A Number of Small Actions in Reykjavík

Dur­ing the last days, a num­ber of small actions have tak­en place in Reykavík; ban­ner drop in the cen­ter of Reyk­javík, graf­fi­ti and stinky liq­uid at Jarðb­o­ranir and a night­time shut-down of Útlendin­gastof­nun.

This morn­ing, July 30th, a huge ban­ner was dropped in the cen­ter of Reyk­javík, bring­ing atten­tion to the con­nec­tion and co-oper­a­tion between the alu­mini­um indus­try and the weapon indus­try. The ban­ner said: “30% of all alu­mini­um goes to the weapon indus­try – Stop the alu­mini­um indus­try!” From the begin­ning of our cam­paign we have not only focused on the destruc­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact of alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion and big dams, but also the social and humane impacts. Alcoa in Ice­land has steadi­ly refused the con­nec­tion, but with only a lit­tle look at the web­site of n.b. Alcoa Defense, one sees with own eyes that Alcoa does not only pro­duce alu­mini­um for weapon man­u­fac­tur­ing, but proud­ly takes a huge part in the design of mil­i­tary equip­ment of all types.

Sev­er­al arti­cles have been writ­ten about the issue as well as many press releas­es fol­low­ing Sav­ing Iceland’s actions:
Lygar og Útúrsnúningar (in Ice­landic only)
Agya, What Do You Mean With Devel­op­ment?
Sav­ing Ice­land Block­ades Rio Tinto-Alcan’s Smelter in Haf­nar­fjörður
Sav­ing Ice­land Dis­rupts Inter­na­tion­al Alu­mini­um Con­fer­ence in Ger­many

Drill your own heads!
Yes­ter­day night Sav­ing Ice­land received an anony­mous let­ter titled Sol­i­dar­i­ty Action, which though did not include any pho­tos:

“The work­ers of Jarðb­o­ranir received a dis­gust­ing sur­prise this after­noon. The company’s fan­cy entrance was cov­ered in rot­ten and smelly liq­uid. Rot­ten like their hearts, smelly like the mon­ey they earn by drilling the Earth. The mes­sage we wrote to the work­ers was: DRILL YOUR OWN HEADS — BASTARDS!”

Jarðb­o­ranir (Earth Drilling ) owns the drills that are used to search for geot­her­mal ener­gy. Jarðb­o­ranir have recent­ly signed con­tracts with sev­er­al ener­gy com­pa­nies; Landsvirkjun, Reyk­javík Ener­gy and Þeistareykir ehf. about drilling for ener­gy, which is meant to run already con­struct­ing and upcom­ing alu­mini­um smelters.

The lack of pub­lic knowl­edge about test drilling is one of the main rea­sons for the myth about geot­her­mal ener­gy being ‘green’ and sus­tain­able. For each test drill, a piece of land in the size of a foot­ball field has to evened out, e.g. for road con­struc­tion. The test drilling’s effi­cien­cy is very lim­it­ed; only very few of the holes end up pro­vid­ing ener­gy. By then the area is already destroyed and the destruc­tion won’t be tak­en back.

Com­pa­nies like Jarðb­o­ranir have not been very vis­i­ble in the cri­tique and resis­tance against the destruc­tion of Iceland’s wilder­ness, but is as impor­tant as the alu­mini­um and ener­gy com­pa­nies. With­out every sin­gle part of the chain, the chain does not work.

Útlendin­gastof­nun

Poke in a bel­ly!
And a lit­tle off-top­ic but still con­cern­ing the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment…

On Wednes­day morn­ing, Útlendin­gastof­nun (The Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion) was tar­get­ed by no-bor­der activists. The anar­chist web­site Afta­ka pub­lished this press release:

“This morn­ing, when the work­ers of The Direc­torate of Immi­gra­tion showed up to work, they faced closed and locked doors. There­fore they could not start their every­day job: To look for ways how to deport refugees to depor­ta­tion camps in Greece or to the open death in their own home coun­tries.

After long-last­ing and inef­fec­tive protests, arti­cle writ­ing and meet­ings with the author­i­ties, a small group to the issues in its own hands, glued the locks of the office’s doors, threw red paint on the walls and wrote S.S. on win­dows.

The group real­izes that the action is very small-scale, only a tiny lit­tle poke in the bel­ly of a gigan­tic insti­tu­tion, but hopes that it will become a fig­ure­head and an inspi­ra­tion for oth­er groups who are tired of protest­ing against fas­cism and will rather break it down with their own force.

The action group Poke in a Bel­ly!”

This hap­pened only one day after Sav­ing Ice­land glued and closed the offices of six insti­tu­tions and com­pa­nies that are involved in the heavy indus­tri­al­iza­tion of Ice­land.