Bloody hell.

I knew the name of my website would be apt, but even my lowest hopes for how things would turn out are being shattered. Icelanders apparantly can dig deeper than anyone ever could imagine.

How on earth are you going to shove this down your throat!?! David Oddson as editor in chief of Morgunbladid for crying out loud. What next? Margaret Thatcher at the local school board? Pinochet taking over the police force and Milton Friedman the dean of the University of Iceland?

How about we just turn off the light and slam the door on this godforsaken idiotic country?

A year ago I was whisked onto Silfur Egils because I wrote a comment on Egill Helgason’s website where I lambasted the state of a country that was going to hell in a handbasket and everything always just revolved around David Oddson vs. Jon Asgeir Johannesson. Two bloated egos with no care in the world for anyone but themselves and their tiny little spirits.

Within a week Glitnir had fallen, within a couple of months the government had fallen, David Oddson was out, Jon Asgeir seemed bankrupt and people were talking about a “New Iceland”. Well, you can kiss that dream goodbye everyone.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED AND NOTHING WILL CHANGE!!!

The evening news declared 65% of Icelandic businesses and 50% of Icelandic individuals on the brink of bankruptcy. Inflation is at 16%, unemployment close to 10%. Housing prices are falling, taxes are rising and then there is IceSave. We need foreign currency but our natural resources are sold off for 130 years, paid for by loans from ourselves with no guarantees that they will ever be paid back. We are the only country in the literate world that thinks price-indexation of loans is a wonderful idea. Instead of people who were at the helm at our financial institutions and government in the last years being brought to justice, they are re-elected, re-financed and revived.

ICELAND HAS BEEN AN INDEPENDENT COUNTRY FOR 65 YEARS AND ITS DEMOCRATIC STORY IS ONE OF CORRUPTION, NEPOTISM AND EXTRAORDINARY ECONOMIC MANAGMENT IMPOTENCE.

And the best you can say about the current government is that it is not the previous one.

David Oddson should be history. Yesterday’s bad dream. Just like Jon Asgeir Johannesson and Bjorgolfur Thor are never supposed to be able to own a business or drive a Range Rover in Iceland ever again, David Oddson is not supposed to be writing the script anymore for anything other than his autobiography.

But the people who were made wealthy through their access to Iceland’s fishing resources by the Independence Party, the same people who became filthy, stinking rich by using the fish in the sea as a collateral in the world that David Oddson created, they are resurrecting the corpse. They want a newspaper that is going to take “New Iceland” by its throat and fill it with xenophobia, propaganda and fear. They want David Oddson’s vision of the world where foreigners are to be distrusted, where the law is to be manipulated against his adversaries and where the nation’s wealth is supposed to line the pockets of his friends.

There is no “New Iceland”. Just the same old crap. By replacing Olafur Stephensen with David Oddson, journalistic integrity and sensebility is being shunned.

And believe me, it appears that Icelanders are going to sit back and take it. People are tired from a year of “negative news” and are increasingly attempting to distance themselves from reality. The Citizens’ Movement is dead and the promise brought with the pot and pan revolution is dying. There is just an economic disaster area and soon it is going to be an intellectual disaster zone as well.

Related posts:

1. The Icelandic Discourse in A Nutshell
2. Icelandic Economic Disaster: A Rearview Mirror
3. Congratulations! Tax Queen Emerges Victorious From The Economic Crisis
4. The Blame Game
5. The wonderful world of an economic disaster