Photo by Sigtryggur Ari Johannsson, DV

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Then this morning we get this video and a strong protest by Saving Iceland which states that the police is lying and there is no evidence of such violence. On the contrary, the police was the brutal party in the exchange.

But why did the media report from the incident in that way. Perhaps the answer lies here in this video where former Prime Minister Geir Haarde throws a fit when asked difficult questions from reporter G Petur Matthiasson who later apologized to the nation for not having shown this on the news when it happened.

Icelandic journalists are underpaid, overworked and always on deadline so they catch an issue, go and find someone who is an authority on the issue, hand them the microphone and allow them to make statements. If they cannot find a countering statement then they just leave it be.
That is how Geir Haarde, David Oddson and other politicians were able to bully the media for such a long time and that is why arguments countering the “Icelandic economic miracle” were so few and far between.
The reporting from yesterday’s skirmish is yet another shameful example of this. When you look at the video over an over again, you cannot help but wonder whether the woman will press charges for sexual assault.

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A long time ago I had a girlfriend who was born in Teheran
but she moved to Sweden when she was eight years old.

We were together for almost two years during which I learned how to write my name in Persian,
tasted some brilliant cooking
and learned a lot about someone from a different culture
and not least myself.

Her middle name is Neda,
which was also the name of the girl who was shot in the Teheran protests today.
The footage of Neda dying in her father’s arms was on the internet today.

It is heartbreaking.

When I was younger I strived to be culturally tolerant.
I was so at unease with the homogeneous community that I grew up in
that I took every chance of travelling,
going to school abroad
and made a point of getting to know people from all over the world.

I succeeded in making friends from diverse places
but as I’ve grown older I have realised that most of us are not divided in core values.

But since graduation I have found myself to grow less tolerant.

With age, and I am only 33, I am less tolerant of narrow-mindedness, self-servedness and ignorance.
Only last night at my sister’s graduation party I found myself telling a couple of relatives off
because of their stance on abortion.
People wanting to control the lives of others
because of no other reason than their own self-interest
are less and less likely to find a tolerant ear on me.

Without stepping forward and claiming to understand the situation fully,
I get the sense that the Persian people are protesting
against a society that has been designed for a ruling elite.

Without resorting to generalization, most of the Persians I have met in my time have been anything but
the close-minded, elitist, xenophobic, homophobic filth that is running their country.

I might be wrong
but I get the feeling that the world is at a critical point
where globalization and the nation states are having an uneasy time co-existing.

The inter-connectedness and free flow of speech, ideas, products and people

that form the core values of so many of us no matter where we are from,
don’t sit well with ruling elites who have had it their way by promoting ignorance and seperatism.

Persia and Iceland have both endured ruling elites for the past decades,
albeit in Iceland you have been less likely of getting shot.
The consequence can be heard in Independence Party supporters
who defend their loyalty to the elitist rulers that have ruined their society
by only pointing out the faults in the opposition.

The prison walls within the mind are so re-inforced that they would rather choose “their own” rotten leadership over someone elses,
but cannot free themselves to think of alternatives.

The elderly woman who taught a class on religion at the catholic university I attended told us we should not tolerate other religions

(but embrace them)

She was right if she’d replaced the word religions with people.

It has become fashionable in some circles in Iceland to say things
like “my home is a recession-free zone, we cannot talk about it within its walls”,
and “I’ve stopped reading and listening to the news, it is so depressing”.

Are those people faking themselves happy?
Can they not see that no matter where they live on the globe
the whole world is changing around them?
The walls of their belief systems, whether religious, economic or political are crumbling.
And therefore isn’t their whole life a fake?

The point of my ramble is it being a declaration.
I know I have rubbed a lot of people the wrong way in the last few months
and in some cases years.

I will probably have a hard time finding a job in Iceland from now on.
In some cases I might have lost friends.

It is fine by me.

I hereby make a statement that I will speak up against elitist interests
and ignorance at my peril.

Marina Hyde called for Britain to gather the force of its anger against the system last week in the Guardian.
What are you waiting for?

Neda and others in Persia have lost their lives,
Bjorn and others in Iceland have lost their homes,
Stephen and others in the UK have lost their livelyhood
and many around the world have never had the chance of begetting anything other than their own life to loose
because seperatist, xenophobic, ignorant voices are not met with full force.

I am going to meet them.

And I urge you to clear your head and do the same.

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So the guy who destroyed his old house has been attracting some headlines in the last couple of days.

His actions have been met with great sympathy from many directions, some calling him a hero for going through with some serious “up yours” to the system that has screwed its citizens royally over.

Others have critisized him for destroying someone else’s property (mostly right-wingers who consider properties to be above people), and many have pointed out the fact that he lost his house in November last year, which means he must have been going under well before the economic crash.

He was on Kastljos yesterday, calm and calculated like a man who knew all to well that he had gone to extreme lenghts but intentionally so.

Then visir.is reported on a couple who say he screwed them over on a house they ordered through him. They lost 10 million ISK doing business with him. He claims the same he did on TV when asked about why he’d found himself in that quagmire of debt, that once his debtors stopped paying, he was unable to pay his own.

Regardless of this particular man’s situation, it is one many businesses and individuals can sympathise with in Iceland. The rapid accumulation of interest payments and currency loans has sucked them dry of cash and squeezed them to a breaking point. In a normal economy you would say it was the way it was supposed to be, bad companies going under because they’d overextended.

But you need not have been a “bad company” to take the heat in Iceland. Interests are high because of very questionable  macroeconomic decisions by previous governments. But it is SME owners and the public who get to pay for the whole deal.

I don’t recommend anyone to go out and destroy their properties, or those they’ve lost. I would on the other hand like to see an investigation into the lending practises of Frjalsi Investment Bank from 2004-2008. It was supposedly easier to get a foreign currency loan with the bank than to find ice in Antarctica.

Again, while the government is busy bailing out every bank in sight, someone should ask why borrowers are made to shoulder all the damages?

Meanwhile, you get the sense that more and more people have nothing to lose. So brace yourself for some more fun stuff.

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This would be similar to 19 million Americans, adjusted for population.

No wonder the “establishment” and the “mainstream media” are afraid of the internet.

Since the economic crash in Iceland, it has been extremely difficult for the mainstream media and politicians to cover the events of our days without bloggers beating them to it, with faster and more critical reporting.

And Facebook has become a revolutionary tool for a peaceful revolution.

Through the site, groups have been able to advertise their meetings regarding various issues relating to the crash and of course urge people to protest in numbers never before seen in Iceland. Information and opionion has also been shared through Facebook and blogs that otherwise would have been edited or PR’d to death.

Update, while I am writing this the number has grown to 19,130. Yesterday when I signed up it was at 12,151.

Other groups have also struck a nerve, “Helvitis, fokkings fokk” has more than 9,000 members, “No more Geir” from when Geir Haarde was crime minister (oops sorry, prime minister) has more than 7,000 members and “I object to the raising of taxes” has over 4,500 members.

19,144 and rising, someone get Mark Zuckerberg’s face on a T-shirt.

ps: oops, phone rang and in the meantime it is up to 19,181.

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The core of the protest does not revolve around Icelanders wanting to “do one over” the British and Dutch savers who banked with IceSave. Most agree that they should be paid, but the protesters are not keen to have the Icelandic taxpayer foot the bill.

Vilhjalmur Bjarnason, one of the harshest critics of Icelandic businesses in the past few years has asked what happened to all the money? According to Landsbankinn’s reports from June of 2008 it had assets of just under 4,000 billion ISK, customers savings amounting to 1,600 billion. But when the bank collapsed, the assets did not cover the savings. What happened to that money? Vilhjalmur wants Landsbankinn’s board and managers to answer that question, and the bank’s accountants and auditors must be asked some serious questions as well.

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Sturla ran for parliament for the Liberal Party but like others from that party didn’t succeed in winning a seat. He doesn’t give much for the IMF and says it is dragging Iceland further into trouble. He compares Iceland to Argentina which suffered deeply after the IMF intervened in its affairs.

He is now moving to Norway to work, his wife is exploring opportunities in the USA. The family is seeking opportunities abroad. “I have given up”, says Sturla to visir.is. “While the people don’t stand up and protest, nothing can be done. I have been doing this since March last year and nothing happens”

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