Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Highlights from 2008

This year has been very eventful for Joy B aka Birgitta. Here are a few of the highlights.

I organized with my dear friend Hjörleifur Valsson two memorial events for my late mother Bergþóra Árnadóttir, who died from cancer 8th of March, 2007. The first event was held 15th of February when she would have turned 60. It was a total success - the event sold out and her lifespan was featured on the national TV the night before the event. We got some fantastic musicians to sing and perform her music and the event was something those attending will never forget, because of the quality of the music and the sense of warmth surrounding the entire event. A big thank you to everyone that took part in making this an unforgettable event:) You can find her music at the myspace page i created: http://myspace.com/bergthoraarna

Here is one video with her performing when she was young and was from one of the first TV shows in Iceland.




and here is a memorial piece i put together for my mother shortly after she died:



and finally the gravestone: thanx to Sólsteinar for managing to create my vision just they way I wanted it to be:



More highlight in the next couple of days:) until then Happy New Year: be the change this year:)

A message from Students for a Free Tibet


As 2008 draws to a close, we reaffirm our commitment to work for
Tibet in 2009. Tibetans across Tibet have risked everything to
make their stand and now we must answer their calls for freedom
with hard-hitting political advocacy that holds the Chinese
government's feet to the fire.

This March 10, 2009 will mark 50 years since the 1959 Tibetan
National Uprising, when Tibetans across Tibet rose up against
China's illegal invasion and occupation of their homeland.

As we approach this historic March 10th commemoration, and
following the Chinese government's rejection of the Dalai Lama's
attempts at meaningful dialogue, the time is ripe for political
action.

In 2009, SFT will highlight the Tibetan people's enduring
resistance, celebrate their embrace of nonviolence, and pressure
global leaders and the international community to push for a
resolution to end China's occupation of Tibet once and for all.

For the past five decades, Tibetans have steadfastly rejected
Chinese rule and, against all odds, kept their struggle for
freedom alive.

With your support, we can show the Chinese government, and the
world, that 50 years is too long. The occupation of Tibet must
end. Please donate now: https://secure.ga4.org/01/Support_SFT

In solidarity,


Lhadon, Tendor, Kate, Heather, Sam and everyone at SFT HQ

and Choeying,Tenchoe,Shibayan and Youndrung at SFT India

---

Students for a Free Tibet, India (SFT India) is the India National Network
of Students for a Free Tibet International, which has over 650 chapters in
more than 35 countries.

Founded in the year 2000 from a very humble beginning as a loose network of few
young activists and students based in Dharamshala campaigning for Tibet's
Independence,SFT India has grown as nation-wide network of youth, campaigning for
the Fundamental Rights of the Tibetan people, and we are still growing. It is from
our grassroots network that we gain our strength.

To ensure the effectiveness of our grassroots network.we create Awareness
and sensitize the world on the just cause of Tibet. We believe that young
people can and must take responsibility to change our world for the better.

For more information visit www.sftindia.org, www.studentsforafreetibet.org

Enough!

enough blood
has been spilled
enough hatred
has been bred

enough weapons
have been created
enough children
have died

enough, enough
the womb of the mother
is bleeding
her breasts dry

time
now
for the peoples of this world
to unite

our world on the verge of collapse
into darkness
time to unite
for real changes
for us all
not just the chosen few

time
for us
to choose for us all
for we are all chosen
to lead our world into another reality

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Horror of War

I wish to dedicate this poem to everyone effected by war in one way or another. Deepest sympathies to the people suffering right now from the horror of war. All my problems are but luxury problems compared to your suffering. I wrote this around the time of beginning of the Iraqi war - but it could be about the same subject around the world. We really have to stop all this hate and fear in our world - I wish I knew how. Click on the image to see the poem better if you like to read it.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

The International year of poetry: 2009!


Many have forgotten that once upon a time - poets were in the role of oracles - we still are - we have just forgotten - while reading through old poetry by some of those poets that never forgot their role and talked with the voice of reason - it is easy to spot this element of forth sight and future gazing - as our world will spin into even further turmoil and chaos - what better then find the simple tranquil voice within the worlds? the Voice within that empty space that speaks to us. Let us write - celebrate - and nurture the words of hope and rebellion against all odds.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Happy Brightmas

Next year 2009 will be the international year of Poetry - I have nominated this year to be the year when we need more then ever the voice of reason often found within poetry. Good poetry says more then 1000000 words. Now we need information, information, hope, faster then ever and the poem is the best form and method to deliver messages to humanity: viva la poesia: Lifi ljóðið:)

So dear friend - write down your thoughts in as few words as possible in a verse of hope...

Love - light - and joy
Birgitta

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

IMF, Russia and Iceland

Just got the news: IMF has agreed to lend Iceland money - Why? All the same people are in power - no one is claiming responsibility for allowing the newly privatised banks to grow so huge that they grossed 12 times the entire national budget. They knew about the risks and yet they allowed the IceSave blunder to occur as late as a few months ago.

I am deeply sorry for all of those people around the world who have suffered because of those incompetent politicians, sharks and general idiots in the banks to allow this to happen. If I had known - I would at least have tried to warn people... many of my friends have lost their savings because of the same sort of robbery occurring here.

But why does a "respectable" institution give the same criminals that made the great blunder happen, who got us in this mess in the first place - why does IMF give them the money to continue the gamble with the Icelandic krona? Many experts warn that the experiment they are about to conduct with the krona will fail.

In my eyes, dear world - this is the day we lost the last remands of our democracy and sailed full on, into corporate fascism... things are going to turn bloody if no one resigns - and I had truly hoped it wouldn´t have to come to that. The biggest loan is coming from Russia, with the kindness of the mafia love - the Icelandic nation, of course, does not know of what we need to sacrifice in return. My bet: energy.

Goodbye my fair island - things will never be the same again... hello infinite debt for my children... dept is of course a claim on their work... so thank you Icelandic government for enslaving my children and future generations... thank you IMF for being true to your legacy - at least we will always know you are corrupt evil institute - wonder when they will privatise the water - the only inexpensive thing on the island...

Hello slavery: man i shall have to go and make some sort of revolution or i will go mad...

love and rage
joy b from the island of extreme insanity

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Diary from the island of extremes - the Fall

Right now we are still falling - from being one of the wealthiest nations on earth towards the poorest nations on earth. What does that tell us about money - wealth - poverty?
It tells me that money is a gas. Money is not real in our world after we invested our security in it and lost our sense of sustainably. The western world is falling - we shouldn´t save the banks - we shouldn´t forget that we are the power - not just a handful of people should have the power to choose for us. But we are to blame. We wanted to throw away our liberties, our independence, our responsibilities for the status quo - for being in a limited comfort. We refused to face the responsibilities of insane decisions by our world leaders. We looked the other way as people starved and were shocked and awed in the name of forcing democracy - DemoCrazy on the world. Our view who we didn´t really know was anyway. We are to blame, we have to take responsibility for our lack of action, lack of responsibilities for having allowed us to become comfortable numb.

We are falling and after the fall is a chance for resurrection - for a new earth - old world order - to return to our roots - to return to the simple - we can learn much from the people who still know how to live in harmony with their environment - who have refined communities without a few fat cats stealing away the extra food to make it rot in sheds at distant shores - we should learn now or it might be too late... the earth can not sustain us unless we are willing to change our consumer habits... we really don´t need more stuff - we need to think with our heart - to develop the heart - and to have the courage to rise for a real reform.

You are the voice - don´t allow yourself to believe that you don´t matter - we all matters - we are the change.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Diary from the island of extremes - Anger management

I got my anger out this morning while writing about the current situation in Iceland - well most of it. I got too much to do, depression or not I always have too much to do. Each day has so many offerings of mini miracles.

Right now I have enough material to write a whole new volume of poetry - this time around I will write in my native language. I think the role of poets and other artists is never as important as at times like this. We should be the voice of reason. We should be the oracles as in the past. Need to rebuild bridges between the word and the public.

Here a drawing by the Hand of Joy B the poet:) Lifi ljóðið, innra sem ytra.

As I enter the creative space - all these troubles of the external world have little impact - seeking for some sort of harmony within this turmoil - find the ballast - because in Iceland the metaphors mostly evolve around the oceans and the elements of nature.
I am seeking for the nature within me - I think that might be a good thing to do for people feeling in a free fall of suspense and worry:) go visit the ocean, waterfall, mountain, tree, if you got the financial crunch blues.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Diary from the island of extremes III - Nation in denial

Right now, the Icelandic nation is in denial about the situation. The mentality, "I have enough problems dealing with my own situation" is still going strong. Why should I use my time to think of ways to change the situation, why should I care? Why should I take to the streets to protest, write about the situation and those responsible?

I don't think my fellow islanders realize that we are facing a grave danger of loosing the little independence we had. I don't think people still realize how utterly screwed we are. Our leaders, who by the way are to a large degree responsible for the situation we are in, ask the Icelanders to show them support and give them peace to solve the problem. And what do the islander do? They trust the people who are responsible for all the mess to clean up the mess. No one at the top has lost their jobs. Not even David Oddsson who was a prime minister here for a decade and before that the mayor of the capital city. He is the guy that was given the job of running our national treasury bank and he is the guy who angered Brown and Oh Darling with his big mouth during a live interview at our national TV. He has never been known for watching his mouth.

So why, why but why does the nation just go shopping with their credit cards in the shops still owned by the same guys who made the impossible possible... made this nation go bankrupt? Well first of all, this is a nation of sheep, nation of mindless consumers, nation of spineless wankers, nation of workaholics, nation of self interest people, who really don't care much about anything except the external goods. A nation who has always thought first, how can I exploit this situation to my own interest. Viva la Banana!!!! This is a banana republic - but the sad thing is that the government doesn't even need an army to get people to follow orders, there is no army in Iceland. It is enough to say, if you obey, we might make YOU feel special and give YOU a little extra. Join the party = there is still plenty of greed-booze left.

I am a little concerned, because I love this island, there is still a mass of untouched wilderness left, but not for long if things carry on in the direction the capitalists wants us to go.
We are a nation living in fear, not of war, not of drought, floods. We are a nation living in fear of not having enough stuff. We are victims of our own greed, and through that process we might loose our independence and our wilderness.

Our government and members of parliament are now talking about that our only salvation is to change this island into heavy industry hell, build more smelters, let us use all our cheep energy to fuel aluminum smelters and other nice factories. Our propagandamasters have managed to sell the nation that we are helping the poor underdeveloped countries in the world by having Rio Tinto and Alcoa in Iceland, because they use our green energy not the dirty coals. So in the mind of the nation aluminum factories are green factories and not only that they are now talked about as our saviours ....

I am living in a banana republic and there are no guns to our heads, the greatest threat we face is to become dependant on huge corporations who roam the earth like an overgrown psychopath.

I want to be able to have election, I want people to take some responsibility for enabling the Icelandic banks to grow so over their head that they were rolling money in and out that is 12 times bigger then our national budget. Who allowed this> WE. People denied the obvious, they tried to ruin the reputation of those that dared to warn us. WE the Icelandic people are responsible, and each day that we allow the people responsible to rule our country, our responsibility grows.

This would of course be quite OK if this blunder was only effecting Iceland, but it is effecting huge numbers of people in the UK. I can understand the anger, and all I have to offer is, my little I am so sorry. A little group of people has been protesting, but it seems so useless, where are the masses who have lost their jobs, their savings, where are they? I honestly don't know.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Diary from the island of extremes II

Who will suffer in Iceland: The working class people are and will suffer. The elderly people, the disabled, the poor, the single parents, the children will pay for this incredible blunder. The rich will still remain rich, the politicians will still have a job.

Many working class people who have been saving a little bit every month have lost big chunks of their live savings. No one knows how much yet. We are still a nation living in suspense of what tomorrow might hold. We are a nation living in fear and the fear is so thick that I can almost taste it. It seeps through my sleep and there is basically nothing I can do or say to make it go away right now, because the wave is so colossal.

People are taking their own lives, people are basically in silent despair and in Iceland you don't show how you feel. In Iceland you bottle up your emotions and put on a brave face no matter if your heart is braking.

Icelanders are a strange bunch of people. Perhaps because we are so few, the elements of the hoard are more obvious here then in other places on this planet. I am puzzled that the people who got us in this mess are still plotting and ruling our country. There is absolutely NO tradition for people to step down from power if they made a mess. The worst thing is that people accept it.

We are a nation in fear - but this fear is not knew. It is integrated in the soul of the nation. I was hoping that this modern day catastrophe would have been the wake up call for my nation. However the only thing we seem to be learning from this fall is that we will just work even harder. People were already working so much here that almost all children were kept in daycare 9 hours a day from age 1 and a half. We have world record in the use of Ritalin for our kids, and despite the fear we claim we are the happiest nation in the world. We claim we are the least corrupt, we claim we read the most, we are the most optimistic. There is something totally surreal about living on this island. This is why I have always left but there is a strange pull that always lulls me back.

I always thought it was the Icelandic nature who pulled me back. In the last few years I have realized that Iceland is the perfect place to do social experiments. I have often become bitterly disappointed in my nation. However I have also realized that because there are so few people here it is so easy to get access to the people in power. Thus it is quite easy to apply changes by simply implanting ideas in the right places. So I have come to see myself as the person who plants seeds, I have no interest to play the political game, I have no interest in fame, I like the concept of planting seeds at full moon.

When they will sprout is impossible to say - all I can do is to carry on planting seeds.

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Diary from the island of extremes


The last couple of weeks have been without a doubt the strangest collective times I have experienced during my 40 years on this planet. I am an islander from Iceland. The island now known for going to the extreme of greed and lack of common sense when it comes to consuming. We allowed our newly privatized banks to grow 12 times over our annual budget. That is pretty insane.

Not all Icelanders took part in this insanity - some of us tried to warn the others. Some of us were in the role of ancient oracle Cassandra - we saw the fall but we could do nothing to prevent it. However we have now an unique opportunity to see the fall as the beginning of resurrection.

But right now people are paralyzed with fear of the unknown. People are indeed terrified. Urban legends flood the media because no one really knows what tomorrow will hold. Some people have taken their own lives and some have lost their minds in this short period of time.

People don´t know if they should go and buy as much food as possible - because we have been hearing from the supermarket owners that they can´t get the imports to the island - no one trusts us anymore. No one wants to give us credit or accept our currency.

And so we are reminded that no matter how well educated we are, no matter how much we leaned on the illusion that money was something real, we are still just living on an island. Island that most people don´t even know exist. We live on an island at the end of the world. We are islanders who just recently emerged from turf houses and dirt floors. We are high tech aboriginals of the North.

It feels kind of rough to be kicked by Gordon Brown and so many others in the UK while we are down. But such is the mentality of those that believe in the survival of the fittest to kill the weak one, it comes as no surprise. Brown is drowning in unpopularity and needs to distract the focus from all his failures - what better then attacking a nation of 300.000 who is anyway drowning in their self made misery.

Friday, October 10, 2008

Living at interesting times


The blame game is on. No one wants to claim responsibility for all the grave blunders. The world is in a whirlwind of an economical meltdown. People are starving, loosing their savings, loosing their homes, their work: of course no one wants to be credited for creating such a storm of anger and hopelessness.

Can we who are suffering from these "wrong" choices, take the responsibility, should we? Hell, yes, by all means. I am the marrow of the world, so are you and you and you. We all carry responsibility for allowing the Maya of separation to take root in our minds, for not caring enough, for always looking for ways to look after our own clan, our own nations. The fires burning in other parts of the world of no real concern as long as it is "far" away.

The fires are now burning in pretty much every backyard and this crises should indeed be our wake up call. We HAVE to change the way we place value on external things. There are no rocks to lean on except our internal serenity and grace. Nothing will give us any sense of real security except something we all have within. Sometimes it is hard to find that rock we can on in the rough oceans of life within us, but it is there.

Once I had something external - I lost it - I thought I would loose myself but instead I found myself - I found out how incredible powerful my mind can be, but most importantly I found out how incredible the power of compassion is.

We need to use this time to change our values - if we don´t wake up now, we never will. This is the rupture - it doesn´t come with a big bang but a whimper. The collapse is our core values.
If we carry on the way we have been doing - well then we got no one to blame for the environmental meltdown. Our earth can not sustain us much longer if we carry on the way we have been carrying on - there are too many of us now doing damage with our all consuming consumerism.

Now is not the time for communism, now is not the time for more capitalism, now is not the time for regliousism, now it not the time for egoism - now is the time to forget ism and just be here on this beautiful planet as if it was our last day on it - to honour life - to value life - to respect the gifts we have been given and of course bring about a deep sense of gratitude within us - because despite the odds we got every reason to be optimistic....

I am incredibly thankful for being given a chance to be here and now at these times of transformation - be the change... no one else will do it for you:)

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Living in suspense

I have often wondered why I have since I was a kid been given rather harsh live lessons when it comes to great suspense. First big one was when my fathers fishing boat sank and he and his crew were lost on a raft somewhere at the rough North-Atlantic oceans. My mother sitting next to the phone waiting for any news. I knew in my heart he was OK but the fear in the house was thick and nothing we could do, but wait for news of life or death.

Second great suspense to deal with was when my fathers sister and her boyfriend vanished. They were 20, I was 12. My mother wrote a song to a poem titled, "Are you aware that your friend is dying". Rescue teams looking for them, missing peoples reports on the news. But in vain until a week later we got the news they had been found, at the bottom of the harbor in the village I grew up in. Me and mother had just moved to the city. Then was the time of getting the car out of the harbor and during that operation the body of my aunt fell out of it and again there was great suspense while they were looking for the body in the freezing ocean.

Third was my father again. He vanished on Christmas eve without a trace. Again it was the waiting, the fear, the helplessness. Missing persons reports and rescue squats, cops and frantic search and that terrible suspension. I knew he was dead, I felt a string snap in my heart. Finally when the blizzard eased they found his car parked next to a deadly river. He has walked into it but his body has never been found.

Fourth was my husband. He did a copy cat of my fathers mission of suicide. It was quite clear. But the rescue efforts was on full throttle. The biggest rescue mission in Icelandic history at the time. He left a suicide note and was traced to the west of Iceland. But he was not found until five years later. His bones weathered and smooth.

This morning I realized why I had been given these lessons of living in suspense without going quite mad or loosing my integrated sense of optimism. I realized that I was being prepared for the times we are facing on my nearly bankrupted island. For over a week now, I have been having similar fears as when those dear people got lost. I realized that I can perhaps help others who have never experienced suspense on the level we are facing now.

I realized that the greatest tool I have found through the years is so simple that anyone can use it at times like this and it might lift the burden of the paralysing suspense so many people are facing right now.

So what is this way this tool to deal with fear and suspense? Gratitude! This is how I have used it: First I focus on the sensation of gratitude within my heart. I dig for it through focusing on events and people who have brought me joy and opened my heart. Thus I forge this feeling within my heart of gratitude through a real and tangible feeling.

When I am in this space - I start to think of gratitude towards future events. Thus I loosen the grips of fear by transforming the suspense into gratitude.

Now there is no fearful suspense in my heart, only a deep feeling of "everything will be alright."
And so it will be: alright. No matter what I am going through, if I remember to use this method, it somehow transforms the fear.
If you are in fear about your future, you might be in debt over your head or just lost your work. Try to use this simple method. Try to think of everything you can be grateful for, because no one has nothing to be grateful for. We can be grateful for the simple fact that we are alive. We can be grateful for our children, the sun, the gifts this planet has granted us.

I feel a wave of fear washing over humanity - the values are changing. This time is simply the time of change the ancients have been talking about for ages. In dead it might be the greatest time ever, an opportunity for us to shift from I to us.

This morning I am grateful for the fact that I have enough food on my table, I have wonderful children. My path has crossed with so many people who have touched my heart because I have allowed them to. I am thankful for all the hardship and all the opportunities to grow. I am thankful for every second, every living breathing moment. I choose to focus on this gratitude rather then the many "difficulties" I facing.

Remember there are no failures, no scapegoats, no one to blame. Everything is alright, everything is just the way it should be. Ask for the courage to change the things you can change, the serenity to accept the things you can not change and of course the wisdom to know what is what:)

Sunday, October 05, 2008

the grEAT dePression in ICEland

The eARTh is changing - the tIMes are changing

In Iceland our greatest heroes were just a few days ago the newly rich - all of a sudden it became clear they had basically managed to make the incredible economical wonder into the great economical blunder.

I have to admit that I am a little mad. The Icelandic capitalist ruling the country for 13 years gave the banks to their friends for shockingly low prices when they decided to privatize them a few years back. And now when the banks are going bust - our government decided to bail them out in the dark of night without even allowing or discussing it with the rest of the parliament.

Last Friday we got news from the biggest retail companies who also owned the busted bank that they couldn't get foreign exchange to get their imported goods to the island. And one of the oil companies said the same.

Right now all the top of ruling elite and the tops of the government are making an emergency plan how to get this island out of the greatest depression since we got our interdependency. They seem to be keen to do this without the public knowing too much about their schemes.

So the general public in Iceland is left in the dark - speculations thriving - fear taking root as people go on a massive shopping spree - trying to get rid of this economical hangover with the only solution they know... consume more - make more debt.

I am pissed off because this economical blunder is hurting those that couldn´t afford to take part in the economical wonder - who never even got to taste the breadcrumbs falling of the tables of the newly rich and the Icelandic octopus. I knew this all along - I am one of the people who tried to talk about the insanity of the previous situation - I am one of the people who knew that building a massive hydro plant to sell energy to aluminum giants was not going to give us any economical wonders in the long run.

It is virtually impossible to be self sustainable on the island - try to grow some real veggies in an environment of 8 months of winter...

However trying to see positive outcome from this blunder of all blunders in Icelandic economy - one thing is clear. During times of depression - people are more willing to reevaluate their priorities and values. Let us hope that my nation has the courage to face the blues and change this addiction to worthless stuff.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Now Joy B is Astronomical:)


Got this in the mail a couple of weeks ago from my cyberfriend Andrei:

"I'm glad to announce you that that we have ended
SARM's Intercontinental Astro-ecologic Verse Tournament (a project
which includes you)
http://www.cosmopoetry.ro/astrotournament/

We intend to present it at the International Meteor (Organization)
Conference in Slovakia, September 18-21."

Beautiful verses and photos ... You should go on a cyberjourney within the interpersonal space:)

Saturday, September 06, 2008

Garbage Truck Rule

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport.
We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped
out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed
on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car by just inches!
The driver of the other car whipped his head around and started yelling
at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was
really friendly.
So I asked, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!'
This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, 'The Law of the Garbage
Truck.' He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They
run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of
disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it
and sometimes they'll dump it on you. Don't take it personally. Just
smile , wave, wish them well, and move on. Don't take their garbage and
spread it to other people at work, at home , or on the streets.
The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take
over their day. Life's too short to wake up in the morning with
regrets, so... 'Love the people who treat you right.
Pray for the ones
who don't.' Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent
how you take it!

Friday, September 05, 2008

Bananas

I got this brilliant and very informative article about bananas... Since i live in a sort of a banana republic i found this interesting :)

"Johann Hari: Why bananas are a parable for our times

Thursday, 22 May 2008
Independent.co.uk Web

Below the headlines about rocketing food prices and rocking
governments, there lays a largely unnoticed fact: bananas are dying.
The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has
its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it
turns bananas brick-red and inedible.

There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly.
Soon – in five, 10 or 30 years – the yellow creamy fruit as we know it
will not exist. The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen
a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate
the world – and where they are leading us.

Bananas seem at first like a lush product of nature, but this is a
sweet illusion. In their current form, bananas were quite consciously
created. Until 150 ago, a vast array of bananas grew in the world's
jungles and they were invariably consumed nearby. Some were sweet;
some were sour. They were green or purple or yellow.

A corporation called United Fruit took one particular type – the Gros
Michel – out of the jungle and decided to mass produce it on vast
plantations, shipping it on refrigerated boats across the globe. The
banana was standardised into one friendly model: yellow and creamy and
handy for your lunchbox.

There was an entrepreneurial spark of genius there – but United Fruit
developed a cruel business model to deliver it. As the writer Dan
Koeppel explains in his brilliant history Banana: The Fate of the
Fruit That Changed the World, it worked like this. Find a poor, weak
country. Make sure the government will serve your interests. If it
won't, topple it and replace it with one that will.

Burn down its rainforests and build banana plantations. Make the
locals dependent on you. Crush any flicker of trade unionism. Then,
alas, you may have to watch as the banana fields die from the strange
disease that stalks bananas across the globe. If this happens, dump
tonnes of chemicals on them to see if it makes a difference. If that
doesn't work, move on to the next country. Begin again.

This sounds like hyperbole until you study what actually happened. In
1911, the banana magnate Samuel Zemurray decided to seize the country
of Honduras as a private plantation. He gathered together some
international gangsters like Guy "Machine Gun" Maloney, drummed up a
private army, and invaded, installing an amigo as president.

The term "banana republic" was invented to describe the servile
dictatorships that were created to please the banana companies. In the
early 1950s, the Guatemalan people elected a science teacher named
Jacobo Arbenz, because he promised to redistribute some of the banana
companies' land among the millions of landless peasants.

President Eisenhower and the CIA (headed by a former United Fruit
employee) issued instructions that these "communists" should be
killed, and noted that good methods were "a hammer, axe, wrench, screw
driver, fire poker or kitchen knife". The tyranny they replaced it
with went on to kill more than 200,000 people.

But how does this relate to the disease now scything through the
world's bananas? The evidence suggests even when they peddle something
as innocuous as bananas, corporations are structured to do one thing
only: maximise their shareholders' profits. As part of a highly
regulated mixed economy, that's a good thing, because it helps to
generate wealth or churn out ideas. But if the corporations aren't
subject to tight regulations, they will do anything to maximise
short-term profit. This will lead them to seemingly unhinged behaviour
– like destroying the environment on which they depend.

Not long after Panama Disease first began to kill bananas in the early
20th century, United Fruit's scientists warned the corporation was
making two errors. They were building a gigantic monoculture. If every
banana is from one homogenous species, a disease entering the chain
anywhere on earth will soon spread. The solution? Diversify into a
broad range of banana types.

The company's quarantine standards were also dire. Even the people who
were supposed to prevent infection were trudging into healthy fields
with disease-carrying soil on their boots. But both of these solutions
cost money – and United Front didn't want to pay. They decided to
maximise their profit today, reckoning they would get out of the
banana business if it all went wrong.

So by the 1960s, the Gros Michel that United Fruit had packaged as The
One True Banana was dead. They scrambled to find a replacement that
was immune to the fungus, and eventually stumbled upon the Cavendish.
It was smaller and less creamy and bruised easily, but it would have
to do.

But like in a horror movie sequel, the killer came back. In the 1980s,
the Cavendish too became sick. Now it too is dying, its immunity a
myth. In many parts of Africa, the crop is down 60 percent. There is a
consensus among scientists that the fungus will eventually infect all
Cavendish bananas everywhere. There are bananas we could adopt as
Banana 3.0 – but they are so different to the bananas that we know now
that they feel like a totally different and far less appetising fruit.
The most likely contender is the Goldfinger, which is crunchier and
tangier: it is know as "the acid banana".

Thanks to bad corporate behaviour and physical limits, we seem to be
at a dead end. The only possible glimmer of hope is a genetically
modified banana that can resist Panama Disease. But that is a distant
prospect, and it is resisted by many people: would you like a banana
split made from a banana split with fish genes?

When we hit up against a natural limit like Panama disease, we are
bemused, and then affronted. It seems instinctively bizarre to me that
lush yellow bananas could vanish from the global food supply, because
I have grown up in a culture without any idea of physical limits to
what we can buy and eat.

Is there a parable for our times in this odd milkshake of banana,
blood and fungus? For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were
given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do
what they wanted with it. What happened? They had one good
entrepreneurial idea – and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from
it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up
killing the fruit itself.

But have we learned? Across the world, politicians like George Bush
and David Cameron are telling us the regulation of corporations is "a
menace" to be "rolled back"; they even say we should leave the
planet's climate in their hands. Now that's bananas."

To purchase 'Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World', click here

j.hari@independent.co.uk

Monday, August 11, 2008

Finally the muse of writing

has struck me and I feel the passion to write in my marrow and I can´t wait to wake up to write more. What joy - what a feeling - it has been so long since last time. 4 or 5 years. No wonder I crave for this feeling so it hurts when it is not here. The power of creation.

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Tragic joy day

I am watching the news with one eye open and the other directed internally, trying to understand the conflicts of my world. I am part of this world, its sorrows and joys. Today 40.000 Icelanders joined gay pride in the capital. At the same time more horrors are erupting in our world. Georgia a conflict zone. I don´t know enough about the history but it looks plain to me that Russia is after the oil riches of Georgia. The seeds of all conflicts seem to be rooted in greed. 

I was thinking as I could hear the most popular gay person in Iceland sing that love is universal, how strange it was to be here on the island, where no one has fought wars but of the mind and most of my islanders are still stuck with the slave mentality from the times of being under the rule of Denmark. I tell you this notion that we are in any way like vikings is really false. We are cowards and our island a banana republic disguised with modern gadgets who offer no more happiness then any other external attempts to find such a thing. 

I am happy that people can sing about universal love in the face of the horrors of the world. I want them to carry on singing and being corny and pink. Bring it on - all the rainbows of joy because at least that offers some hope in a rather hopeless situation of the eternal self destructive nature of this human race.

Camus


I like the youthful writings of Albert Camus - how he deals with death is a favorite. For like him I have been preoccupied with the concept of death and for me it is the greatest source of understanding on how to be alive. It is for me the source, the spark that runs through everything I write in one way or another.

I have many books - sometimes I think they are TOO many. But then again, knowing they are waiting there for me to discover or rediscover only brings comfort and joy. Specially when I discover pearls I have long forgotten.

My sole motive for writing is to plant seeds, to inspire and to be brutally honest:) yet my honesty can never excite further then how honest and truthful I can be towards my own self. 

Candle for Tibet video

Friends of Tibet in Iceland staged a candle light vigil for free Tibet in Reykjavik - Iceland
I am ever so happy to have been part of this and help create it - a huge thanx to everyone that lit a candle for Tibet at this moment - we made a massive wave of compassion around the world. Here is a little video I put together from the event on the 7th of August. Enjoy my friends.
Joy 
B

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Candle for Tibet

My heart and thoughts have been with Tibet and its people in the last few months. Everyday I do something to help bring awareness to the grave situation there or how I value their culture who is under threat. 

Many important events are occurring on a world wide scale and it feels like this time we might achieve to build some real pressure. I have joined the global project Candle for Tibet and so have Friends of Tibet in Iceland. I encourage you to participate on a personal or grand scale:)

The World's Greatest Light Protest for Tibet grows even greater
 
All out light for Tibet in the 24 hours preceding the Olympic Games.
 
Sad Smoky Mountains & Skyscrapers join Candle for Tibet campaign. Will ignite red smoke on hundreds of mountain tops, and on several skyscrapers and landmarks in major cities.
 
Candle for Tibet asks people to put the candle in their windows, desks, or anywhere else where other people will see it and hopefully do the same. Many will participate in candle vigils throughout the world.
 

CFT is calling on All Light artists in the world to create light shows for freedom.
 
CFT calls the people of the world to take part by lighting candles, flash lights, lighters, car headlights and any other light source.
 
CFT calls for all those who plan to attend the opening ceremony in Beijing to light a candle, flash light, a lighter or even a cell phone during the ceremony.

Monday, July 07, 2008

Rotten fish cooked in Sulphur


That is the smell me and my older son inhaled yesterday while taking photos in one of them bizarre places on my island of extremes. Got some great photos but I don´t think I will ever go out of the car again in that place:)

I have been rather silent because I got so much on my plate these days... seems like all the rotten things of society are surfacing and when you see something rotten - well i tend to have a need to do something about it.

I have hardly written anything apart from things that are linked to this situation of general rotteness - but there are many beautiful aspect to this - i feel that people are awakening - so i share with you my old poem - Wake up - enjoy until next time:)

Wake up

I have seen signs
the end of the world
as we know it
has begun.

Don't panic
it might look terrifying
on the surface
but inside every human being
a choice
to go under
or flow.

Earth is calling
Sky is calling
God is calling
Creation is calling
wake up, wake up now.

Generate the capacity for love
for compassion in your heart.

Now is the time
to wake up
to the call of growth
and unlimited love
to all that life is.

So wake up, wake up now.

Friday, June 20, 2008

My strange dream

I had a very strange dream last night... i dreamt Dalai Lama, but he was much younger and not wearing monk robes, he was wearing a black shirt and jeans... He had just arrived from a journey...

perhaps it is symbolic because the torch is going into Lhasa tomorrow... but despite his strange and youthful appearance he was very much H.H. Dalai Lama. And he removed all doubts about myself and fear from my heart with a simple and swift gesture of his hand...

i don´t have any time these days to write... but i did read this poem at the national radio in Venezuela a few weeks ago:)

Paradise lost
By Birgitta Jonsdottir

At the roof of the world
frozen bodies
sterilized wombs
scars of torture
dying language
rumbling monasteries
empty sockets on temple walls

But Paradise lives on
in sand mandalas
made from foreign soil
the ancient sounds of chanting
in other worlds
in other words

In Dharamsala
in the sound of the Tibetan culture
determant to survive the genocide

In every corner of the world
Tibetan prayers sound
Tibetan thinking takes root

Om Om Om
Thick deep voices
Colorful prayer flags
and the longing for Phayul
Your spell is peace
and peace and peace again
While we learn the
meaning of compassion
through tolerance of divine nature
Such is the way of your teachings


Your forced exodus from Phayul
a great blessing for humanity
Your voices silenced
by the faceless Chinese regime
Yet you speak through me
not only through my voice
but through my heart

Oh blessed are you who have suffered so much
Yet humanity has failed to
recognize your greatest gift:
Your monks walking among us
planting ancient seeds within the modern mind
our collective salvation
was materialsed

Without it we would have fallen
down down down
into the abyss of self destruction

Oh blessed are you
for you have awakened
the sleeper within

Today your flag flies higher and higher
The Snow Lion rises
not only in Tibet
but in the collective human heart
and I pledge to rise with you

As you return
into the heart of Phayul
we will again have a dome of peace in our world
at its rightful place at the roof of the world

Drifting in a steady stream
blessings towards
your heart - your soul

Om Tibet
free Tibet
Om Tibet
Free Tibet
Om OM om OM
Free Tibet NOW

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Rapture is an internal affair

We are living at interesting times. Seems like all the loose ends are coming together. I don´t think there will be rapture or apocalypse - yet these times are the times of internal rapture, times of internal apocalypse if we remain stuck in matter, stuck in only serving self interests. If we nurture compassion and gratitude we might find that the rapture inside will be quite enjoyable:)

At this moment in time, I believe it is important to simplify our every day life. It is important to walk our talk. Brutal honesty to self is essencial. We have been behaving like parasites on this planet. We forget to honor it - to thank it - to love it. The way we have cut the chord, the threads to everything that is sacred, makes us often feel totally alone in this universe. But it is a big lie. We have never been alone.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

We are all connected

No matter where I go, I meet people who I either know, or who know someone I know. Thus I have come to the simple conclusion that we are all connected.

I had a dream last night of Matisse the great painter and I had a dream whispering "we are all one".
I used to be a lucid dreamer, I used to dream dreams of prophecies when I was a kid and in my early teens. And it freaked me out so I started to shut it down. Mostly with lots of drugs when I was a teenager. I sort of lost the connection with the oracle within, we all have this oracle within. But it is sort of scary to know things you can not explain to others with words, and it is almost impossible to explain the dreamtime to the rational mind. But I am making the sleeper awake within the dream and it is like being back home. Somehow this is a much bigger part of who I am than I had chosen to remember. I stop using drugs a long long time ago, yet those dreams, those connections with the intuitive side is like a trip into the known unknown. It is hard to explain... but I feel it is important to strengthen the sense of oneness - compassion - to let go of the self centred elements and serve my lives purpose. Who is and has been for a long time to make sure our mother this earth can smile from within again...

That is the lesson I learned while participating in an important ritual with the holy Mamos/Mamas from Columbia. And this is my quest. And I will never be fully happy until you all are fully happy... so make my day... make this a happy day for you:)

Sunday, June 08, 2008

There is no tomorrow


Only this moment - this is the first and the last moment I am:)

Been reading interesting books explaining the Mayan calender. It is not all about the day after no future> aka doomsday - everyday can either be our personal hell or heaven - The Mayan calender raises some serious questions about the concept of time and clocks. Who invented the routine most people in the world follow? It is rather inhuman - we all experience time in a different manner, based on our emotions. My happy hour passes a lot quicker than my hour in misery. Most people are waiting for the happy hour - longing for happier times - and non of it is real. 

I refuse to lead my life by someone else's concept of time. I like the concept of time in Venezuela. Clocks are only guidelines - nothing to take all too seriously...

The Mayan calender is human, it is based on using each moment to each premium... based on ancient understanding of how we are a part of the streams and currents in space not only time.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

Dolphins swimming in my window

Today, like so many other days, wind howls on my island of extrems. We are an indoor culture, our homes are nests, our plants thrive indoors not outdoors. 

I am on edge these days, sometimes I am not sure if I belong to this human race. Sometimes I think I am truly a visitor, an alien on this planet, puzzled by the acts of horror and greed this human race is doing every day. Is that all a part of me? Could I if put in the same circumstances commit such deeds? I don´t know, I don´t think so, but honestly, who am I to say. Would I kill, torture, rape others if I was living in the insanity of fear? Perhaps, perhaps. Could I choose to do so now? NO, I would rather die, death is not the source of my fear, the source of my fear is an undercurrent of collective sadness. Sadness based on not being able to do more to help restore sanity on this planet. The people living on this planet are basically insane, they are living in the dream of hell, described so simply and plainly in the Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz. 

I sometimes feel like, when i look around me that I am witnessing a tragicomic soap opera, the drama all around me, usually based on illusion or the result of the fearful running away from fear by creating more fear. How absurd is that. I am working on understanding how not to participate in this, and I admit that sometimes I am just as crazy as the rest of us. I allow fear to run through me, guilt, anger, envy, despite the fact that I know how silly and indeed pathetic  it is, when one knows about these pitfalls.

I want to understand what drives people further into the dream of hell. In all religions the description of hell resembles our own world too much for not noting it. My dream might be a bit crazy, but I dream we all wake up to the fact that it is OK to be happy and that all humans could would live with joy, gratitude and compassion as the element that drives us to act.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Countries without Borders

The countries of the world
are merging
borders falling
cultures crossing

Through the void
of cyberspace
earth is shrinking
sense for distance changing

One race
emerging
Floating through space
virtually real

I feel home
in every corner of the world

Expressions
through symbols
we can all understand

Art is the language
the word still a virus
from outer space

Colours, forms, sounds, shapes
interwoven
in interspace

Cities without borders
Countries without borders
Cultures without borders
Earth without borders
Us without borders

No Star Wars

Please have a look at this petition and spread the word if you like: Here is a video with information about the impact and intention behind the Star Wars plans


Sunday, June 01, 2008

Where the Earth still rumbles


I am raised up where the earth was shaking and rumbling in Iceland. My grandmother just moved to the city from the village what was hit the hardest by the earthquakes and she was eager to go there to see if the house she built with her own hands with my grandfather was still standing. So we went on a journey to Hveragerdi in glorious weather with intentions to explore the past and found something precious on our journey.

My grandmother is one of those unforgettable persons. The story of her life : film material. And through my quest of talking with people i have figured out that everyone is like this: full of surprises and testament of how amazing the human being can be - however most people dare not show this to others. They hide behind fear of rejection - fear of being labelled foolz or even crazy. My grandmother has the Shaman elements in her more than most people i have met. She knows how to talk to birds and plants and she is truly in her element when she is in nature. Yet she is now cut away from the rest of the family in old peoples home and somehow it just doesn´t feel right to me.

Every time she is telling stories from her past - i see this woman that was always ready to take her own path, despite the attacks she was under for doing so. And her own ways were more often than not - paths to help the children in her village - and they indeed still love this person - who trusted them and saw them as they where. But the adults hated her because they didn´t understand her motives. And thus if they could have they would have stoned her. So she has mixed emotions about this village - the birds answering her call when we arrived to the little house she used to spend her last few years in at the old people home in the village, me carrying her rocks to the car and she beaming with joy that someone wants to keep them for her.

We looked inside the windows of the little house and it was empty. The only thing inside was the fridge and it had almost fallen out of its socket in the earthquake. The earth was still rumbling and moving under our feet. I didn´t feel it much. Raised up in this village means that the moving earth is as natural as it is not to see lighting on the island. We went to the house she and granddad built from one room to a big and beautiful house. The people who own it have done wonders for it and it looked from the outside as solid as in my youth. We knocked on the door and out came the owners. One of them a close relative, my grandmother raised his sister for 3 years when they were young. So the house is the hands of someone who really cares for granny:) It was hard to tell that everything had fallen two days earlier from shelves and walls. Broken glass in box in the hallway and photos of it for the insurance company the only tell tale - a few cracks in the walls and the shaking in the voice of the women of the house as she told the tale of how it was to wake up to the violent shake of 6.3 quake - the noise from the earth - like thunders below.

I walked through the house that had so many memories within its shape - the garden - the trees - and it was a beautiful moment to be there with granny. She had not been there since they moved and she was at peace - joy flowing from her eyes.

The day was filled with moments like this and indeed one of these unforgettable days. I am deeply grateful for being alive at times like this.

Friday, May 30, 2008

High tech aboriginals of the North


This tyranny of distance
left us to fend for ourselves
The earth shaking
spewing deadly fumes
fire and ice
forces beyond
taming
Natural disasters
nearly killing the entire nation
century after century

Declared independence
no blood spilled
Our colonists
occupied by Hitler
— they had no choice

Our isolation was our salvation
until the big corporations of the West
smelled our naïveté
Like leeches they smelled virgin blood
Alcan, Bechtel, Impregilo, Alcoa, Century Aluminum, Rio Tinto

First they take our nature
next they take our economy
and then, and then they take our independence

We are the high tech aboriginals of the North
The $ beads they gave us
have lost their short term value
We sacrificed more then was ours to give
and we will pay the price
of forsaking the only thing that shaped us
into who we are
—that gave us all our riches
We have forsaken our very own nature
And she will not spare the glass cities

The beads could have been
seeds of a sustainable future
—it still can
If we learn to listen to voices
of glaciers
of waterfalls
of the hidden people
of the oracle in our heart

We can still give the spoiled beads seeds back
before they turn into parasites
beyond our control

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Joy B is moved by the Earth

Today is almost exactly a year since I posted anything on this blog. I got other blogs and somehow just forgot this wonderful world of my toon self... Today we also had a massive earthquake in Iceland. I live up high and could feel it and things fell from the shelves - yet i live an hours drive from the source of the quake...

The Earth quaked at 6.3 richter close to where my fathers bones are lost and my mothers ashes buried ... and i will be going searching for bones next Saturday - well almost - perhaps the river lost its grips on the shiny white rocks of his bones.

It is a good thing that the houses are sturdy in Iceland - no one got seriously hurt - but people close to the source of the quake are shaken and fearful. No panic though. Just this classic Icelandic calm of fear.