February 8, 2009Rebecca Solnit, A New Era of People Power in the Streets?
Of all places, it was Iceland that went bust first. It happened so rapidly -- the island's staggeringly indebted banks collapsed, as did the country's currency, in little more than a single week. If you weren't one of Iceland's many inhabitants who suddenly found themselves desperately impoverished, it seemed like a perfect metaphor for our dystopian planetary moment and, as the economic meltdown continues, it's being used just that way. As other countries -- Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Great Britain -- begin to queue up to experience some version of Iceland's fate, that nation or its stand-in capital, Reykjavik, has gained something like logo status. It's already the Xerox or Swoosh of modern disasters, which means, without thinking twice, the German magazine Der Spiegel could headline a major report on possible European bankruptcies, "Reykjavik on the Thames," and far more startlingly, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown could feel called upon to publicly deny that his country was truly in bankruptcy analogy-land. The first national bankruptcy of the twenty-first century, Iceland is now a laboratory for possible future developments on an increasingly unsettled planet. Rebecca Solnit, who last year traveled with TomDispatch readers all the way from insurgent Chiapas, Mexico to murderous New Orleans, begins her new year at another periphery, the fish-rich but desolate island of Iceland in the distant north Atlantic, which somehow, briefly, made itself into the epicenter of worldwide economic disaster. There, she offers not just horror, but hope -- Solnit's coin of the realm as the author of Hope in the Dark -- for a renewed planet. Tom
The Icelandic Volcano EruptsCan a Hedge-Fund Island Lose Its Shirt and Gain Its Soul?By Rebecca Solnit In December, reports surfaced that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed his Wall Street bailout package by suggesting that, without it, civil unrest in the United States might grow so dangerous that martial law would have to be declared. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned of the same risk of riots, wherever the global economy was hurting. What really worried them wasn't, I suspect, the possibility of a lot of people thronging the streets with demands for social and political change, but that some of those demands might actually be achieved. Take the example of Iceland, the first -- but surely not the last -- country to go bankrupt in the current global crash. While the United States was inaugurating its first African-American president, Icelanders were besieging their parliament. Youtube video of the scene -- drummers pounding out a tribal beat, the flare and boom of teargas canisters, scores of helmeted police behind transparent plastic shields, a bonfire in front of the stone building that resembles a country house more than a seat of government -- was dramatic, particularly the figures silhouetted against a blaze whose hot light flickered on the gray walls during much of the eighteen-hour-long midwinter night. People beat pots and pans in what was dubbed the Saucepan Revolution. Five days later, the government, dominated by the neoliberal Independent Party, collapsed, as many Icelanders had hoped and demanded it would since the country's economy suddenly melted down in October. The interim government, built from a coalition of the Left-Green Party and the Social Democrats, is at least as different from the old one as the Obama administration is from the Bush administration. The latest prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, broke new ground in the midst of the crisis: she is now the world's first out lesbian head of state. In power only until elections on April 25th, this caretaker government takes on the formidable task of stabilizing and steering a country that has the dubious honor of being the first to drop in the current global meltdown. Last week, Sigurdardóttir said that the new government would try to change the constitution to "enshrine national ownership of the country's natural resources" and to "open a new chapter in public participation in shaping the structure of government," a 180-degree turn from the neoliberal policies of Iceland's fallen masters.'
Of all places, it was Iceland that went bust first. It happened so rapidly -- the island's staggeringly indebted banks collapsed, as did the country's currency, in little more than a single week. If you weren't one of Iceland's many inhabitants who suddenly found themselves desperately impoverished, it seemed like a perfect metaphor for our dystopian planetary moment and, as the economic meltdown continues, it's being used just that way. As other countries -- Ireland, Greece, Italy, Spain, Great Britain -- begin to queue up to experience some version of Iceland's fate, that nation or its stand-in capital, Reykjavik, has gained something like logo status. It's already the Xerox or Swoosh of modern disasters, which means, without thinking twice, the German magazine Der Spiegel could headline a major report on possible European bankruptcies, "Reykjavik on the Thames," and far more startlingly, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown could feel called upon to publicly deny that his country was truly in bankruptcy analogy-land. The first national bankruptcy of the twenty-first century, Iceland is now a laboratory for possible future developments on an increasingly unsettled planet. Rebecca Solnit, who last year traveled with TomDispatch readers all the way from insurgent Chiapas, Mexico to murderous New Orleans, begins her new year at another periphery, the fish-rich but desolate island of Iceland in the distant north Atlantic, which somehow, briefly, made itself into the epicenter of worldwide economic disaster. There, she offers not just horror, but hope -- Solnit's coin of the realm as the author of Hope in the Dark -- for a renewed planet. Tom
The Icelandic Volcano EruptsCan a Hedge-Fund Island Lose Its Shirt and Gain Its Soul?By Rebecca Solnit In December, reports surfaced that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pushed his Wall Street bailout package by suggesting that, without it, civil unrest in the United States might grow so dangerous that martial law would have to be declared. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), warned of the same risk of riots, wherever the global economy was hurting. What really worried them wasn't, I suspect, the possibility of a lot of people thronging the streets with demands for social and political change, but that some of those demands might actually be achieved. Take the example of Iceland, the first -- but surely not the last -- country to go bankrupt in the current global crash. While the United States was inaugurating its first African-American president, Icelanders were besieging their parliament. Youtube video of the scene -- drummers pounding out a tribal beat, the flare and boom of teargas canisters, scores of helmeted police behind transparent plastic shields, a bonfire in front of the stone building that resembles a country house more than a seat of government -- was dramatic, particularly the figures silhouetted against a blaze whose hot light flickered on the gray walls during much of the eighteen-hour-long midwinter night. People beat pots and pans in what was dubbed the Saucepan Revolution. Five days later, the government, dominated by the neoliberal Independent Party, collapsed, as many Icelanders had hoped and demanded it would since the country's economy suddenly melted down in October. The interim government, built from a coalition of the Left-Green Party and the Social Democrats, is at least as different from the old one as the Obama administration is from the Bush administration. The latest prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, broke new ground in the midst of the crisis: she is now the world's first out lesbian head of state. In power only until elections on April 25th, this caretaker government takes on the formidable task of stabilizing and steering a country that has the dubious honor of being the first to drop in the current global meltdown. Last week, Sigurdardóttir said that the new government would try to change the constitution to "enshrine national ownership of the country's natural resources" and to "open a new chapter in public participation in shaping the structure of government," a 180-degree turn from the neoliberal policies of Iceland's fallen masters.'
Lees verder: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175031/
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