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As far as "revolutions" go, I'd call tossing a few eggs and yogurt and maybe burning a tree or two rather peaceful. There was one night where everything went crazy (when we burned down the Norwegian Christmas tree... sorry about that, Norway) and threw rocks at Alþingi, but other than that, it was mostly just family people banging pots and pans. In Iceland, it's known as the "Búsáhaldabylting" which basically means "kitchen appliance revolution", if that gives you any idea of what it was like. (edit: you already stated that in your post) Edit: To elaborate some more... most of the people who were arrested, or those who were pepper sprayed were nothing more than opportunistic (often young) people taking advantage of the situation. Some of them were self declared "anarchists" or had some kind of "fuck-the-system" attitude. Most of them probably had little stake in what was happening. this was in contrast to most of the peaceful protesters, they were family people protesting how the govt. handled the bank collapse. These people had just lost their life savings, their house, their car and were left with insane debt. I went, and protested for my parent, whose debt have now doubled because of the inflation. I showed my anger, I threw rocks, I screamed, we were all pretty angry. But only a very small group of people were actually violent, and you could literally point out who was there for a valid protest and who was just looking for an excuse to fight the police. -- Addendum: What you may not understand is that loans in Iceland are "insured". That's good... if you're a bank, but if you're a n individual, it's bad... very bad. It basically means that, in addition to interest, your loan principal increases by the amount of inflation. So if the inflation is 5%, voila, your loan is now 5% higher. Now realize that inflation went as high as 18.6%, which means your 4% interest loan just went up 18.6 + 4 = 22.6% in one year. There are associations currently suing the banks and the govt. to try and make this form of loan illegal. |
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21275527