This was an article that had more relevancy two weeks ago. However, translating takes time, as well as keeping the other side of the site… Hopefully you still care about this news.
Iceland. It's already December, and I should be writing about turkeys, hams and other Christmas dinners. But I bring you something more juicy: gossip. I was checking the site, trying to adjust things, catch up with my publications (soon the English section will be fully updated). And I found something very interesting, I had no content in the News section!
I am not going to lie to you, there are some sections that are easier to write than others, since they don’t require much time and effort. To give you an example, I would like to post more pictures about nature, but this days are basically always dark, so the photos I could get would be of many dark mountains. I need to vary the content, so I don’t feel tired when writing and also for those who read this don’t get bored. Anyway ... that's why today I wanted to write about what is happening in Iceland from a journalistic perspective.
We start with a happy note
Iceland ranked fifth in the nationality quality index. This index informs if you “got the nationality lottery,” says Wikipedia when quoting Ayelet Shachar, professor of Law, Political Science and Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. In contrast, Mexico ranked 52nd, while France is in first place.
They also report that 14.1% of the population in Iceland are immigrants
An immigrant is defined not only by those who were not born in Iceland, but neither are our parents nor our grandparents. The most predominant nationality among migrants is Polish, with 38.1% of the population, followed by Lithuanian and the Philippine. I was curious and found that we are 147 Mexicans in Iceland.
Well, now ... let's go to a more somber data
The PISA test data has been published, and the news tells us that Icelandic children have gotten a grade lower than the average among OECD countries in the reading comprehension mark. The average according to their website is 487, Iceland obtained 474, while Mexico obtained 420. Estonia stands out from the rest of the OECD member countries, with a score of 523.
(read.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2018-results-volume-i_5f07c754-en#page5)
Let's go to our main course, the pièce de résistance
One of the most relevant news lately has been the corruption case reported by Wikileaks. More than 30,000 documents were leaked to the website in what is now known as Fishrot Files or Samherji's documents, which were obtained through Jóhannes Stefánsson, former operations director of the Samherji company, an Icelandic fishing company. The documents (ranging from emails to photographs) report payments to officers and politicians in Namibia to gain access to the natural resources of that country. The fishing company maintains operations in other countries, where the case is also being investigated for possible acts of corruption. The investigation is still ongoing followed by media such as RUV and Stundin magazine in collaboration with Al Jazeera being the main sources of information regarding this. Now, if you still do not understand how SCANDALOUS this is, we are talking about one of the most important companies in the country, in the industry that is one of the pillars of its national economy. Meanwhile, Samherji's CEO, Þorsteinn Már Baldvinsson, announced that he would temporarily leave the company until the investigation is completed. On the other hand, the Icelandic government has expressed their concern because, if all of the above is true (I insist, it is barely being investigated by the competent authorities), regarding both, the economy, especially in the fishing sector, as well as the image of Iceland in the world.
What did we learn today?
- The world is upside down, wherever you search, you will find wrongdoings.
- I will try to write back in this section soon since it was quite entertaining.
- The Spanish version of this article has in this part a beautiful quote from Don Quijote, but here I will leave you with two words: Shit happens!