[gislifb]

So a little background, this looks like backlash from a few very controversial decisions the government has made recently and recent corruption allegations.

The biggest one being; Stopping the nations talks with the EU and a few days ago withdrawing* the application without discussing it in the parliament and putting it to a national vote as both parties promised would be done before the elections.

This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics' started when comedians, artists and musicians (among others) started the 'Besti flokkurinn' (Best Party) and won the elections for city council in Reykjavík ?five? years ago.

People saw that new people and new parties could do a better job then those 'professional' politicians and I think the Pirate Party is riding on that wave and every controversial decision and corruption allegations just strengthens people's believes that politics must change. It won't happen in 2 years or 6 years but we might start to see some big changes in 10 years time!

*The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.

[yodsanklai]

> This backlash agains the 'old block' and what is called 'traditional politics'

It's great that Islanders express their dissatisfaction by reporting their votes on "the pirate party" instead of extreme right parties as we see it happening in some European countries.

[gislifb]

Well I'm afraid that we will see a extreme right party in the next elections and I wouldn't be surprised if they got 1 seat in parliament. The progress party made some vague statements which were interpreted (and rightly so) as islamophobic in the last city council elections and that brought them two seats in the council. Before they made those statements they were looking at no seats so there definitely are people that will vote for extreme right ideals.

[PeterisP]

Well, but that result can be considered a good thing - okay, you have a block of voters with opinions that you despise; but now instead of being outside the estabilishment they now have a seat or two to voice their concerns, but everyone knows exactly how small that minority is and the mainstream parties can finally start ignoring that block of voters since they'll vote for that extreme right party anyways.

[funkyy]

The problem is that everything on the right is called extreme right at the moment. Saying "I love my country" makes you some kind of fascist.

Patriotism is seen as some kind of wrong thing as it could be taken offensive by immigrants. Unless you are in Asia - then its OK because it is accepted there that when you are a guest, you live by host rules. But for some reason both Europe and America is afraid to say that.

ANY kind of extreme left or right is wrong, but recently I see right parties going to the left slowly.

Saying "I don't like when people do XXX" or "I am unhappy that government pays for XXX" makes you extremist.

Saying this as an immigrant.

[cryoshon]

Or more of the same, like in the USA.

[ende]

Or extreme left parties, as we disasterously see in Greece.

[phaer]

Could you elaborate on what's "extreme" about SYRIZA? Some of them have their roots in communist parties, but their actual politics today seem very close to the politics of most european social democratic parties 20-30 years ago. They aren't talking about revolution, a dictatorship of the proletarians or anything like this, they just think that Greece should default rather than living on unsustainable credits forever, that the Greek tax code should be changed and that corruption should be reduced. What's "extreme" about that?

[mullen]

SYRIZA is extreme in that it appears not to live in a proper economic reality. They can not keep the promises they made in the election by forcing the EU to loan them money on Greece's terms. Anytime the EU gets sick of demands from Greece, the EU will simply turn off the flow of money to Greece and then Greece will collapse.

[mjn]

That's a reasonable criticism, but I think quite different from ideological extremism. Their problem, at least at the level of the leadership, is more just populism: they are telling Greeks many things that Greeks want to hear, which are mutually inconsistent. If anything the leadership lacks much of a hard ideological conviction, mixing together an eclectic combination of leftish economic sentiment with rightish nationalist sentiment, and a kind of paradoxical pro-EU/pro-euro position fitting uncomfortably with both of those. Hence there is this weird mixture of demanding German war reparations on the one hand (a completely counterproductive negotiating tactic purely for domestic nationalist consumption), trying to renegotiate the debt in a fairly technocratic/moderate way (into GDP-linked bonds) on the 2nd hand, a weirdly brash personal style on the 3rd hand which works badly with #2, a "red line" of no exiting the Euro on the 4th hand which restricts options considerably but is popular in Greece, and a bunch of electoral promises of the usual bread-and-wages kind on the 5th hand, which the combination of positions 1-4 leaves them virtually no room to actually enact. This all works very well for domestic politics, and the Syriza–ANEL coalition, a coalition of a large left-wing populist and a smaller right-wing populist party, is actually considerably more popular now than when they were elected. But it's not clear it is a winning strategy.

The actual left of Syriza has become very critical internally over that line, which they see as incoherent and not in tune with reality: in their view, the line Tsipras/Varoufakis are attempting to take just won't work, because it wants to promise staying in the Euro and then also a bunch of things that are incompatible with staying in the Euro, but won't admit that you need to pick one. Here is one interview with a left-wing Syriza MP, criticizing them along those lines: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/03/lapavitsas-varoufakis-gre.... You can differ over whether this line would be better, but I think it's more grounded in reality; Lapavitsas (the interview subject) imo much more clearly understands the concrete situation and what can and can't be done, and doesn't promise glibly that everything is simultaneously possible.

[rosser]

SYRIZA is extreme in that it appears not to live in a proper economic reality.

As distinct from the dominant political parties in the US ... how, again?

[zo1]

By default do you mean they want to stop paying back interest on loans they already made? As in "get a free slate" to start off again, yes?

#Edit. It's just a question, people. I'm trying to figure out what default means in this whole Greece context.

[mjn]

Basically the sovereign-country version of declaring bankruptcy, yes, except that it's messier because there is no bankruptcy court with jurisdiction to oversee it. You declare that you can't pay some or all of the outstanding debts, the creditors take a loss, your credit is ruined for the near-term future, some of it possibly ends up in various courts.

Alternately, you use the threat of that default to renegotiate the debt on more favorable terms. This also happens with personal bankruptcy, though the situations aren't quite analogous (some creditors will negotiate a more favorable repayment plan with debtors who seem like they might otherwise declare bankruptcy).

Unfortunately for Greece, afaict they have less leverage now than they did in 2010. At the time, much of their debt was held by German and French banks, so there was a mutually assured destruction angle. France/Germany would probably not sit by and let their large banks go down with the ship in the case of a Greek bankruptcy. So they would be forced to bail out the situation one way or the other, either bailing out Greece and thereby indirectly bailing out their banks by giving Greece money to pay them, or letting Greece default and then bailing out their banks directly. Now most of the debt has been moved to institutional holdings (the European Central Bank, IMF, etc.) as part of the bailout, which is less directly threatening. Probably Greece should've bargained harder at the time, but the previous government was a bit spineless.

[Retric]

Defaulting is actually harder.

Right now Grease gets more new loans / year than they pay out in interest payments. So their debt keeps growing until their next default / restructuring. It’s a vicious cycle.

On the other hand if they defaulted and did not need to make interest payments, but could not make new loans their cash flow would be worse off. But, they would have a reasonable path to long term prosperity by simply keeping their books balanced.

Of course there is always the 3rd option of defaulting and then trying to make new loans and default again. But their already getting free money from the EU so there is little point in doing this now.

[bojan]

Letting a country default is quite extreme.

[zhte415]

Iceland is an interesting political community, which I feel is incomparable to any other country.

300,000 people

Everyone knows the other person, or a family member, or a friend, or a friend of a friend. It does not get any deeper than that.

New people and new parties were doing a great job of turning Iceland into a hedge fund, and did a pretty good job of that. A pretty successful hedge fund, until everyone in the words realised it was a pretty bad hedge fund.

Iceland is searching for a new bedrock. Going back to the old bedrock of fishing and... fishing, is unappealing to some. The political landscape is open to options becauseno one has any answers.

But I do see the last decade's rampant financial foolishness having unlocked a desire to cross borders and break out. Lords of fishing and having had a try at finance, why not dominate the finance of fishing across the oceans?

[pyrocat]

Fishing and internet spaceships.

[Beltiras]

It's actually not so strange. The EU is just openly saying what everyone knows is true: This decision is not as formal as the minister of the Exterior would like everyone to believe. The Will of the Alþingi (congressional resolution) is still in force and the majority couldn't assemble votes to have it anulled.

[orng]

I think you are giving way to much credit to "Besti flokkurinn". Right after the financial collapse there was a cry for change in the political landscape in Icelend and an upsurge in new political parties, some of which where able to get some foothold. People blamed the "old block" for running the country to the ground and it kind of culminating in the people voting for a "joke-party" since most other politicians and parties could be regarded as jokes as well. IMO "Besti flokkurinn" was a symptom and not the cause. Recent events and allegations of corruption are giving new wind to the idea of switching things up and creating a new political scene in Iceland and the Pirate Party are indeed enjoying the benefits of that for the time being.

[johnchristopher]

> *The foreign minister wrote a letter to the EU to withdraw the application but the EU don't take it as a withdrawal. It's very strange.

I would like to make a joke about how one doesn't simply escape the EU (see headlines about Greece's potential exit) once touched but we are way past that level of understanding.

[deong]

It seems reasonably clear that the foreign minister had no legal authority to act on behalf of the parliament though. I live in Iceland, if I told the EU to bugger off, I don't expect they'd actually do it.

[netcan]

This is what happens when bullies are suppressed. Societies get soft