Published September 28, 2010

Dear Victor Blaer,

I was surprised by your article in the last edition of this fine publication [Reykjavík Grapevine, issue 14: ‘Foreign Investment Racism and Grapevine’s Leftist Communistic Hippies’]. I laughed at your loaded headline that you fail to back up with any reference to the Grapevine’s coverage of the debate surrounding the private ownership of natural resources and Magma Energy Canada/Sweden. Call me a leftist communistic hippie, to use your own words, but I’m starting to feel more like a conspiracy theorist—something about your article just didn’t sit right.

So I Googled you.

You see, Victor, you probably shouldn’t qualify the superiority of your arguments over those of all the “stupid people [who] continue to make noise” by writing of yourself “I’ve worked as a geophysics researcher and as corporate finance professional focusing on geothermal power, dating back to 2001” in the age of Google if you don’t want people to make some connections between you and the foreign investors to whom we hippies show prejudice. And if you don’t mind the connections splayed across the table then why not just spell them out for the Grapevine’s readers to better understand whose words they are digesting.
Victor, you have “been with Capacent since 2006,” if I may quote the Capacent website directly. Your “area of focus is corporate and quantitative finance.” Moreover, you are a research analyst for the Centre of Systems Biology of the University of Iceland. Your own LinkedIn profile confirms these two positions. Also, I have it under good authority that you were working in a men’s clothing store in 2001 and beyond, but that is neither here nor there. My friend, it is people like you who give birth to leftist communistic hippies. It is people like you who work for Capacent, the very firm in Iceland that advised Magma Energy on the purchase of HS Orka, and then fail to mention this fact when writing a scathing critique of the “stupid” public’s noise over the privatisation of their natural resources and prejudice against foreign investors—investors whose success in this country is your bread and butter— who create the need for scepticism of Icelandic business deals and foreign investors engaged in the country.
I have written in the past [see Magma Energy Lied to Us] on the need for more honesty, openness and transparency in all business dealings surrounding the sale of natural resources and all deals that would see control of Iceland’s resources loaned out to foreign investors or others for lengthy periods of time. If the “stupid” public wasn’t constantly having the facts of the matter hidden from them and if the “leftist communistic hippies” weren’t constantly being lied to by businessmen and politicians with an inflated sense of importance and power (all the while forgetting that is the “stupid people” who elect them and truly hold all the power if ever they cared to exercise it) then perhaps there wouldn’t be this societal divide where resources are concerned.
Victor Blaer, maybe you are a good guy and maybe Ross Beaty and Magma Energy of Canada are the cleanest that a businessman and his corporation can be, but until there is honesty and transparency from the very start, you’ll have to forgive us stupid people for making a little noise as we trudge through the never ending LIES and nepotistic dealings.

To move beyond your first paragraph, I, too, am no fan of the governments’ action or lack thereof in this Magma situation—my own belief is that much hate is being spewed at Magma and Ross Beaty personally when the reality is that Magma and Mr. Beaty would not be in the position of being able to purchase Iceland’s geothermal resources if the government grew a pair and stood up for the best longterm interest of the Icelandic nation rather than allowing private business to prioritise the short-term financial gain of a few—but for you to write “The more involved government gets in industries that are supposed to be run on a competitive basis the higher our taxes get, because they suck at it and need our money to finance their failures,” makes me laugh. Was it not the PRIVATE banks and PRIVATE business that sucked so hard at doing their jobs that they have forced taxpayers to finance their failures?

I respect your right to an opinion and I respect your right to voice it within the larger sphere of communication that is the media, but if you are so sure in your opinion that you will spell it out in 1.783 words then be sure, also, that your personal interest in the success of Magma Energy, and others like it who are advised in Iceland by the company that pays your salary, will raise some eyebrows. Maybe if you and others involved were honest about your affiliations stupid leftist communistic hippies like me would quit making all this noise.

Then again, maybe if we really knew what was going on we’d come to our senses and make even more.

All the best.