks. While the general public is stuck with price insured loans that continue to grow no matter how much you try to pay off,* the banks get bailed out, even though they themselves are in massive debt.

Does this seem just to you? The banks borrowed in excess of their means, and then, under the cover of secrecy and fraud, loaned that money out to the public at loan-shark interest.

This cannot stand.

The simple fact is that until the banks themselves are solvent, until they’ve paid off their debts, including those debts incurred in artificially inflating their stock prices, they have no fucking right to expect us to pay. They took the risk in borrowing from Peter to loan to Paul, and those who took out a loan in good faith, thinking that they were borrowing against real assets instead of fictional finances, are under no ethical obligation to pay anything back, let alone price-fixed high interest loans that lead to company-town indentured slavery.

Meanwhile, the IMF deal is already showing its true face, as across the board budget cuts begin to shut down healthcare centers around the country, and as the already swamped and under-funded social services try to point out that they need more funding to deal with this crisis instead of less.

Of course, if the IMF stays true to form, less is what they’re going to get. The last decade has seen a prolonged and active effort on behalf of the neo-liberal government to purposely under fund and mismanage the Ministry of Health, of Education, and all the programs that make (made?) up Iceland’s welfare system in order to give them the usual excuses of “efficiency” and “free market capitalism” for selling off these public assets into the hands of their cronies.

Just like they sold off the fishing rights.

Just like they sold off the Postal Service.

Just like they sold off Siminn.

Just like they sold of the banks.

I think it’s high time we refuse to be sold into debt slavery to protect those responsible for most of the debt. I think it’s high time to refuse to be punished for fraud perpetrated by others.

Those currently being held hostage by their debts to the old banks should refuse payment until a just and equitable solution can be found. In the meantime, they should band together to prevent, by force if necessary, the coming wave of evections and repossessions. People are more important than property.

Every fishing crew of every ship should refuse to pay the kvota kings the tithe they were granted by a corrupt Parliament. The fish in the sea are a communal property, and no-one has the right, or can be granted the right, to demand payment from those doing the work for the right to work.

Those who work the land should band together, defy regulations, and sell their produce directly to the people, without going through the government-mandated middlemen who profit from their appointed positions regardless of the harm they do their own people with inflated prices for consumers and deflated prices for producers, or the price-gouging corporate supermarkets run by a cabal of career con artists.

Anyone needing shelter should simply move into any of the multitude of empty buildings scattered around the country in the wake of the building bubble’s bust. There is no fucking excuse whatsoever for homelessness in a nation as small as Iceland.

And finally, if Parliament will not bow to the will of those they were meant to serve, if they will not step down, then We the People of Iceland, native and foreign born, men, women, children and youths, elders, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, irrespective of faith, creed, or political leanings should rise up and establish new, more just, more equitable, more practical institutions to replace those we shall overthrow.

Declare your independence!

You don’t even have chains to lose.

They’ve been repossessed.

*A good friend of mine purchased a car two years ago by taking over a loan. The car is a good, fuel-efficient, cheap vehicle, and the loan was, at the time, very reasonable. After two years of paying more than the minimum payments, she now owes more for the car than when she took over the debt. The same sort of financing was used on indentured servants sent to British colonies to prevent them from ever paying off their debts and hence enslaving them for life, if not the life of their children as well.

Stop Bitchin' and Start a Revolution Already!

Enough of the speeches.

Enough bitching at your fellow protesters for not marching in your line.

Enough of this corrupt, incompetent, self-serving government.

We will not pay the debts of those who impoverished us.

We will not be quiet, sit still.

We will not be obedient.

We will be loud.

We will be raucous.

We will not be moved.

Bring drums.

Bring horns.

Bring pots to bang.

Paint your words on heavy shields, so the blows of those who would force us into silence will not harm us.

Cover your eyes so their venom will not sting.

Be angry.

Be joyous.

Be ready.

We don't just want a new life, a new society, a new start.

We need one.

And the only people who can make that happen are ourselves.

Not exactly a model remodel...

So as is obvious from the last couple of posts. I've gotten all gloomy and melancholy and grouchy.

Again.

I apologize dear blogadytes.

Thing is though, I can't seem to shake it. Which worries me. I have a long and frankly disastrous relationship with Madame Melancholy (as well as her sisters Mary Mania and Clinica D'Pression) and I know that when I get like this there's a chance it might get worse.

So I try to get enough sleep, work out, take my lýsi, and relax like all the nice (although frankly all-too-often incompetent) doctors tell you to.




Yet I'm still just tired, unmotivated, and grumpy all the damned time.



Part of it is a very hard to shake anger/sadness cocktail resulting from the stupidity of last July, part of it is the inertia of living out of a suitcase for this long, and part of it is grandma. Add in a healthy dose of I've-been-working-overtime-galore-to-pay-for-a-ticket-home and a pinch of the-last-thing-I-wanna-do-after-being-surrounded-by-screaming-children-all-day-is drill-holes-in-concrete and you get a very unmotivated Sma.

But I can't keep going like this. The landclan (as opposed to a single landlord/lady I've got a whole mess of relatives involved in my housing situation) is getting pissed about the lack o' progress on the remodel front, so if I want to have any sort of say about what kind of kitchen I get, I'm gonna have to get my ass in gear and take charge again.

So tired or not, grumpy or nay, I've got to paint and drill and tile and chisel and all that all this weekend and all the next.

Anyone up to coming over to help?