It is highly unlikely that our current government is colluding with the US. Transparency is too high and anti-American sentiment as well. Don't forget, we're in total about half the size of an average American suburb, everyone knows everyone, there's very little you can gain from spying as opposed to asking.
Spying electronically on Icelanders is a useless and expensive pursuit, if you want to know anything you go downtown and sit around while your average Joe or Jane talk about it.
Seriously though, it is amazing how much information can be gleaned from someone (rightly or wrongly) if you just sit down and talk with them for a bit. And even more information about someone's true feeling can be determined from their non-verbal communication, something that electronic surveillance (like email snooping) can do nothing about.
There's a recurring joke in advertisement in Iceland. If you have a fringe product with a well defined demographical following (say, upper-middle-class females, 40-50), you'd reach them better by throwing a small party with drinks on the house and inviting them than with media advertisement.
I don't know about your Iceland, but my Iceland is currently debating putting edge filters up to block "pornogaphy and other questionable content". I understand that the Internet here is just following our outdated laws which levy fines and threaten prison terms to anyone who purchases porn, but any country (even one as enlightened as ours) that contemplates edge router censorship is suspect to me.
But you know as well as I do that he didn't fall over his censorship dreams but Icesave. Another will come. That we even seriously, politically, considered this is scary in and by itself. Pirate Birgitta isn't enough to reassure me.
I would say that is a miscategorization of the election results. It's not so much that he was voted out as the electorate falling for the populism of Framsókn.
Of course a party of 3 out of 63 is not going to make big waves legislatively, but the center-right coalition wouldn't touch this issue. Hell, the previous administration didn't want to touch the issue either. Noise, that's all.
Fair enough. Maybe I am just a little too sensitive to the broad brush and heavy handed approach we seem to touch everything these days with. Frankly, I love my country, but I sometimes wonder if the Facebook "Iceland is so cool" movement isn't making us, internally, a little to complacent.
(note, I am an alcoholic, I'd have to eat my five year chip if I lapsed)
As much as I agree with everything else in this response, the "offering alcohol excludes recovering alcoholics and non-drinkers" is a non-starter. Offering vegan meals or vegetarian meals for those with such disposition is not excluding meat eaters like me, offering meat is not excluding vegans and vegetarians unless some office drone will force those things down the respective person's throat.
We're alcoholics, not children. We live our lives around people who can responsibly and sensibly drink (and some who can't). Adding a few bottles of beer into the workplace on Friday is much, much, less an issue than drinks during festivities, the fact that most weekends start and end in bars, or that "just one sip" is a family mantra.
We're dealing with all those, we can deal with some beer in the office on Fridays. We manage to be part of society, social and professional circles, and have romantic, social, and professional relationships despite not lifting the stein, what makes you think we're that weak when it comes to Fridays at work?
Adria, in all this please take one thing from me. Please do not use the term "trigger" for things that make you angry or uncomfortable or sad. Triggers are powerful psychological events, things that make people near-catatonic, unable to act, have physical and psychological repercussions. A rape survivor, a soldier or police officer or survivor of domestic abuse won't smile, snap a picture, and use their significant power to shame someone if "triggered". Quite in the contrary. Your use of the word sets the stage for people to presume that someone who has a trigger could have "discussed it out" as you could have done. And that is demeaning and dangerous to everyone who really has psychological triggers.
I'd argue that in some cases there's a degree of control that can be developed, but also that this seems to be more the case for sensory triggers than for psychological ones.
Actually, not quite factually true. She did not "report" it. She used her significant media presence to shame someone with vague allusions. The right thing to do would have been for his company to get his side of the story (which we see above) and make a public statement, not to fire him over pitchforks and torches at the gates.
Spying electronically on Icelanders is a useless and expensive pursuit, if you want to know anything you go downtown and sit around while your average Joe or Jane talk about it.