Social & Political

On silencing and the revoking of civil rights

April 26, 2011

Hello everyone! I’ve decided to resurface because I wanted to post this important interview with Elvira Mendez-Pinedo, a lecturer at the University of Iceland and one of the clearest voices out of Iceland these days. Here she’s discussing a book called Indignez Vous! that is making major waves throughout France and elsewhere, about things that [...]

Full article →

Gearing up for a constitutional review

October 28, 2010

Some of you may have noticed that I skated pretty nimbly over the issue of the constitutional reform the other day. If I do say so myself. Of course the matter of reviewing the Icelandic constitution is a highly significant one, and I happen to think that the way we’re going about it here is [...]

Full article →

14.25

October 25, 2010

Today, at 14.25, Icelandic women will be walking out of their workplaces. The reason for that precise timing: with the wage gap factored in, that is when women will have completed a full workday. Some interesting factoids from the Fréttablaðið editorial today: Women are 50% of the human race, but own one percent of the [...]

Full article →

The new blogtitution

October 24, 2010

As some readers will undoubtedly know, Iceland is in the process of reviewing its constitution. A constitutional assembly will be set up next spring, chosen via direct personal election, for which anyone can run. The deadline for submitting candidacies was last week, and a whopping 525 people have decided to run, which amounts to 0.2% [...]

Full article →

Beaty polishes his halo in The Globe and Mail

October 18, 2010

So, Toronto’s Globe and Mail today publishes an interview with Ross Beaty, CEO of Magma Energy, which focuses [among other things] on the controversy surrounding Magma’s acquisition of HS Orka here in Iceland. Now, we know this about Ross Beaty: he is a smooth talker. He’s got this slightly self-depreciating manner that instantly invites rapport. [...]

Full article →

Ingvi Hrafn hangs himself on TV

October 15, 2010

OK, I just have to share this. What we have here is one Ingvi Hrafn Jónsson, supporter of the Independence Party and castigator of all things Eva Joly, denouncing [um, too polite a word] the good lady and the work of the Special Prosecutor’s Office on his private television station, INN. I doubt if such [...]

Full article →

Population trivia from the second quarter

October 15, 2010

Here we have some population stats from the third quarter of this year that some of you may find interesting.* At the end of the third quarter of this year, precisely 318,200 people resided in Iceland. This is 300 more than at the end of the second quarter. There were 160,000 men and 158,200 women. [...]

Full article →

Machinations of the shadow elite

October 14, 2010

A new article in the Huffington Post by economist Robert Wade from the LSE and Sigurbjörg [Silla] Sigurgeirsdóttir from the U of Iceland is a chilling read. It gives a pretty concise account of the machinations of the Independence Party and their cronies in the lead-up to the meltdown, and proves how a handful of [...]

Full article →

On keeping Iceland’s energy resources under Icelandic control

October 13, 2010

As I mentioned in the last post, Eva Joly has joined ranks with those who oppose the sale of Icelandic energy company HS Orka to Magma Energy of Canada. This afternoon, Mme Joly, along with a group of people who oppose the Magma deal, gave a press conference in which the Magma affair was once [...]

Full article →

And now for the sports news

October 11, 2010

So, the Icelandic national under-21 football team [men's!] beat Scotland this evening 2-1, which means Iceland is headed to the u-21 European Championships for the first time ever in the history of the republic. According to EPI there are all these young and talented footballers coming up in Iceland now because around five years ago [...]

Full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →