Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.06.2007, Qupperneq 3

REYKJAVÍK_GRAPEVINE_ISSUE 07_007_OPINION_0504_RVK_GV_ISSUE 07_007_LETTERS
Dear all, Góðan dagin!
My name is Augustin, I live here in Iceland and some of
you know who I am. I found your e-mails from the cultural
centre website and the purpose of my letter is to speak for
those guests in Iceland who can’t (for a reason or another)
speak for themselves. I know how much your all are busy with
your life but because of the dignity we all share and the values
we all stand for in this new country, take a few minutes to
read and possibly respond to the following:
As part of the ongoing Reykjavik Art Festival, a lot of you
might have been entertained up to some level by the diversified,
colorful and at times breathtaking performances done by our
dear guests from other countries. These entertainers varied
a lot in their cultural demonstrations, backgrounds and in as
much as their financial ability could truly speak out, yet with
the shared and intrepid goal that was to entertain!
On Friday the 18th of May an orchestra called KONONO N.1
was on-stage to do just that. Subsquent to that performance,
an article appears in the Grapevine journal by a certain Helgi
Valur who dare compare one of the dancers as “a twenty year
old porn star in a music video”(reference to the full article is
on the link below).
Aghast by the article I decided to make a phone call to
Grapevine in order that they gracefully redeem this defense-
less man’s reputation by publicly apologizing for the publication
of such abusing words, to no avail.
Forget not that on the 10th of January last year, a man in
Isafjorður took his life due to irresponsible libel (article here
below) which in fact prompted the writer to resign at DV after
massive series of protests.
Comparatively, in the beginning of April this year a famous
commentator on the CBS Corp subsidiary in New York by the
name of Don Imus was shown the way out of his job because
of the equally “cool racial gibe” after advertisers such as
General Motors, Procter & Gamble deserted the radio station
(find links below as well).
These are few among many other cases of irresponsible
reporting being met by responsible reaction!
The point I would like to make here is that Helgi Valur was
wrong to write those words and should apologize immediately
in the following Grapevine Issue. That band that came to Iceland
to entertain Icelanders was invited for that same purpose! A
well deserved farewell to the band should have required and
an appreciation, least of which is to recognize that they do
what they do for a decent living. It only appears that Helgi’s
life -and profession for that matter- isn’t that much laudable
than theirs, because to be called a “porn-star in a video” is
defamatory by all rational thinking, especially when you are
not one. Thus, Helgi should get a lesson now rather than later.
He should also be able to acquaint himself with the happenings
in the media industry in order to learn the basics of what is
right and what is wrong in connection with media reporting.
After you have read this, all I would simply like to ask you to
kindly forward this letter to: publisher@grapevine.is or editor@
grapevine.is and feel free to make any further suggestions as
is deemed seemly.
The Konono group is gone, voiceless but their reputation
unjustly destroyed!!! Perhaps today it was Konono, tomorrow it
could be someone related to you and just because he/she would
then be a foreigner does not justify Helgi’s writing style.
Thank you all,
Augustin
Augustin and others cc’d.
It was with utter disbelief and disgust that I read your incred-
ibly tasteless and ill-advised e-mail.
I cannot even begin to understand the general suspen-
sion of common sense to reach the absurd conclusions you
present as facts. I find it saddening that you choose to waste
not only my time, but also the time of those you have chosen
to send your e-mail to as well with such incredible nonsense.
“…but also the time of the other recipients of this nonsensical
email.”Especially after you called me earlier to threaten me
with legal action.
Helgi Valur, an accomplished musician himself, wrote a
glowing review of the Konono no1 show where he concluded
that the show was a great experience by all standards. The
full clause by Helgi Valur, which you refer to without any
context what so ever, reads: “Mingiedi, the Jimi Hendrix of
the likembé, had been standing still all evening only moving
his thumbs. Now he walked on stage dancing, shaking his
hips like a twenty-year-old porn star in a music video. “What
a cool dude!” I could hear many people utter.”
Now, your statement that Helgi Valur compares Mingedi to
a porn star is an incredible stretch at best. He uses an analogy
to describe a certain movement of the hips by a “cool dude”
who happens to be the “Jimi Hendrix of the likembe.” How
you reach the conclusion that this man’s reputation needs
to be redeemed or that Konono no1’s reputation has been
unjustly destroyed by this clause is not only blatantly ignorant,
it is just plain stupid.
Be that as it may, what sets your letter apart from other
nonsensical letters I receive is the incredible tastelessness to
try to evoke correlation or compare this to the case of Don
Imus or an accused child molester in Ísafjörður who sadly took
his life after his name was leaked to the press. As well as your
suggestion that people can expect to be attacked on the pages
of the Grapevine for being foreigners.
There is absolutely no correlation whatsoever, and the mere
fact that you should bring this up is both incredibly tasteless,
and again, beyond ignorance. The mere attempt to compare
the two and bring the discussion down to that level and to
send out a mass e-mail suggesting any correlation is a much
more serious attempt at destroying a man’s reputation than
anything said in the review by Helgi Valur.
The Grapevine is largely written by foreigners and has
always been supportive of the immigrant community. Your
attempts to suggest that people can expect to be treated
badly by the Grapevine based on their nationality are extremely
offending.
If anything, I believe that you owe both Helgi Valur and me
an apology for your false statements and your merciless attack
on his person by sending out a mass e-mail full of unfounded
accusations.
Your decision to not only write your letter from the relative
safety of not supplying your full name, that is anonymously
but also creating a special e-mail address (grapevine-issue6-
may18-2007@hotmail.com) to send it from is cowardish, and
it suggests that you may not even be confident in your own
claims.
I will be waiting for that apology.
Cappuccino + bagle + yoghurt = 650 kr.
I’m a ridiculous man – all too familiar with
self-contempt and self-mistrust. I envy those
who can sleep, who can ‘dream’ without
imagination… who can have that clarity dis-
tilled upon them by ‘meaning’… who seek
profound moments… where all is still while
life is such a blunder; comfort must be found
in such blindness.
But there is one miserable being, dear
reader, who I loathe even more than myself:
The Politician – and I sometimes wonder how
this mysterious creature can think… and feel.
I will, however, not make a thorough study of
its face. I will only listen, and remain an ever
present critique – and never so epitomizing
arrogance as to criticize people: I leave that
task to the ignorant and truly clever… Power
structures will be the only objects of this petty
inquiry:
Every human society is overrun by diverse
forms of Power, which rule our acts and regu-
late our trains of thought, whether we like it
or not, and Power is a key element in the for-
mation of all social-structures: a painter seeks
power over his paint-brush, a politician seeks
legislative power, the media seeks power over
social debate, a parent seeks power over her
child as a teacher seeks power over his pupil;
and this master-slave dualism will be evident
throughout human history ad infinitum… Wel-
come to the hierarchy.
But, Power ‘itself’ is not a simple concrete
object which can be scrutinized in a dark labo-
ratory until we have determined its essence and
finalized its fundamental nature. Power ‘itself’
is so much more deceitful and Machiavellian
than we can ever imagine; like gravity, it is
invisible, unattainable, and thus, in order to
examine its true essence, we must study the
way it announces itself before our very eyes
– we must wait for it to show its face – like
gravity exposed itself to Newton in the form
of a falling apple.
Power is perfectly reflected in the absence
of a single, innocent, little word: ‘Why?’ When
this childish question is nowhere to be found,
an unconditional obedience to the current
state of affairs is unveiled; an unconditional
obedience which is encapsulated in a well
known example of Primo Levi’s experience in
the notorious Auschwitz concentration-camp:
‘When the thirsty Levi reached for a pile of
snow in the window-sill of his shed, the guard
outside hysterically ordered him to step back;
when the astounded Levi asked Why? – why
should such an act, which contradicts no rules
and is of no apparent damage to anyone, be
rejected? – the guard replied: Hier ist kein
Warum! – here there is no why.’ The complete
absence of ‘Why?’ demonstrates Power par
excellence – whether you need a bearded
metaphysical clause to anchor that or not.
Politics make strange bed-partners, over-
cast by the shadow of the recent Icelandic
governmental transformation – where the so
called ‘left-wing’ Social-Democratic Alliance
and the right-wing Independence Party were
united in a perverted Midasian embrace – I
must ask the question which so many have
asked before me: Was Fukuyama correct when
he wrote The end of History and announced
the death of ideology? Is there space to be
found for a fundamental ideological debate
if the ‘left’ is embedded in the ‘right’? Is a
capitalistic democracy the only imaginable
possibility from the eternal multitude of infinite
possibilities? Are we not men anymore? Have
we lost the naïve talent to ask Why? – the tal-
ent of interpretation which makes us human
– the talent to criticise power-structures? Has
the childish Why? quite simply, been sent to
the gas-chamber?
The grave is open, the bells are ringing,
and ideology is being buried alive... Left- and
right-politics are dead clichés! you say. Well,
let me remind you, that to become too easily
afraid of the cliché, is to become one yourself.
They… (The Cliché), grasp us, not we them;
when the emperor walked proud and naked
in the New Clothes, his subjects could not find
words sublime enough to describe his elegant
attire. It was not until someone finally broke the
object of illusion that the herd started laughing:
Can’t you see that the man is naked! – it was
a child who spoke out. A good argument is
always better than bad peace.
I have no political-compass… all I have is
my all too human heart.

(In this text, there are references to a few
philosophers (most of whom are long-dead),
but it would be barbaric of me to name any
of them; so in the spirit of the late Derrida, I
chose not to fragment my debt of gratitude
– or to quote Montaigne: I quote only others
to quote better myself.)
The Grave-digger
and the Bell-ringer
Text by Magnús Björn Ólafsson
Sour Grapes
Say your piece, voice your opinion, send your letters to letters@grapevine.is.
I remember when being Green, or whatever
it is called nowadays, was generally referred
to as being: an environmentalist, a hippie, or
rather tastefully, a weirdo. It was like being
in a constant state of committing a faux pas.
Around the same time I was rather young
and quite into Captain Planet, the cartoon,
and his band of eco-conscious friends who
would often thwart the dastardly plans of
conglomerate corporations bent on raping
Mother Earth.
Since then, a lot has changed; being Green
has, essentially, become quite hip, at least in
Europe and especially in England. There even
the trashy tabloids that report daily on environ-
mental issues, focusing on carbon footprints,
both the ones we leave and the ones that we
generate with our shopping and how products
arrive into our shopping carts. Hence, it would
seem that England along with other countries
such as Sweden and Germany seem to be
leading the way towards greener lifestyles and
policies.
So that raises the question: Where does
that leave Iceland? Are we looking ahead
or lagging behind with China and suburban
America? The answer might not be as simple
as one would want to believe. On my way
here, right now I am writing this article in lovely
eco-friendly café Kaffi Hljómalind, I counted
the cars that were driving down the street to
this exact spot. I counted 66 cars, despite the
fact that I walked rather briskly. Moreover, at
least twenty vehicles had only one occupant
– and since I have been here there has been
a car driving down the street at ten to fifteen
second intervals. Hundreds and hundreds of
cars creep along slowly for the weekend glance
of Laugavegur and its part-time denizens.
Personally, I do not understand the appeal
of watching other people walk down the street
from a car. Emitting carbons and wasting oil
driving down a street seems to be a popular
leisure here in Iceland, known as “rúntur”,
which is sort of like a ‘50s style teenage leisure
activity in some suburban nightmare with a
Freudian edge. My question is why is this so
popular here? Are these the same people who
throw trash on the street, do not recycle and
scoff cynically with the typical Icelandic stub-
bornness at the term “global warming”?
From my own personal experience, I seem
to have discovered one thing about “certain”
Icelanders – yes here comes the generalization.
Because, as you all know, some people just
can’t handle the truth. Those who scoff at
green thinking seem more inclined to try and
rationalize whaling by saying: they eat all the
fish. There you have Solomonian wisdom at
its finest. The same kind of Icelandic person
never recycles, as he or she sees no point in
it – and considers the epitome of modern
culture to be the cultural wasteland that is
the American mass consumer society. If these
people got to decide Iceland’s future I am sure
that we would become the 51st state with 50
aluminium smelter plants to boot.
On the other hand, being Green has be-
come a fashionable vote baiting commodity
in the agora of Icelandic politics. The main
proponenent of Green values hitherto has been
the political party, the Left Green Movement,
and of course they have put Green politics
on the map here in Iceland – although at a
price. If you cast a vote for Left Green, you are
casting a vote for nanny state politics, which
is a steep price indeed; not to mention their
occasional shelving of Green values for political
gain. Not to be “left” out of the mix are the
Independence Party, priding themselves with a
generous clap on the shoulder: we have seen
An Inconvenient Truth as well. The sad fact that
remains is that being an environmentalist is
still on the fringe of Icelandic society, although
we have made progress, e.g. hydrogen buses,
carbon footprints (kolvidur.is) and numerous
other initiatives.
However, being an environmentalist doesn’t
really mean you have to conform to some kind
of stereotype or adhere to certain politics, it
is more of radical new Social Contract that
depends on the cooperation of everybody
involved. So, here is hoping that more Iceland-
ers ride a bike, use local transport systems or
use cars less, demand less packaging in their
groceries and recycle. The change has to start
with Icelanders that have an irrational phobia
of being Green. Because, of course, one of our
national pastimes is talking about how great
the country looks. Somehow I don’t think Ice-
land is as attractive with Marlboro packages,
coke cans, aluminium plants and various trash
scattered around – not to mention the fact
if the country (and world) finally becomes a
true uninhabitable wasteland because “To be,
or not to be: that is the question.” I just think
the answer needs to be a resounding yes.
To be Green or
not to be Green
Text by Marvin Lee Dupree
Was Fukuyama correct when he wrote The end of
History and announced the death of ideology? Is
there space to be found for a fundamental ideologi-
cal debate if the ‘left’ is embedded in the ‘right’?
Those who scoff at green thinking seem more inclined
to try and rationalize whaling by saying: they eat
all the fish. There you have Solomonian wisdom at
its finest.
Be that as it may, what sets
your letter apart from other
nonsensical letters I receive
is the incredible tastelessness
to try to evoke correlation or
compare this to the case of Don
Imus...
GREEN