Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Volcano dancing


So what is new?

Not much. The Icelandic police have returned the machine guns the Norwegian army gave them. They still maintain that they need machine guns, apparently they think they might need to fight ISIS. Please do not think I made that up. This is true. The public outcry over the weapons ended up with them having to go before a parliament committee and explain themselves and this was the best they could come up with. ISIS attacking Iceland.

Considering that we are an island it would take a pretty cool maneuver to bring the fighters over, much less weapons for the ISIS army. Icelandair might notice something amiss if their planes filed up with jihadi fighters. With violin cases.
 
the spokesman for the Icelandic police (left) and what they want to look like (right)
They named two other incidents as reasoning for arming the police – with machine guns. Columbine and Anders Behring Breivik.  I don’t care if I spelled his name wrong.

Both the Columbine and the Utey incident took place in countries where there are lots of weapons. What the police should have considered before preparing their powerpoint presentation for the parliament was that these weapons did not help at all.
 
Next thing you know the police hold a press conference to show weapons that they have confiscated. A photo of what they displayed is here below:
 
 
No one was very impressed with this, three rifles and lots of knifes. In addition to a collection of what seem to be batteries but are probably ammo for the rifles. The blue gloves are probably there to make the display more cool but don't really do much for the embarrasing scenario. Specially when today there was news of a police raid into a motorcycle club where they confiscated a safe and some toy guns.
 
I don’t think that the Icelandic police would have saved the day at Columbine or at Utey. I am also just as certain that they will not encounter ISIS in Iceland. If they do I am sure they will need more tactical training than a half day’s worth of target practice – which is what they believed enough to allow their members to grab a machine gun and solve/prevent crime.   

They might however run into Beyoncie and Jay-Z that are here to celebrate his birthday and take selfies at the Holuhraun volcano. This has become popular for the jet-set, the most famous incident being gazillionaires from Kazakhstan or the Ukraine that hired a helicopter and had it land close to the eruption so that they could tape themselves dancing in front of the spewing lava. This they put on youtube. Unfortunately for the pilot they included the helicopter in part of the frames and he has now been charged with reckless flying or landing. Transporting people to close vicinity of the eruption is forbidden. Even for dancing.
 
 

I wonder if there was much jet-set dancing at the outskirts of Chernobyl in 1986 …. stupid me. That was before the selfie or youtube.

Yrsa - Wednesday

6 comments:

  1. But... but... if the police had been equipped with machine guns, then they would have been able to shoot down those idiotic gazillionaires in their helicopter when they tried to fly into danger. I mean, they WERE asking for it, yes?

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  2. It's long been believed by a huge section of the UK population that being both a billionaire and an idiot makes you fair game. As does 'walking on the cracks in the pavement' and 'looking at me in a funny way'

    I used to know somebody who was a member of the only routinely armed branch of the police here -- those tasked with guarding this country's nuclear power plants -- the UK Atomic Energy Authority Constabulary. He told me that seventy percent of officers failed their handgun proficiency test ... so they issued them with H&K submachine guns instead. Gotta admire the logic of that ...

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  3. No matter how hard you try you can't convince me that Iceland is anything less than perfect! I know for a fact that the first photo is actually a promo shot for the new Star Wars film--notice the Death Star trooper in black--the second photo reveals the contents of my safe, and number three is clearly ABBA on holiday from "Mama Mia."

    Stop trying to mislead us, Yrsa. Reykjavic rules!

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  4. Yrsa, I sympathize with the billionaires on one point only--everything about Iceland makes me feel like dancing!

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  5. ISIS? Seriously? I just shook my head when I saw the original news story. Why the hell would anyone want machine guns in Iceland. There would be nothing left of a puffin if shot by one.
    My favorite dancing Iceland promo was this one on Vimeo.
    http://vimeo.com/12236680

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  6. I just learned what a selfie is. A perfect word for a narcissistic generation? No, I'm not fair. I am starting to enjoy the photos I see on Facebook.

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