Fisheries Oligarchy, Hate Speech, Fuel Reserves, Windmills & Counterfeit Cash

Denmark’s Oldest Newspaper Refers To Icelandic Fishing Interests As An “Oligarchy”

This past weekend Berlingske Tidende, Denmark’s oldest newspaper, ran a story it had been working on for months. The topic: the Icelandic fisheries industry. The conclusion: Iceland is an oligarchy. 

Man Fined For Hate Speech in Reykjanesbær

A man in Reykjanesbær was ruled to pay a 100.000 ISK fine after expressing hate speech online. The hate speech in question was a comment the man made to a Vísir news story, the offender said that the “German showers” needed to be revived because of asylum seekers, and that the Greeks knew how to beat them into submission.

Airplane Fuel Reserves in Iceland Good, Says Oil Executive

According to Skeljungur’s CEO Þórður Guðjónsson, fuel reserves in Iceland are in good shape, though the closure of the strait of Hormuz is likely to affect that at some point this spring.

Person Busted For Trying To Pay With An 11.000ISK Bill

An undisclosed person tried to pay for products with an 11.000ISK bill. As no such nomination of the ISK exist, they bill was a forgery. Details on what person was to be found on the bill are yet not in the public. 

Former Foreign Minister To Become Ambassador To The UK

Former minister of foreign affairs, Þórdís Kolbrún Gylfadóttir Reykfjörð, was appointed Iceland’s ambassador to the UK on April 20th. Þórdís has been a MP for the Independence Party since 2016, but her views of foreign policy have as of lately been more in line with the current coalition government, rather than her own political party.

Windmills Show Up In Þorlákshöfn

The first shipment of windmills for electricity production for Iceland’s state owned energy company Landsvirkjun has arrived by ship in the town of Þorlákshöfn. Recently, roads from Þorlákshöfn to the part of the highlands the windmills are destined to, have been strengthened for the move.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Oh go online. The regular graven also has an online store. Funstore journalism. Go shop there and it helps feed our journalists. Just like the ski serving fat pipe bread. Fuck. Hello and welcome to Iceland Round Talk with me, Jon Triste.

SPEAKER_03 0:32

Uh me? Uh Sindri Eldon. Sindri? Yeah, this is the problem with me introducing myself is I don't know how to say my own fucking name.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Sintri.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

Yeah. Okay. But it just sounds weird switching the accents. People are less likely to get it. I went through like five years of introducing myself in America and having to fucking repeat myself.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

So it's just Okay, you'll be Sindri. I'll be Sintri.

SPEAKER_03 0:56

At least when I said Sindri, they got it right the first time. When I said Sintri, they're like, what? Or like Gesundheid. Gesundheid. Yeah. They thought I was having a f seizure or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

Seizure? This is why I'm usually known as JT. J T. Yeah, and you are uh AK.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

I'm not known.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

So yeah, and you are thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

We should be calling the slow. These are important questions. We should be calling the show slow horses.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Uh I mean I don't move at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

You're changing the whole like intro to the show. Like Yeah. Stationary horses. It is by default. We've been doing this for over a year or so.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

But I I want to point out that what is consistent is the clunkiness of the intro.

SPEAKER_03 1:45

I like that you thought that having us introduce ourselves would cause less problems. I am an optimist. Yeah.

unknown 1:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

My name is Alstead. Thank you for tuning in. Mainstone. Mainstone.

SPEAKER_03 1:57

And my name is Sintra. Sintra.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Alright. Sintrani. So we have a few things on the docket now. We have uh something about the oligarchy.

SPEAKER_05 2:11

Sindra.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Something about hate speech. Sindrande.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Sindrand. Jet fuel. Jet fuel. Is that the Australian band jet?

SPEAKER_03 2:21

Oh uh why do you have to keep reminding us they exist?

SPEAKER_02 2:25

That's so mean. And then uh somebody eleven thousand cron bill, that's an interesting thing. Um like a bank note?

SPEAKER_00 2:37

A new Yeah, someone tried to pay with it.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Are you a new UK ambassador uh from Iceland? I'll just pay with it with my handy one hundred and ten dollar note. Winkmills wink and windmills, okay. It seems to be two presidents morphed into one. It's like AI's attempt at making currency. Yeah, it's uh uh Washington Thomas Jefferson. The eyes are looking in two different directions. Uh Adams. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Alright, so uh I wonder where to start. I'm kinda I'm kinda tempted by starting with uh hate speech.

unknown 3:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Did you see the story from?

SPEAKER_03 3:22

Yeah start every day with a little hate speech.

SPEAKER_02 3:26

Yeah, so uh so uh guy did you you you follow the story or what no we were really banking on that. I'm gonna poorly I'm gonna do this poorly because I didn't uh I didn't read the the court case, but apparently a man was fined for hate speech. Ah yeah and in Reiken spice.

SPEAKER_00 3:45

I didn't know it wasn't Reiken spot for Because it happened online.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Did he say Keplovic sucks? Uh I guess we according to Icelandic courts. That can get you in a lot of trouble there, I found. I according to Icelandic courts now, Kepler is Facebook and Facebook is Keplowic.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 4:00

There is no grimmer dystopian measure of how fucked Icelandic society is than this like merging of Facebook with everything. Kaplovic public opinion and Kaplovik, the Detroit of Iceland is now Facebook.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Kaplovik, the Facebook of Iceland.

SPEAKER_03 4:15

It's like three things you should never put in the same evil cauldron together.

SPEAKER_00 4:20

So Kepler, Facebook and Detroit.

SPEAKER_02 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Because I don't want to say it, but uh do you remember, Austa, what the comment was that he made? Yes, I do. Do you want to repeat it? No.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

You do know. You always say you don't know the news. No, I mean we pull, we yank it out of here.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

I didn't know it happened in Kepler. Ah I I mean it was a Facebook comment uh on a VSIF, the news outlet uh like post on Facebook. And he talked about the German showers.

SPEAKER_02 4:54

Yeah, it was in the context of immigration, and he was looking forward to putting all of these people into the German showers, right? Something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Germans, of course, make excellent, you know, I'm under the impression shower tiles and plumbing is all very I'm under the impression Growe is a German company.

SPEAKER_02 5:11

I just bought the shower hat from them.

SPEAKER_03 5:13

I mean, there's like old parts of the cities where the plumbing is, let's face it, deficient.

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Uh people put up with crazy stuff living in Berlin, just like I've never been to Berlin, but I've been to like uh, for instance, Wiesbaden, which is like a bath city that used to be house their plumbing. It's great. I stayed in a hotel that's built uh on top of a like Queer. What's that? A hot spring. A hot spring.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Yeah, yeah. Uh it's it's really nice. People do not do not appreciate the the importance of plumbing. Plumbing is one of those things you never think about unless it's broken.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

I have I I think I'm starting to feel like like I'm 40 now and I'm starting to feel like good plumbing is like a myth. I've never lived anywhere with good plumbing. Like there's always something fucked. It's making me really I was I was I was selling this to my uncle who's like a carpenter. It's just like I've I've all my life I've been forced to live in like really old houses and old apartments. Yeah. And I've just for once, I want to like live in like a brand new apartment my life. Yeah, okay. And uh, you know, like a brand new everything, you know, just like and my uncle was saying, like, actually those places have their share of problems too. Yeah. Brand new place where they haven't ironed everything out. So I'm starting to think there's just like nowhere with good plumbing. No, no apartment has ever had good plumbing.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

The the best thing you can buy is all smoke and mirrors. It's like a five to six year old, a five, six, seven-year-old apartment.

SPEAKER_03 6:41

Yeah, where they've ironed out all the kinks, but it's hasn't started to go funny yet. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, I don't know. That's my professional opinion as a journalist.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

Yeah, cool. I dig it. No, I was a renter. What is the word? Yeah, tenant. Yeah, the tenant.

SPEAKER_00 6:58

A person who rents an apartment. Yeah, I I So I like rent it from my bank.

SPEAKER_03 7:02

I don't we all.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

That's what we all do. Uh no, it was uh so I I I noticed that in the court case the uh the explanation for his comment that this hate speaker gave to the judge was considered.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Uh that's my stereo brand. Was not considered uh I didn't notice until I brought it home. The hate speaker. You turn it up.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Yeah, I thought it's a bose.

SPEAKER_03 7:31

Yeah. It's an easy mistake to make, a common mistake. What is it called?

SPEAKER_02 7:35

Like a Google Nest? Google Nest? Like a Gooks. No, like Google Nest is like a brand's speakers. Oh, okay. But I don't think Grok has their own speakers yet.

SPEAKER_03 7:47

That would those would be Nazi speakers. Yes, of course. Yeah. Um the true hate. Giant swastikas over the speaker cones. It's like, oh no, actually, our engineer our AI engineers determine that this is the most efficient shape a speaker cone can have. Oh, I see. There's nothing to do with our fascist ideology. No, it's true. I didn't even say fascist. That was you. You use that word, not me.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

But the Grocks speaker is as has this hidden feature, like where every time you don't s or you're not looking at it, it will uh it will project a swastika on the wall, kind of like the bat logo.

SPEAKER_03 8:24

Yeah, you're just like it's it's like filtering into your subconsciousness. Like you turn around, it's like the ghosts in Mario. They sort of just like Yeah, exactly. Did I really see that?

SPEAKER_02 8:34

Yeah, so the guy the guy who was charged for this um and and uh for this hate speech thing tried to make uh to the judge, he tried to tell him that he was actually just talking about how great the showers in Germany were.

SPEAKER_03 8:48

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

He just started the rant about plumbing.

SPEAKER_03 8:51

It's funny because like you know, you might think from this the this podcast that like this is like a particularly chaotic, rambling podcast where we just say the first shit that comes into our mouth, but I find it's actually a pretty decent microcosm of how our society works. Yeah. Like, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

Yeah, there you go. I mean it was actually about it was actually about plumbing, sir. Yeah. I was I was just talking about the great plumbing of Germany.

SPEAKER_03 9:16

I just really want everyone to have a nice long shower. Yeah, but I mean, I don't know. Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

If that guy is ever I just I just like the like I there are a few things I really like. I want the trains to run on time. I want the plumbing to be good. There's no hate speech in that. I can see where this is going. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

I was hoping some of the immigrants were immigrating from Germany, bringing their plumbing buffets.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

They have so much to teach us.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Oh what?

SPEAKER_02 9:49

I'm crying. I've gotta stop now because uh I'm gonna the next thing I'm gonna mention is where all the plumbers in Iceland are from, and that's just not gonna help.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

A Nazi party? No. No. No, never mind that.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

Please don't.

SPEAKER_02 10:04

I'm not going there.

SPEAKER_00 10:05

Uh so uh another country that okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

Another criminal story uh is that somebody in Santiaganes, the uh the the very commercial of Reiki Rick, who somehow is its own municipality. Um there tried to pay for something with an 11,000 kronor bill. Unfortunately, the news story did not feature a picture of that bill because I would be really interested in seeing what the artistic rendition of an eleven thousand kroner bill would be. But just Harrachnietasmir was on the bill. The highest denomination of a bill we have in Iceland is 10,000 kronor. It features an image of I've never seen one in real life.

SPEAKER_03 10:54

Jonas. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, and the the you know the 10,000 kroner bill.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

The uh the professionals I What do you think? Jonas Egg? No, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

I don't know. I've never seen one.

unknown 11:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Jonasan. Jonasan? Yeah. That would be that would have been something.

SPEAKER_03 11:11

He's got a good face for money. He's got like a money.

SPEAKER_02 11:13

Also, like, you know, money trying to be tell, you know, money with the word sen and it is good. Yeah. Um it's good. Some of the nice placid vibe. So we should maybe go through this. This is now a quiz show. What is who's on the 5,000 kroner bill?

SPEAKER_03 11:28

Uh the the uh the woman. Brintis is her name?

SPEAKER_02 11:32

No. It's Rachman Brinkel. Yeah, yeah. Uh and then who's on the 1,000 krona bill? Well, that's Brinelur. Yeah. Yeah, the bishop. Switch. Yeah. 2,000 kroner bill. Oh, it's Collux. No, it's no, no, no, it's Karaval. It's Kerval. Yeah. The painter?

SPEAKER_03 11:50

Yeah, yeah. I missed I missed the 2,000 krona bill. That's like you pay, like, that's like a lot of shit is between 1,000 and 2,000. Like, those were handy.

SPEAKER_02 11:58

Yeah, but they're still I think they still exist, but you'd never see them, obviously. They're kind of like the two dollar bill.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Yeah, but it's like the money that breaks the rule of like first you you you multiply by five and then double, five and then double. Money that breaks that rule, it never catches on. You have to follow this pattern.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

The Thomas Jefferson$2 bill never caught on.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

It exists. Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it does. Uh, you know, the more I look into like American money, and maybe this is just like every real country with a functioning economy, semi-functioning economy. Uh, yeah, whatever. They have like all the monies have been made. Seemingly just for collectors. They're just like driving up, you know, value. They they do these like mint coins and stuff, and you know, there's like a four-dollar commemorative plate to mark the I don't know, the Waco siege or something.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

$2,000. No,$2,000 the Icelandic, but it's it's the nicest one. Yeah, it's a beautiful one.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

It looks super swank. It's a really handy denomination. It's support, you know, you're supporting the it's because of Carnaval's face, because you know it's like you're supporting the arts kind of. It's like uh paying paying homage to our artists and not just clergy and uh politicians.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Well, there's a poet and well, yeah, politicians. Yeah, that's mostly what we were dealing in. But the poet's a clergyman, right? Yeah, but who so who was on the 500 kroner? Yeah, on the 100 kroner.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

A fish. Yeah. No, the the the bills were just not I can barely even remember what it looks like. It was green. It was green, I remember, yeah. It was Aldney Magnuson. But what I mean. Yeah, we could we that's this is like a common problem with money, uh, right? They use up all the the big heroes on the low denomination currency, and then they have to really scrape the bottom of the barrel for the the bigger they get, you know. What?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

And then there used to be a 50 kroner bill and a ten kroner bill.

SPEAKER_03 13:59

Yeah, I saw a 10 once.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Yeah, I think that was wild.

SPEAKER_00 14:02

I found it somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 14:04

Yeah. I I remember the 50 vaguely, but don't not the 10. But um I for the life of me cannot remember who which people could it be possible I remember the 50 as well?

SPEAKER_03 14:13

When did they phase that out? It's kinda copper colored. Is it early 90s that they phase it out? I think no, it's the 80s. Nah, then I wouldn't I won't. I'm just make I'm just making it up. I'm just remembering a hundred because I remember the hundred pronouna bills. I remember those coins first showed up. It's like, oh my god. It's like pirate money from the future.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Yeah, I'm I'm assuming we'll eventually see now the uh Are you guys texting each other?

SPEAKER_03 14:37

No, no.

SPEAKER_04 14:37

No, I'm looking at the bills. Um like okay, yeah. I got you.

SPEAKER_03 14:41

So I I translated a really fascinating uh article about the the woman who designed uh our money. It was a woman. Did you know that? Yeah, like I knew.

SPEAKER_02 14:50

I mean, I read it.

SPEAKER_03 14:51

The pioneer woman design one of the pioneer woman designers in Iceland. She should she should be on money.

SPEAKER_02 14:56

I I like I actually I'm I really like the design of the money.

SPEAKER_03 15:01

Yeah. I saw I walked past the the the money factory the other day and I noticed they have um sort of patterns from the bills, like in this sort of mural leading into the door.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Money sculptory.

SPEAKER_03 15:13

Yeah, where they they you know pump out all the money, pump it right into our pockets. The big pump up on the you know the guy. There's like a statue of a guy with a giant pump. Like a money pump. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy who invented money. And he's just like money changer. Yeah. He's just like The monetary man. Yeah, it's like a giant like a suction tube.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

I'm gonna I'm gonna use this opportunity to point out that there's a numismatic museum. Money museum. Excuse me, what? Numismatic. Numismatic? I think that's what it's called.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

You just wanted to like show people that you know that word. Uh justifiably so.

SPEAKER_03 15:56

What a cool word. Uh numismatic.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

I love it. The last time I knew it was in the central bank, which is next to uh the guy with the uh money pump. The pumper, yeah. Uh called Ingolarnosun. Pump man. Also the first guy to live here, uh apparently. Um what else was he gonna do? Just stand there pumping all day. It is it's it's kind of a fun visit because well, we've gone through a few different types of money over the past a hundred years or so. Yeah. And you know, the some of them are fascinating and and fun to look at and I miss our Uyrr, like with all the shrimp on them.

SPEAKER_03 16:29

Oh, yeah, I missed it. More money should have shrimp on it. Oh yeah, the the denominations of of Kroner. Yeah, yeah, which is now like functionally gone, right? It's functionally gone, yeah. It's not uh it exists digitally, right? When they have to compute like fractions of a krona.

SPEAKER_00 16:42

Yeah, something like when you pike ass.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

Yeah. Like it's our like our cents are now basically so worthless. So I'm explaining to our foreign viewers, our pennies, if you will, that we don't even make them anymore.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Do you think we have foreign viewers?

SPEAKER_03 16:55

I would be surprised if we had any Icelandic viewers, but yeah, we have thank God for that. They're either foreign viewers or very convincing AI bots. Either way, I'm gonna pretend. Uh yes. I feel like I answered for a lot of that when I was younger writing for grapevine. Okay. And I have no interest in engaging with these people. But you know, if they want to, like come at me, bro. Yeah, come at here I am.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Yeah, unlike in the old days, people are Icelanders are now not forced to read the grapevine. No. No, no, no, no. It's now optional. Yeah. Yeah. Things are going downhill.

SPEAKER_03 17:35

Back in the I like being able to bask in the sort of semi-anonymity of what a wide field we're in, like three white guys with a podcast. Like no one's gonna really like people no one's gonna we can say whatever we want. No one's gonna ever ever hear of it.

SPEAKER_02 17:49

No, that's so that's the old that's the image that kind of pops into my head when you say like three guys doing a podcast, which is the good old uh Mitchell and Whip skate skate, which is like, are we the baddies?

SPEAKER_03 17:59

Are we the baddies? Are we the problem? Are we contributing to the downfall of our society? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 18:06

So I don't even tell my wife I do this podcast. She thinks you're having an affair or something.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

I think in a sense, my girlfriend. I think that's actually less bad, if you think about it. To her. Yeah. Are you like are you pouring like resources into the pro sphere, manosphere, or are you having an affair? Out of the two?

SPEAKER_03 18:26

I don't know, man. We're we're fighting the good fight here, aren't we? Like someone's gotta stake one more claim for the left in this stupid, stupid scene. It's great. This is great because unlike the music scene, you never have to interact with other podcasters if you have a podcast. You're just in your pod doing your cast.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Oh my god, that's a good that's a very good point. I'm just realizing if I had to like do that, we had to go out every Friday and do the show somewhere. Yeah. With like four other podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

Or like we had to practice our podcast in a big building full of like other podcasters all who are rehearsing their podcasts. It's just like, oh god, can you imagine the sacks of shit we would have to do with it?

SPEAKER_00 19:07

We should do a live show.

SPEAKER_03 19:09

Um that'd be fun. Just take it, take it, take the call. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, we always want guests. I mean, this is a live show, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Well, uh, yeah, well, like uh This is a dead show at some point. I mean, I guess we can just put up like four seats over there and then we're good. Yeah. Yeah. So okay, uh well, no news yet on how the uh 11,000 croner bill might look, but uh do you have any like ideas what people you think would fit on that bill? Um uh Priet. Priet would be good on it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:45

Yeah, Leve's face is on fucking everything now, so we might as well slap her on a bill. Yeah. That is some merch campaign that's like that's like next level stuff.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Yeah, Louve Energy Drink, Louve Sex to Sex Nordus.

SPEAKER_03 20:01

And her she's like a Fortnite skin, like a Leve video game avatar, basically. That's the dream though. Yeah, no, I mean it's just wild that this is like this is what pop stardom is now.

SPEAKER_02 20:15

Alright, I mean, I'm glad I'm not the pop star, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

Um so we're gonna go into She said something about like she did some kind of release and uh said something about respecting the heritage of Miles Davis or something like that. And whatever. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

So uh it was also in the news that um the paths for windmills that will be set up in the Icelandic Highlands had shown up in Thorlox Ub, which is uh actually kind of a historically interesting place to to land them. But yeah, you love Thorlocks Ub. Yeah, but uh it was also the main hard part for the bishopric of Skaulvalt in the mid middle ages, but that's a total different thing. Uh which actually so you know about this that the Yes I do the the road from Follox all the way up into the highlands lead to Rome.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

Rome. Somewhere somewhere with decent wine. Perhaps it was a restaurant. Could have been a restaurant. What's the name of that restaurant? Italy. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Okay, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 21:26

Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna take this seriously. Making massive like changes to the roads to be able to like ship these gigantic propeller blades, yeah. So I guess they've now started driving them up there. Uh and driving everyone crazy. And driving everyone crazy at the same time. And these are supposed to be set up, I guess, near Segalta in the Highlands. Which uh is a thing, I guess. This is uh some sort of um experiment by our uh state owned power company to squeeze more uh.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

I mean they're in the kilowatt business. They're in the kilowatt business, so they're trying to like, I guess, uh that is. I'm not surprised that they chose like this to focus on. Not just like producing electricity.

SPEAKER_02 22:18

No, I guess I'm always waiting for them to propose like a nuclear plant up in the Highlands.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

Yeah, I mean that Rome. How stupid would you feel showing up to work every day in like a nuclear plant in the highlands and it's like insanely windy like every day? You're just like and just thinking about like the the amount of power that could be generated by the wind that's fucking eating you alive.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

It's nothing compared to like nuclear power though.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

Well, yeah, I mean that that makes it doubly stupid, you see. Like somebody who's like has to work at something as you know, as stigmatized as a nuclear power plant, you know, with all the things that we've got to put them on like uh you know, show quildi.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

Yeah, uh fish farming out at sea, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:12

It's like turn that into nuclear power plants.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

Underwater nuclear power plants?

SPEAKER_00 23:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:17

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

Can't see them? Out of sight, out of mind.

SPEAKER_03 23:20

Yeah. It's problem solved. Is this what the Golan Diane party is campaigning on?

SPEAKER_00 23:25

Uh I really don't know what they're exactly. They're campaigning on lighting.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

No, they're they're campaigning on like uh uh pocket nuclear power plants that will also function as a daylight alarm clock.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Go on that.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Anyway, uh so yeah, I mean it it I what the reason why I found it interesting that uh Thorlock's up was being used for this is because that's like where they would uh the ship the bishopric of Skowold back in the day. Like they once in the 16th to 17th century built like a gigantic wooden cathedral that then of course, given the wind, kind of blew up in a storm. Really? Yeah. But uh the way they did it was they also landed in Thorloksharp, which is in the south of Iceland.

SPEAKER_00 24:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:11

And then they wa waited for the rivers to freeze and then they dragged a whole lot on ice all the way up to the bishopric. Which I think is something that the uh road authorities should have considered as a less of a disruptive measure. Just wait for a good good old freeze and then go for it.

SPEAKER_03 24:29

But I mean isn't you know, isn't it a sign of uh climate change that we can't really rely on something like that anymore?

SPEAKER_02 24:36

Well, according to very new research about the AMOC, the Gulf Stream, uh there's now fifty percent chance that it will end by Is AMOG the same as the Gulf Stream? It's it's a combination of all of them, I think. Yeah, okay. There's uh 50% that that will be completely disrupted by the end of this century.

SPEAKER_03 24:52

They're trying to rebrand it as AMOC so it's no longer associated with billionaires. Did you just break the chair?

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Yeah, I've gained the a few pounds. What just happened there? I broke the chair.

unknown 25:03

Shit.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Okay, can we edit this up?

SPEAKER_02 25:10

So anyway, okay. We haven't gotten to any of the things. No, okay, just let's let's let's let's get going here. You guys are too too chill. Uh too chill? Yeah, you're too chill.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

Yeah, I have to do that.

SPEAKER_02 25:21

So airplane re fuel reserves have been declared by the Iceland Earth as being fine. I don't know what that means. Do you have any idea? Because I'm I I know all of our jet fuel comes from the Middle East, whereas our diesel fuel comes from Norway. Are we too worried about getting land locked here like it's the 13th century again?

SPEAKER_00 25:40

I mean yes. Yep. Uh okay. Just checking. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 25:44

I was wondering about this. Like, where does our oil come from? Norway.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

Norway, but the jet fuel comes from the Middle East, and no jet fuel is coming in from the Middle East, so that's gonna be a problem.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

I haven't checked in a while, but it used to be for like years uh that you can go to Annet or Orchan or all these different brands of gas stations. They all like sell you oil that comes in uh in the same ship from Start Oil in Norway. Yes. It's like the illusion of choice.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

The illusion of competition. Yeah, I mean that's that's Iceland in a nutshell really. We've rant ranted about a rant ranted ranted about this a few times. You rented this? We rented this. It's a rented skit. So uh no, the the fact that some people still hang on to the illusion politically that there is competition and there needs to be competition in Iceland, there's never been real competition here. No.

SPEAKER_03 26:40

It's funny to hear all these people mock socialism as by saying, like, oh, you wouldn't have any choice in like, you know, pro in a socialist economy, you wouldn't have any choice of products. It's just like we don't have any fucking choice.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

No, no, it's the same thing with just different colored branding.

SPEAKER_03 26:55

Yeah, and it's so offensive to have like to me, like the worst of it is like like you know how the the stores still have different prices on shit. Like the one situated right next to me is more expensive than the one that's a little bit further away. And why? It's all owned by the same shitheads. Why can't they at least do us the dignity of making everything cost the same?

SPEAKER_02 27:15

It kind of does. That's the uh one of the things with oil, doesn't it? It's always kind of similar. Yeah. But anyway, enough about uh jet fuel and the possibility of us being stuck in Iceland and nobody getting in for a while. Well, we would have Norwegian diesel. We would just uh go back to boats? Yeah, ships. I guess so. I mean, also I guess we can just hit shake with the diesel boat when it goes back to normal.

SPEAKER_03 27:40

We picture all the fucking like Icelandic people just like packed onto like a big like cargo ship to Tenerife, just like everyone in their holiday gear, just like it's gonna be a great two months. Oh imagine like I would love that.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Imagine the vibes on that ship.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

Yeah, see now we're talking. This is like instant cruise ship. It's gonna be uh it's gonna be like a water world scene.

SPEAKER_02 28:04

Yeah. Um anyway. Uh so we're gonna get to the the the thing now, which is the main thing. You were in the news this weekend after in Denmark. In Denmark, you were in Beliniskitine. Yeah. The oldest daily, the oldest newspaper in Denmark. Founded in 1749, I think. Yeah. So I found it when Iceland was in.

SPEAKER_00 28:27

Before speaking to them, I said, How old are you? They told me, and then I said, Okay.

SPEAKER_02 28:32

Yeah, you too you passed the 250 year mark that you have.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

That's why I never speak to more people.

SPEAKER_02 28:39

I mean, I would I would like to point out that spice in 1749 there was there is almost nothing in Iceland that dates back to 1749. Either like neither institutional nor just physical in any sense.

SPEAKER_03 28:51

Yeah, the even the the rocks are you know aren't that old. Yeah, basically. They've been spit out by volcanoes in the last couple hundred years.

SPEAKER_02 28:59

Yeah, so uh it's interesting that our former company Well, we have tax avoidance. Oh yeah, that actually predates uh Satellite, I guess. Yeah. We started tax avoiding before arriving here. That was the Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:11

But uh the Danish love to mock us for our tax avoiding. That was that the their whole pretext of the article was just like if only they'd paid their taxes, they wouldn't be living in dystopian oligarchs.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Yeah, because the Danes tell themselves Pyramid scheme. They weren't actually squeezing us at all. We were just pretending to be poor and badly fat to avoid taxes during their whole period.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Anyway, so the afternoon.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Yeah. The cunning Icelanders. So um what was in the Belinskine was the uh was a so uh it was a story about the fisheries in Iceland, the big fisheries companies in Iceland. No, my hand like really fits in the chair.

SPEAKER_05 29:59

Did you like elbow like a hole into the chair?

unknown 30:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 30:03

Cool. Oh, it I'm not gonna tell you tell you where these chairs are from, but we got them for free, and I think they're from Yusk. So they're actually literally made out of cartport paper, I think.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

So thanks for not telling us they're from Yusk.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Um it's very so very discret discreet of you. It was about the athletic fisheries and the big fishery magnet companies and their political power and their influence.

SPEAKER_00 30:30

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 30:31

And it was uh contacted through a series of interviews with anything ranging from the Minister of Finance here to some members of Parliament to some anonymous people who didn't want to go on the record, to former and current professors or ministers and whatnot. And the uh story is in a sense uh I and I they use it I guess for the headline, but uh to be completely accurate, that's because the word is thrown around in uh in the comments of those they interview that Iceland is basically an oligarchy. That these uh companies hold so much power that they are they can act with total impunity. And the article uh which wasn't that long, um put this into the context. That's the ultimate insult, isn't it? I mean, it wasn't that long.

SPEAKER_03 31:31

I mean that's not an insult. That's actually kind of like you know, it was it was like one foreign reporter took a good look at Iceland and was like, yep, this is like this sucks.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

It did it did put into context two things that are kind of important the the the declining ratings of Iceland's press freedom uh compared to the other Scandinavian countries. Yeah. Yeah. And the increased rankings in uh corruption here compared to the Scandinavian countries. Yeah, yeah. Like globally we rank pretty high, but in a Scandinavian context we kind of suck. Um unless you like love corruption, which I'm sure you do.

SPEAKER_03 32:08

Well, I mean it's I am Gordon Gecko.

SPEAKER_02 32:11

So I don't hate it.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

No, you're interviewed in this piece. Yeah, I don't I don't think I'm one of the 20 like people saying it's an oligarchy.

SPEAKER_02 32:23

No, I don't think you are, actually. You you you like uh other people to to use words like that, don't you? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 32:31

No, but it's a it's an interesting like do you so you do you just not agree with it or or do you are you for some reason you don't want to say it because you I mean obviously you wouldn't say that.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

I I mean I wouldn't say that.

SPEAKER_03 32:44

Uh because then you don't get taken seriously by people you're trying to interview and stuff like that. You don't want to say that.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

Yeah, also I'm just like I'm not sure that we are an oligarchy.

SPEAKER_03 32:54

No, yeah, because how do you define that? Like what what is the technical definition thereof?

SPEAKER_00 32:58

But the it's like i the response to this is amazing because we have like these right-wing politicians who have been historically like tied with the fishing industry, and then we have some like very limited uh amount of people from the fishing industry commenting about this, and their comments are like, oh, we follow the letter of the law. Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:21

Yeah, you fucking write the laws. It's super easy to do that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

It's like the thing that is discussed in the article, it's like how tight the maturity, like the ruling political class historically has been. It's been with the fisheries. Yeah, they're not even how the rules are written for them. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 33:41

They're not even addressing the Will you follow the law, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:44

Yeah, it's like I asked some AI machine to analyze the contents of this article, and uh all I have to say is something that dodges the point completely.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

No, but it's uh I mean it's And then the AI wrote a song about it.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Would you like to hear the song? Too many boots on the dance floor. I don't know. Yeah. So no no, I mean I we wrote about a specific element of well, a specific company um in the fisheries Samhere last spring.

SPEAKER_00 34:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Where I actually realized uh that I had in in my editorial I'd called them potential oligarchs. Uh but it's interesting to see somebody say it somewhere else because it kind of stings a lot more when somebody's pointing out I think you have a problem here.

SPEAKER_03 34:39

Well stings. I think it fucking rules that someone's pointing it out. Like I don't I'm not sure how much good it will do, but there's always something that shows up and says like the thing.

SPEAKER_00 34:51

Iceland sucks and you remember like Christmasen before the banking collapse?

SPEAKER_05 35:01

Everything good here is because Icel uh Denmark invented everything good here. Yeah, Denmark, this is Danish.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

Yeah, he he started out saying that, and then he said, like, your banking industry is fucked. Yeah, I mean they're right. People are like, no, it's not. And then few months later he was right.

SPEAKER_02 35:20

Yeah, a few months later everything fell to pieces. And now we have this Dane who's telling us we don't have to.

SPEAKER_03 35:25

I I do think this can really help in sort of a a roundabout way, because the more I think the more foreigners uh start to see, you know, what an incestuous circle jerk of corruption Iceland is, you know, the more pressure will mount from outside to do better. And outside pressure is the only thing that will ever alter these people's ways.

SPEAKER_00 35:49

But the thing is, like, we we cannot have a debate about this in Iceland because I don't think we agree on what corruption is. Yeah. I mean, no one is going in like underground parking garages with envelopes of money. I mean, that doesn't really happen here.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

No, it's they're really fucking close to it though.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

I mean, like, it's kind of it's really like it's sometimes really weird because sometimes politicians do things that if you look ask somebody from a different country and they will look at the thing and they'll go, like, he must have gotten like a thick envelope of cash. No. And like, nope, actually, they just do this for free and it makes no sense.

SPEAKER_03 36:27

Yeah, it's the the great thing about like live like sh like repeatedly shitting where you live, just like shitting and shitting and shitting so that everything gradually fills up with shit, is that everybody knows who's responsible for all the shit that's gathering there, right? So, you know, if you do a lot of favors for somebody, like they will remember and know this is it's so tiny here.

SPEAKER_02 36:50

That's kind of the thing, and then you kind of have more sort of explicit revolving tour situations where you're like you do somebody like a you scratch, I scratch your back, you scratch mine kind of a thing.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Yeah, like corporate someday you will scratch mine, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Which is different to the song lyrics I was thinking about.

SPEAKER_05 37:08

Yeah, it but it's and it's and it's such a AI version.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

It's such a pathetic toady way of doing corruption as well, because like if these these guys do a lot of favours for people and if they get their just reward, great. And if they don't, they just keep sucking up to them.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

But uh like speaking of because we were we we did this story on Samhiri last spring, which is just to kind of take together a whole story arc about the scandals and their like impunity to put it mildly. Yeah, yeah. And you are like you're in this story, obviously, Arsted. Yeah. Because the story of Samhari, and I'm just gonna be excited about that. Yeah, I'm gonna recount the story briefly. In 2019, I said and another guy we're not gonna mention on this podcast. No, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_00 37:56

And Stefan Trinkson. Who? Uh our producer. Oh, yeah, okay. Stefan Trinkson. Trinkson. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:04

Wild.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Stefan, son of a son of a boy.

SPEAKER_03 38:07

Son of a boy. Uh broke a story that It's not often that an Icelandic name can surprise two Icelandic guys.

SPEAKER_02 38:14

That Samhere had been bribing officials and whatnot in Namibia for years.

SPEAKER_00 38:20

And Angola, the Angolan fisheries minister is now like going to court.

SPEAKER_02 38:26

Oh, nice. And Angola, okay. For to get their hands on fishing quotas that they thought were too expensive on the normal market, so they bribed their way into getting it differently. Which, funny enough, is kind of expected behavior of them because that's how they learned to do it in Iceland, I would say. Anyway, this is what they did. This story broke, and what followed has been it was like what four or five years, five years of investigation that are over now, but have not yielded anything that we know of. Yeah. No uh nobody's been like the the state prosecutor hasn't prosecuted anybody yet. And during those past five years, uh Sam had just started speaking of impunity, to basically hire people to to work on almost exclusively kind of going after and or stalking and annoying or discrediting people who had written about the scandal, including yourself, which led to you, amongst other things, being dragged into a case when you were you were under investigation by the police commissioner in the north for about a year and a half. In kind of like uh let's call it uh an absurdist thing, uh or a Kafka-esque nightmare where they were trying to tell you like get you to t tell them who your uh sources were. Yeah, they were like we know your source, and so just confirm it. And you were trying to tell them that you would be breaking the law by saying that. Yeah. And somebody probably told them to, I guess your lawyer, that they can have that rule lifted by taking you in front of a judge, yeah. But they never did that this because they obviously never had a case. So they just kept doing this for a year and a half to I guess try to cool your feet along with your uh colleagues uh who were in in that on that bench with you. Yeah. Uh this is just like uh this is just part of the whole thing, but there's like apart from like the the the company like Sandere, specifically and the other big fish use companies, they have um there are like tax evasion uh things that are being investigated because they've been running subsidiaries all over the world to not pay taxes on stuff they export.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

They actually concluded that one. And they had to like repay taxes and they did pay back. Yeah, nice. Good to know.

SPEAKER_03 41:07

Yeah, I feel like something's being chipped away at here.

SPEAKER_02 41:10

And then uh there is like the immense power with with the that comes with wealth, and they've been really busy trying to like turn their wealth into power, and they've also been buying up all sorts of like we've you've talked about this on the show. Yeah. The fishery companies have been buying up all sorts of other unrelated businesses in Iceland because they have so much money they don't know what to do with it. And as you like to point out, you can't really buy a you know a coffee bag of coffee or a pack of cigarettes without actually or a mayonnaise, or a can of mayonnaise, actually. Yeah. Can of mayonnaise.

SPEAKER_03 41:40

It's sort of like a more slippery.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

Oh, cool.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

But goodness mayon is in Hafnerfitter, it's definitely owned by the same people who run Morcumplay, the only daily paper in Iceland, which brings us back to like the meeting environment.

SPEAKER_03 41:54

But isn't Air Finzon is owned by the fucking Warb. Yeah, which is like the mob up north, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:01

Uh the Oh, you're talking about Kofi Light. Yeah. Yeah. The mob. I mean yeah. They're also in the fisheries.

SPEAKER_03 42:07

So you but you have no choice of mayonnaise in this country because they're both owned by Oh, you can have helmets. Oh, but yeah, like foreign mayonnaise isn't corrupt as fuck. I mean, I guess it's the bit it brings up an interesting point. Like this this is this corruption is all like it seems pretty harmless, you know, when compared to shit that's going on elsewhere. But it is it is interesting to me how this sort of letter in the law strong arm shit, it it only the only way to stop it is like a functioning free press. And you know, everybody knows that, so you erode that, you or you just let it die.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Yeah, it isn't really functioning today.

SPEAKER_03 42:47

Uh no, no, no. I mean You could sort of say though that you know victories were won against Sam Hedi. Maybe like they were rained through. You just said a court case was included where they had payback taxes. And that was all because like their shit was exposed. In the six years to foreigners as well. That's the really important part. Like foreigners were made aware of like the corruption seeping out of Iceland.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

In the six years that since that original story broke in 2019, almost like six and a half years now. Yeah. I mean uh the other daily paper in Iceland went bust.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:27

Uh there is no media outlet that isn't either losing money or cutting cost and staff over the past six years.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Uh I think the number of people working in the sector have also been in decline. So I mean in the long term uh these these companies are winning if it's about media freedom. That's going straight to hell. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:00

Like big in a scene.

SPEAKER_03 44:04

Which is now the the media conglomerate that ate every other media anything.

SPEAKER_02 44:08

Yeah, the physics the phishing industry It's like what telecommunications, uh internet, TV, are now getting bigger in the other big media company in Iceland, which uh runs the uh television station Scene and VC Dot S the website.

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

And oddly enough, speaking about this, how this actually works in their favor, there was a new media bill that was introduced uh for review by people like me who are in the media. And oh, you were in the media. And in that particular bill, which is like government subsidies for the media, they're still like running the same scheme they did, like the which is originally from 2019, the same year the story broke, which has done very little to actually help anybody, but they give like they fund you back a specific percentage of your costs for labor. Um and uh it like I said, it hasn't worked, it hasn't stopped the decline. It's also it was also introduced when most of the decline had already taken place in 2019. And to add insult to injury, the two the the the new element of the bill is that too they that the bill suggests from this current ruling government that they will pour proportionally more money into the two biggest media companies, one of them owned by the fisheries, the other one slowly sort of getting more influenced. So and and these are not even people who are like pro, like these are people who've been trying to tax um the fisheries. Yeah. But it kind of just tells you what kind of a landscape we're living in in a sense. That this is just the default setting.

SPEAKER_03 45:54

Do you think it's all sort of because it seems to me like it's all sort of congealing into us becoming this sort of cold, slimy, you know, bad smelling version of the Middle East, where there's like one export that has value, like one thing that we can potentially sell to other people, and the people controlling it just control absolutely everything, you know, because of the you know, because of the nature of of how like how one how how asymmetrical our output is. Well and what is what is that other than an oligarchy? Like we were talking earlier about like the definition of an oligarchy.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

I mean I think I think we can argue that like one of the things that have changed during the 40 years since the quota system was put up put in place is that um we're not as heavily reliant on the fisheries as we used to be. There are like there are other sectors that are pretty strong now. But we still have this problem of kind of very fluctuating pick few industries.

SPEAKER_03 47:01

I mean, you know, the the the fucking sheikhs and emirs and whatever of the Middle East have invested in other things so they can sort of you know diversify and you know cle clean up their PR and seem like it's about other things like fucking you know airlines or soccer or whatever the fuck. But in the end it just boils down to to fucking who owns the oil. Right. Um I think we have to I think we have to end this now.

SPEAKER_02 47:30

It's a shame. I was uh You were like our our promise to get yeah Yeah. I mean the whole like the money pumper. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Yeah. I I sort of peeked there. I kind of I kind of ran out of juice after that one. He should have pumped more money into me. Pump some juice? Yeah. If any Icelandic heroes want to pump some money into me, just hit me up, man.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Or the Raycoy Crap fan. Support.crep and s. Yeah. Anyway, thanks for uh listening and watching. Yes. Um this is amazing. This has been fun. Uh see you next week. We'll try to be on time, but you never know.

SPEAKER_03 48:07

Bye bye. I know, we know. Go on there.

SPEAKER_06 48:11

Go on.

SPEAKER_02 48:12

Go on time. The Rick of Great Man also has a store. It funds our journalism, it sells all sorts of stuff, including specially curated gift boxes. Just like the uh famous Icelandic hot dog box. Go shop there now and fund our journalism.