Numbered lists and the difficulty of daily ranting.

So I'm trying to get back on the write-o-cycle, having fallen off roughly two years ago, but it's proving to be more of a challenge than I thought.

For starters, this time around, I'm doing a lot of writing that isn't going up in the form of a daily blog/rant/thingy, and is aimed instead at a slightly more commercial audience. So I'm working on churning out snarky numbered lists for Cracked.com, angry-yet-non-threatening political rant for TruthOut.org, and useful and informative how-to articles on Experts123.com.

Of course, none of the above have "hired" me, nor do I know exactly how to submit my work to them, but hey, keeps me busy and let's me occasionally convince myself that I might at some point make some money off of it.

Thing is though, that the more I think of writing as a job, the less I want to do it, and the fewer and fewer topics I want to discuss on my blog, as I think "hey, wait a sec, shouldn't share that for free", which then makes me feel like a total money-grubbin' capitalist a-hole.

But every now and again I come up with something that won't fit anywhere but my blog, some short little ditty that just has WRB written all over it.

Like this.

America Explained in 4 Simple (but false) Statements.

4. "The American Dream" aka "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

For starters, practically no one in Merka has bootstraps anymore, we all get to wear shitty fall-apart-at-the-sight-of-weather sneakers manufactured in off-shore sweatshops and sold in box stores so huge our fat asses can't make it from one end to another without renting an electric scooter. Aside from that, this statement ignores the reams of data gathered over the last 50 or so years that shows that not only is upward mobility no longer a trend in Merka, but that downward mobility has been the rule for years now, even before the Great Re-possession. The reason Merkans still hold on to this ridiculous belief is based on...

3. "If you're poor, its you're own fault for being lazy/sick/stupid/black/brown/ etc."

Merkans hate poor people. Poor people not only make the whole country look bad, but for some weird reason there are always people in the government trying to take away our money and give it to no good lazy poor people. Oh, we'll happily spend tax money on police and prisons to lock them up, but actually trying to prevent poverty-based crime (and the VAST majority is poverty based) by obtaining some measure of *shudder* "economic equality" is straight out freedom-hating-socialist heresy because...

2. "Competition brings out the best in people".

O rly? So the same thing that induces people already making assloads more than your average working Joe (who does something worthwhile with his labor) to take illegal steroids to further wring cash and endorsements from people stupid enough to believe smacking a globular chunk of leather with a stick makes you a role-model brings out the best in people? The same thing that "forces" companies to lay-off thousands and move their operations abroad to avoid taxes, labor laws, and that pesky lack of slave-labor is a good thing? Really?!?! So a system wherein insurance companies and HMOs compete with each other to screw as much money out of the public while providing as little of that there expensive medical care as possible brings out the best in the assholes? I can only imagine that without competition they morph into some huge encephalitic elder god bent on murdering existence...

1. "There can be no common good without personal greed".

Okay, fine, they don't say it like that. Mainly 'casue they've given up on even the idea of a "common good", but this is what's behind all the "trickle-down" talk, the bullshit about "rising tides lifting all boats". People believing this, and believing that a piece of paper with a government seal justifies it are the reason that fully half the resources of this country, hell, of the world, are owned by a tiny fraction of the population, who don't give a flying fuck about the "common good" and would sooner slit your throat and sell your organs on Ebay than part with even a fraction of their vast wealth.

To summarize:

Most of you reading this are members of the new global underclass (you are just lucky enough to be at the top of that particular shit heap). In all likelihood, no matter how smart you are, how creative, or how hard you work, you will stay a member of the new global underclass. Because like all caste-systems, you are born into it.

The people you work for, who likely pit you against your fellow workers, while pitting the company you work for against other companies in an endless drive to "beat" the "other" "team" are in all likelihood the also the owners of the "other team". They will continue to pit you against other people just like you to force you to accept lower wages, fewer benefits, and eventual indentured slavery because "competition brings out the best in people". These same asshats will then claim that any move made to bring any-level of fairness to this fucked up situation will result in global economic misery (like we don't have that now) because if they are not allowed to make obscene profits off of your hard labor, you won't receive your minimum wage paycheck next week.

Where's that rifle????

PS: Yes I have sources to back this up. No I didn't post them. Why should I go through the trouble, I mean look at the Tea Party, not only did they essentially take over America, they did it without siting any real sources! Mostly they just pulled xenophobic libertarian shit out of their fat ignorant asses and flung it into the public debate like so many masturbating zoo monkeys.

Can't beat 'em...

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.

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”.

If its too loud, you´ve been in power too long.

Brigada Negra Cacophonica is seeking volunteers to make lots of noise!

As the Powers That Be in this country continue to turn a deaf ear to the will of the people, we've decided to crank the volume up to eleven and friggin' make them hear us.

Joining is easy. You just have to show up with a instrument of musical destruction, make loud rythmic noises with it, and maybe drum up a revolution!

Join now!

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.

Just a quick note...

...for all the útrassavíkingur and politicos and columnist who keep telling us that "we" are to blame for the Great Icelandic Financial Meltdown. I have just 5 words for you.

Speak for your own damn self!

Also: FUCK YOU!

We didn't throw the economy down the toilet. You did. a lot of us (myself included) didn't take out any damned loans, we didn't go on a credit bender, and we don't have a goodamned flat screen or a luxury SUV. Some of us do, but mostly because "we" were doing what people who have been robbed of all control over the structure of the world the live in do.

We tried to get by, and tried to be happy with the narrow limits you allowed us.

So go screw yourselves.

We know who's to blame, and WE WILL FIND YOU!

Jú sey jú vant a revólúsjón?

I’m getting weirded out folks.

Seriously.

I’m used to the news pissing me off, and even more used to the op-eds in the Icelandic papers making me foam at the mouth.

For years now my friends and I have been crying out in the proverbial wilderness, shouting “Sustainability!”, “Self-Organization!”, “Economic Equality!”, and occasionally “Rise the Fuck Up Already!”

To absolutely no avail.

Then everything went straight to shit, as most of us knew it would.

Now the op-eds are filling up with intelligent discourse about sustainable economics, about the cronyism and corruption amongst Iceland’s elite. People are calling for a sea-change in how Icelanders make their living, calling for diversification, self-organization, and economic equality. They’re shooting their well aimed barbs at the white knights of aluminum and fish and the E.U.*

They’re even flirting with the idea of rising the fuck up.

Which is encouraging, if a tad disconboobalating.

That’s my own word by the way.

I mean, what the hell am I going to blog about now?

But I thought about it for a bit, and decided that I’d indulge in some magical thinking. Seeing as so very many of the issues and ideas I’ve blogged about in the past have sudden appeared on television and in print, I’m going to throw a few of my wilder ideas out there and see if they make it into the collective consciousness.

For starters, this Saturday will see the third major protest downtown in as many weeks, which is downright shocking by Icelandic standards. Originally a call for Davið Oddson to step down as head of the Central Bank, they’ve now (better late than never) become a call for new elections ASAP, aka kicking the bastards out. All fine and dandy. I’ll be there, I’ll meet you half way.

But consider for a moment a couple of points. Right now the Icelandic State is in deep financial doodoo, and in order to pull themselves out, they’ll need to slash public spending. This will mean less money for students, children, the disabled, fewer social services, increased fees for supposedly “free” healthcare, and more than likely a package of tax hikes and the downsizing of many a public employee.

Public employees mind, not public officials.

So how about we save ourselves a lot of money, and simply dissolve parliament? We’d save on their over-inflated wages, their retirement scam, their “day-money” that would take me two weeks to earn, their gas-guzzling official cars, private jet vaca…I mean meetings abroad, and their teams of sycophantic yes-people hired at public expense to do their jobs for them.

We then declare the Icelandic public to be the legislative power, giving the average Jón and Anna the right to propose laws, gather support for them, and then vote on them in twice yearly democracy days.

Meanwhile, we vote on who gets the ministerial positions, for a four year term. Instead of being political cake for unqualified politicos, they’d become administrative positions for people who can make them work, instead of purposely running them into the ground so that they can be gobbled up by Mammon. So we get healthcare professionals in charge of the Ministry of Health, and maybe, just maybe, a FUCKING ECONOMIST IN CHARGE OF THE CENTRAL BANK!

Likewise, let’s save some more tax money by teaching the State to stop eating itself. Student loans are not, repeat not, income. It’s a fucking loan. You have to pay it back. Why the hell do you have to pay income tax on it? The same can be said for disability payments. The State taxes the public to pay disability payments to those who cannot work and then taxes those same payments??? The same is true of pensions. What the fuck? Not to mention taxing the interest people make off of individual savings accounts.

How ‘bout this? Just declare disability payments, student loans, and pensions to be tax free. Then lower the amount paid out by the amount of taxes levied. Everyone gets the same amount of money and the state saves on the costs of processing all those unnecessary taxes.

Individual savings deposits should be tax free. Period.

Not only will this encourage people to save instead of borrow, but any government that is already charging me taxes on the money I bring in should keep its filthy corrupt piggy fingers out of what I manage save of the money I have left.

After all, like most of us, I can’t just vote myself a raise.

I know, I know. I’ve ranted this before. Doesn’t make it any less of a good idea.

Another thing I’ve been happy to hear is people talking about CSA, or Community Supported Agriculture, whereby farmers sell directly to the public, hence cutting out the middlemen and getting a better price for themselves, while also providing the public with fresher, less processed, higher quality, and often cheaper food.

The problem with this is that when it comes to everything but vegetables, this is illegal in Iceland. You cannot, repeat cannot, legally sell dairy products, meat or fish direct from the producer. Instead you are required by law to sell (at an artificially low price) these products to State mandated middlemen who then sell them on to retailers who then sell it on to the consumers.

At an artificially high price.

Not to mention that because it has to go through the middlemen the food has to be shipped to the processing centers, often times located well away from the farms and communities it was produced in, processed, shipped to the retailers (through a series of warehouses), and finally comes back to the community either unripe and tasteless in the case of vegetables, or with all the fresh yummy goodness removed (in the case of many of the dairy products).

This is also why, up until the current foreign currency crunch, the cheapest fish you could buy in Iceland was frozen Peruvian cod sold under a Danish label.

From a supermarket located across the street from the fishing docks.

My solution for this is simple. BREAK THE DAMN LAW! If you are a producer, and you’re tired of selling your produce cheap, only to see it mixed in with other, possibly lower-quality produce, labeled with no information on where it came from, and then sold at a ridiculously high price to consumers who then blame you for their empty wallets, STOP!

Sell it direct to the public. Screw the law.

Just because something is legal doesn’t make it right

And just because something is illegal doesn’t make it wrong.

Witness the guys who have been out fishing without a kvóta to protest the privatization of a national resource. Fishermen have started it, farmers can join the parade.

Likewise, anyone who is currently paying full price for electricity to run their greenhouses or software companies should immediately subtract 95% from their electric bill, so they pay the same rate as Alcan and Alcoa.

Personally, I’d love it if I could get away with subtracting the percentage of my taxes that goes into the pockets and retirement funds of parliamentarians. Not to mention the percentage that goes to the State Church and a law enforcement and immigration authority run by a person who anywhere with actual free speech (where one can state an opinion without being dragged into court for libel) could be described as a paranoid fascist bootlicker with a uniform fetish.

But hey whatcha gonna do?

While we’re at it, let’s renationalize the kvóta system, and grant each and every community that has a harbor a percentage of the total catch, based on population and infrastructure (meaning that communities with limited economies would get a bigger share, not smaller). Said community can then split their percentage amongst those who wish to fish, charging a small percentage of the gross profit to fund public services. Sound good?

Let’s start up a few companies while we’re at it. And by “companies” I mean Sf., not Ehf. and definitely not Hf. Cooperative companies that recycle paper, aluminum, old tires, plastics, etc and sell their products back into the Icelandic market, helping to balance out our trade deficit. Cooperative companies producing food, clothing, building materials, energy, tools and hardware, electronics, software, electric vehicles (trains trains trains!), and tourist/recreational services.

Cooperative companies, wherein all employees are partial owners, and more importantly wherein all owners are required to be employees. Co-opts in which all decisions regarding capital and profits are handled democratically and hence are intrinsically more egalitarian, and thereby inherently more stable, than companies run from the top down, whereby people with no real talent for massive responsibility reward themselves with massive bonuses and take massive ill-considered risks to justify said unequal pay. Co-opts are also more egalitarian that State-run companies, where the ruling elite reward their loyal toadies by appointing them the head of a national bank or television or other such foolishness…

So that’s it. A bit of constructive civil disobedience, a bit of self-organization, and a bit of reform, whereby we reform the institutions responsible for fucking us over for years now right out of existence, and bingo! Revolúsjón bæbí!

Dónt jú nó its góíng tú bí all ræt?

*'And I looked, and behold, a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him...'

The Upside of Downturns

In order to comply with the new government regulations requiring all discussion of current events in Iceland to be positive, optimistic, and generally complacent, I hereby present you with the the upside of economic downturn.

For starters, men's fashion will improve. No more faggoty-assed pink shirts. No more striped blond hair artfully moused. No more orange-skinned hairless yuppie freaks. They can't afford to look that ridiculous anymore. Men will look like men again. Beards will be back in fashion, 'cause who can afford razors? Long hair or buzz cuts will be the rule, and full-body-waxed spray-tanned Armani-clad cads will no longer be considered hip og kul.

Women will start to look like women again, as opposed to the spray-painted Barbi clones that recently roamed the streets, as the price of cosmetics and snobby beauty parlors becomes prohibitory. One will once again be able to snog without first resorting to an electric paint stripper. Likewise, no more fat chicks. Thin will be in...evitable.

Stupidly non adaptive fashion will fade away. No longer will Icelanders shell out gazillions of krona for the latest pair of shoddy canvas low tops with pink skulls on them. People will start to wear boots instead, because they last, and because its friggin cold when you walk to work, instead of driving there in your giant four-wheel drive penis extension.

The stupid tradition of wearing an overpriced piece of useless silk around one's neck to show social/economic superiority will fade as no-one is able to afford them, and the surplus is re-sewn into much needed undergarments.

The streets will be safer, as fewer and fewer large vehicles whip around corners driven by people too busy talking on their 3G phones, drinking expensive coffee, trying to score more coke while wondering how much money they might make in shady financial deals that day.

Children will spend more time with their parents.

And finally, there will be increased opportunities for social interaction. Whether waiting for the bus, standing in line for soup, waiting for our ration cards, huddled together for warmth in the cold nights at the labor camps, or dancing through the streets to the light of flaming bank offices, we'll all be a little less lonely in the days to come.

The Canary And The Phoenix

In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, as man first began to take advantage of fossil fuels, namely coal, canaries were carried down into the mines as an early-warning system. Because of their small size and fast metabolism, these little birds pass out, or even die from poisonous gas or asphyxiation long before miners feel any effects. Hence, when the canary dies, you get the hell out of the mine shaft.

Iceland is a small nation, and like most small nations, is inherently more susceptible to changes in the world environment, at least when it gets dragged down the mine-shafts of globalization.

Like the coal miner’s canary, what happened here is a forewarning of what could or will happen elsewhere, if people fail to get the hell out of the mines.

This doesn’t help those of us here in Iceland all that much. The damage has been done, and for all the harping on about Russian loans and the IMF, we need to recognize that the heyday of Viking Economics is over. Iceland will not be a international financial superpower.

Let me repeat that: Iceland will not be an international financial superpower.

Get over it.

Our waxy wings got way too close to the sun and we burned.

This may not be a bad thing. As Octavia E. Butler pointed out in her semi-prophetic Parable of the Sower:

In order to rise from its ashes
A Phoenix
First
Must
Burn.

I for one hope that we rise from our ashes.

I hope that the “New Iceland” everyone is talking about will be a triumphant thing, an affirmation of hope and reason and community, a vision of a prosperous, flourishing island, a well-balanced blend of town and country. Productive farms feeding and fueling clean cities, small scale industry supporting electric rails and new aluminum boats, sailing out to fish and trade on the wind, recycling plants turning what was once wasted into a resource, and cities bustling with the work of “knowledge factories” ,the schools and information companies. I hope for horizontal organization, from the bottom up instead of the top down. Real democracy, of the people, by the people, and for the people.

None of this is going to happen though. Not unless we make some hard choices and throw out a great many outdated and self-destructive habits.

The most damning of which is looking to Authority to solve all our problems.

Right now, the very same people who caused this crisis, either by their blind faith in the dogma of the Church of the Invisible Hand*, or by passive acquiescence to said doctrines have the unmitigated gall to don the mantle of salvation and claim that they and they alone can save us from the very reckoning they called down on us. These same people, falsely cloaked in Authority, will stand in the way of nearly every effort to build a new and better Iceland, because a new and better Iceland will have no use for them, for their cronies in big business, for their closed-door party meetings, for passing laws without debate, for musical-chair ministers and some-pigs-are-more-equal-than-others retirement schemes.

No!

Just no, damn it!

NO MORE!

No more of your vested interests. No more claiming brides as speaking fees. No more of your transparent scapegoating, kicking down hostel doors to distract us from your fraud. No more funneling the nation’s wealth into the pockets of your supporters.

You had your chance. Hell, you’ve had more than a chance. You have had chances, plural, each more pressing than the last and each more shameful.

When the canary started to sicken at the rising price of food and fuel, did you look the truth in the eye, recognize that oil is on its way out, and push for a nationwide move away from that poisonous black gold and towards sustainable domestic production?

No you did not.

You threw some crumbs to the crowds, little phrases like “bio-diesel” (imported, despite the fact it could be manufactured here) and “the hydrogen economy” (to date nothing but a pipe dream). You talked about destroying what little is left of Icelandic agriculture in favor of “cheap” imported food, instead of moving to build up agriculture, creating jobs, sustenance, and fuel in the process.

When the Housing Bubble burst, as anyone with eyes could see it would, did you move swiftly and effectively to soften the blow? No. You knelt at the alter of the Invisible Hand and hoped for the best, only taking action long after it could have had any real effect, and then only to insure the banks would pay no consequences for their predatory lending schemes.

Worse yet, when it became clear that the Banking Bubble was going to burst, you did nothing, even as the greedy few dragged the many into debt while lining your own pockets with 30 (thousand) pieces of silver. Then, to pile incompetence on inaction, you moved with misguided zeal to “save” the banks, dragging the nation down to prop up institutions that according to your own oft-stated believe in competitive markets should have been allowed to fail, taking their overpaid captains down with them.

Now you spout drivel about heavy industry, which will put the nation further in debt, whilst reaping a meager harvest of jobs and cash and a whirlwind of environmental damage. You bat your eyes like a courtesan at a tyrant to bail out our banks, and look to an organization that once tried to privatize an entire country’s water supply and sell it to Coca-Cola for advice on how to restructure. You tell people their pensions will be slashed, while using the crisis to excuse the continuation of your own embezzled “retirement” funds, and claim to investigate yourselves when you can’t even pass a law on public disclosure.

By your actions and by your inaction, you have forfeited any claim to leadership.

You who claim Authority over Iceland have failed the people time and again, and it is high time that people shook you off their backs. We don’t care how hard you work now to prop up the tottering house of cards you built.

Let it fall.

Let it burn.

Then get the hell out of our way so we can build something better from the ashes.

All the golden gilt in the world doesn’t make it any less a cage.

We’re tired of being your canary.

*If we could see the Invisible Hand of The Marketplace, it would be giving us the finger.

8 reasons why I feel fine

1. Move. First off, cancel your gym membership. You don’t need it. People kept themselves in fighting trim for centuries without Nautilus or Pilates by doing something called “being active”. Walk or bike to and from work, for example. Go for a swim, hell some of the pools have free weights. If that’s not enough, do some push-ups and sit-ups. Work in your garden. Hell, I if I can find one, I’ll be rowing a boat out to fish whenever I can. My decision to only take the bus when forced to by time constraints or weather, to ride or walk whenever possible, has paid of in twenty-dropped kilos, while my forays to Sundhollinn have added muscle I thought I had lost forever. The best thing is, I’m not paying anything for it, and because its part of my daily routine, not an addition to it, I tend to stick to it better than any gym-inspired attempt at achieving svelteness.

2. Eat. The nice thing about getting in shape in the aforementioned manner is that you get to eat more. Or at least better. When one is trudging through wind and snow, biking against a stiff gale, and doing ones best porpoise impression several times a week, one finds that one needs good hearty food. With butter. One finds oneself eating filling, nutritious food because one needs to and diet-plans involving self-imposed starvation fly right out the damned window. And good riddance. Good home cooked meals are one of the simpler and more complete pleasures in life. They are also cheap. If you do the prep yourself, you can feed five people a great meal for what it would cost to feed yourself at any place worth calling a restaurant. This brings us to the next benefit…

3. Share. For far too long the social scene in Rvk has been under the monopolistic control of “the bar scene” whereby everyone had to pay through the nose for flat beer to get the chance to socialize and meet new people. Not many of us can afford that anymore. But we can afford to have dinners together. Be they potlucks, or stone-soups (whereby everyone brings an ingredient and the whole party works out what to do with them), communal cooking and eating is fun, and comforting. There is something deeply human and primal about breaking bread in the company of good friends. We should do it more. Just like we should play music together, have video nights, play ball in the park, etc.

Not to mention theme parties. I love theme parties. Especially when the theme includes partial nudity…

There’s another benefit here. When times get hard, people generally figure out that all this imposed competition isn’t actually brining out the best in us, just the opposite in fact. Use this opportunity to create closer ties to your neighbors and friends. Extend your social network. It not only makes everyone feel a bit less alone, a bit less worried, but provides a network for mutual aid. Got a friend that needs a babysitter? You need a hand painting? Bingo, cashless solution to both your problems…

4. Love. What with the friendly socializing, good food, and healthy fitness, its only fair to indulge in one of life’s other pleasures, namely fucking. Now, this might just be my singleness talking, but come on! Its fun, its free, its healthy, and it makes you happy. Screw your way through the Depression! Make with the horizontal tango! Form the two backed beast! Why not?

5. Create. Once upon a time, back before China provided for all our material needs, people used to make useful things for themselves. Some of us still do. This is not just economic, its fun. It fills time otherwise spent worrying about money. Knit, sew, homebrew, carve, weave, paint, compose, potter (?), whatever. Doing something worthwhile with your hands is probably one of the best ways to get out of your own head and achieve some zen.*

6. Read. For free. From the library. I suppose you could watch a DVD from the library too. Or listen to one of their books on CD/mp3 as you bike to work. Or just take some time to have a free cuppa and read the papers. Libraries rock, but they rock out with their metaphorical cocks out when times is hard. Need to know how to homebrew? Go to the library. Need to know how to repair your bike? Ditto. What to learn how to cook new and interesting food? Ditto ad infinatum.

7. Rise up. Take to the streets. Seriously, if the events of recent months haven’t activated you inner activist yet, you’re either sitting on a pile of tax-paradise trust funds, or you’re, frankly, a dolt. I don’t care if you disagree with my politics, just get out and make some fucking noise already. Every disaster bears the seeds of opportunity, if we’re willing to go out and gather ‘em up. Plus, when done right, its fun. Its thrilling, its good cheap fun. Politics shouldn’t be a chore. As soon as it feels like one, its time to inject some fun back into it. Play merry havoc in the streets. I mean, if they arrest you, can you say free room and board?

8. Hope. For better or worse, we will survive this. Its bad, but its not the End of the World, just the End of the World as We Know It. And you bet your ass I feel fine.

* Kreppa Koan:

If a tree falls on an investment banker, does anyone care?

What is the sound of one hand washing the other?

If wealth is created from nothingness, is it worth anything?

Three monkeys sat on a branch as a monster walked by. The first monkey blocked his eyes and said “Globalization is making us rich”. The second monkey plugged his ears and said “Business is booming”. The third monkey covered his mouth so he wouldn’t say anything that might be construed as leftist. They all got eaten.

When the tide ebbs, it is considered a tragedy. But when the tide never ceases to rise, it is considered anything but a flood.

Ten Radically Simple Truths

1. Loans are not income! As blatantly obvious as this is, it needs saying in Icelandic society and in the halls of finance. Loudly, and often. Iceland has been a debt driven economy for far too long. Until very recently (weeks ago, months tops) easily 90% of the Icelanders I know were more or less living off their overdrafts. Taking out a loan in this manner has become so common place that many here don’t even consider paying for something with actual earned income. Hell, even the government can’t seem to grasp this concept, considering that they tax student loans as income…
2. A króna saved is a króna earned. Again, obvious. But oddly subversive nonetheless. We are told that our “duty as consumers” is to prop up the economy with constant spending. Debt is held up as a sign of prosperity, whilst frugality and savings are considered a “poverty mindset”. While 90% of the Icelanders I know have an overdraft, I think less then 5% have a saving account. The only people I know with saving accounts in Iceland are foreigners. Which leads us directly to:
3. Anything you can make, produce, grow, or create yourself is ALWAYS more economical than buying it. ALWAYS. The actual monetary savings involved in growing a garden may be low, but the increase in food quality, the sense of accomplishment, and the feeling of security that goes with the sure knowledge that you can feed yourself are priceless. It’s always more economical to mend your clothes, to fix broken furniture than buying new, to brew your own beer instead of buying from the store. ALWAYS! The same goes for sewing your own clothes, baking your own bread, or, in the extreme, distilling your own fuel. A good book from the library, a dinner party with friends, a movie night with the neighbors, or playing music with likeminded folk are all cheaper and more fulfilling than say, spending the better part of your weekend wandering around shopping center hemorrhaging money just to stave of boredom. This is equally true of nations. If you can produce it domestically, do so! As “old-school” as it sounds, a healthy economy should strive to balance imports to exports, and a truly thriving economy should try to import less than its gross exports. Any country that imports more than it exports is letting its mouth write checks that its ass can’t cash.
4. You cannot have infinite economic growth in a finite world! As soon as an economy grows beyond its actual productive abilities (in real goods and commodities) it becomes a sort of virtual reality, which while entertaining, is nonetheless a game, of the sort played in Vegas, a crapshoot where financiers wager the hard work and labor of the commonality for personal gain. Its bullshit. Everything they say, everything about global trade and interest rates and stock exchanges is bullshit. Its only wealth, only business because they’ve managed to convince us that it matters. It doesn’t.
5. Any man woman or child, society, community or nation only needs five things. They need food, they need shelter, they need clothing (provided they don’t live in the tropics), they need energy, and they need meaningful connections and activities. Anything else is, to use the American vernacular: “gravy”. Now gravy makes any meal a feast, but a gravy heavy diet will kill you quicker than you can say “cardiac arrest”. Iceland has been chugging down gravy for breakfast of late. The current kreppa is the inevitable result of societal arteries clogged with over-consumption.
6. A rising tide only lifts those rich enough to own boats. Everyone else either has to tread water or drown. Far better get everyone to high ground instead of forcing them to live on the beach.
7. You can’t eat gold, you can’t drink silver. Take a bag of each out into the lonely desert. See how long you last.
8. The further the gap between the richest and the poorest in any society, the more unstable that society will be. There will be more crime, more terrorism, more misery, and less unity, community spirit and mutual aid.
9. Sustenance has always been the foundation of any society. Food culture is the last facet to fall away from immigrants, even language falls before. Any society that gives up its ability to feed itself, that does not build its economy on a foundation of sustainable sustenance, is doomed from the start.
10. The meek really will inherit the earth. Because the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and lo how the mighty are fallin’. Usually out of the upper stories of Wall St. “Meek” in this case doesn’t mean “weak, obliging, and obedient”, it means “humble, realistic, stoic, and pragmatic”. Nations and communities that strive for a sustainable, low-growth to zero-growth economy aimed at creating a happy healthy society, instead of simply increasing the numerical amount of currency, are going to survive. Hell, they’re going to thrive. Those societies and nations that keep chasing a purely currency-based vision of human well-being, wherein all the “economically irrelevant” values like health, environment, happiness, equality, etc, are ignored, are fucked. Simple as that.

A Parable About Fish

Once there was a small pond, enclosed by a meadow in the mist of a steamy tropical jungle. Though a massive river ran nearby, the pond itself was tiny, save for rare occasions when the river flooded well above its banks and swamped the pond, but most of the water came from frequent rainfall.

The pond was a thriving little place. There were hundreds of species of insects, twenty or so kinds of fish, a few amphibians, uncounted and uncountable microorganisms, aquatic plants, crustaceans, and the like.

As a whole, it was a very stable little system, and for its scale, a thriving one. The microorganisms were eaten by the smaller fish and insects, while the smaller fish and insects were eaten by the bigger fish and invertebrates. But the biggest fish in the pond (tilapia agriculturalus) ate the plants and the algae, keeping the water free of blooms, and providing, by their fry, waste, and eventual decay the foundation for life in the pond. Smaller fish helped in this process, eating the insects that might harm the plants the big fish needed to survive, stirring up the sediment so the plant seeds could grow and the silt wouldn’t solidify, and eating some of the organisms that would otherwise prey on the big fish’s young.

One day there was a big flood, and a new species of fish (piranhas ravenous financialus) came into the pond. This species did not arrive alone; it brought with its own parasites, the Trading Leech, and the Speculative Worm.

The new fish were single minded and hungry, and quickly set about devouring everything in sight, so that they could grow bigger. Meanwhile their parasites attacked the smaller creatures and large alike, weakening them, hijacking their hosts bodies to feed themselves. Soon the new fish had consumed all the small, medium, and large fish in the pond, along with everything else worth eating. The native fish, already weakened by parasites proved easy prey, and the piranhas grew ever larger, sleeker, and stronger.

Soon though, they discovered there were no more fish to eat, except for other piranha. So the larger piranha started devouring the smaller ones, and the ones made weak by parasites, growing sleeker and stronger, until there pond was full of huge, sleek predators, circling each other, waiting for a chance to devour each other in order to grow ever larger.

Meanwhile, the plants that had been kept in check by the tilapia began to fill up the edges of the pond, while blooms of algae began to form over the surface, blocking out light, trapping heat in the water and leeching poisons into the pond. Bacteria that were kept in check by the insects and little fish, now swallowed by the piranhas, began to infect the few fish left, and any fish that weakened was immediately devoured by its brethren, who continued to grow, spawn, and devour their own young.

Finally the pond began to silt up, the water to stagnate, the plants to fill all the available space, as the last few piranhas circled in an ever smaller pond, proud of how large they’d grown and fiercely they devoured each other.

In the end, one fat bloated fish gasped for life in the stagnant, slimy puddle that remained of the once prosperous pond. Its only hope was that someone would come and bail it out, or pump more liquid assets into the pond.



Hey, I never claimed it was a good parable.