Category: Climate Chaos

Fight Speciesism! #8 — Out Now

Spring 2009 issue of the lat­est anti-speciesist, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, abo­li­tion­ist direct action news is out now.

Arti­cles: SHAC 7 sol­i­dar­i­ty, oper­a­tion sink­ing ship, hunt sab­bing, mink released, ‘fash­ion’ shop closed, lib­er­a­tionists arrest­ed, max mara cam­paign, inter­na­tion­al actions, pris­on­er let­ters, police under attack, alf vs wagenin­gen uni, pris­on­er sup­port, mon­keys fight back, netcu, bull­ring riots, aeta 4, earth lib­er­a­tion, mex­i­can actions, whale wars, riot­ing in lon­don and edo smashed.

Fight Speciesism! #8 - Out Now Spring 2009 issue of the lat­est anti-speciesist, anti-cap­i­tal­ist, abo­li­tion­ist direct action news is out now.

Arti­cles: SHAC 7 sol­i­dar­i­ty, oper­a­tion sink­ing ship, hunt sab­bing, mink released, ‘fash­ion’ shop closed, lib­er­a­tionists arrest­ed, max mara cam­paign, inter­na­tion­al actions, pris­on­er let­ters, police under attack, alf vs wagenin­gen uni, pris­on­er sup­port, mon­keys fight back, netcu, bull­ring riots, aeta 4, earth lib­er­a­tion, mex­i­can actions, whale wars, riot­ing in lon­don and edo smashed.

FS! #8 https://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2009/03//424982.pdf

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Anti­speciesist Action is a col­lec­tive of mil­i­tant anti­speciesists and ani­mal lib­er­a­tionists com­mit­ted to con­fronting ani­mal abuse, suf­fer­ing and exploita­tion of non-human beings through the use of direct action.

G20 critical mass & link to action maps, meeting points, and resources

A voy­age of explo­ration into the world of Car­bon Trad­ing, what it is and who’s mak­ing a killing out of trad­ing in hot air.

Wed April 1st 9:00 AM Meet at Bank Junc­tion (Bank tube sta­tion) EC2

You’d be a fool to miss it! Want more? Get involved with: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

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G20 Critical Mass flierA voy­age of explo­ration into the world of Car­bon Trad­ing, what it is and who’s mak­ing a killing out of trad­ing in hot air.

Wed April 1st 9:00 AM Meet at Bank Junc­tion (Bank tube sta­tion) EC2

You’d be a fool to miss it! Want more? Get involved with: http://www.climatecamp.org.uk

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For oth­er G20 plans, actions & info, fol­low the links under G20 1–2 April 2009 in the updat­ed upcom­ing Action dates & gath­er­ings

Callout for organising! Scottish Camp for Climate Action

Build­ing a more sus­tain­able future in four easy steps:
1. Get out your diary and find a pen
2. Open it at the pages for the 4–16 June and 3–10 August
3. Write in very large, bold let­ter­ing: CLIMATE CAMP SCOTLAND across these dates

Camp for Climate Action Scotland bannerBuild­ing a more sus­tain­able future in four easy steps:
1. Get out your diary and find a pen
2. Open it at the pages for the 4–16 June and 3–10 August
3. Write in very large, bold let­ter­ing: CLIMATE CAMP SCOTLAND across these dates
4. Get involved in this excit­ing move­ment for social change and envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice!

What’s the Scot­tish Camp for Cli­mate Action?

Some time between 3–10 August, activists, cam­paign­ers and com­mu­ni­ties from all over Scot­land will set up camp! We will be liv­ing sus­tain­ably and equal­ly, and tak­ing awe-inspir­ing col­lec­tive direct action to hold greedy cli­mate crim­i­nals to account.

In a time of epoch-mak­ing eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal change, we’re going to be mak­ing direct changes for the bet­ter. We’ll be tak­ing con­trol of our lives, of our soci­ety, and stand­ing up for what we believe in. We’ll refuse to believe the greedy pol­luters and financiers, when they say it’s just not the right time to clean up their act. We’ll clean it up for them!

The Camp (whether urban or rur­al) will be a liv­ing exam­ple of col­lec­tive, imag­i­na­tive low-impact liv­ing, full of prac­ti­cal solu­tions. Its not just about plas­tic bags and light bulbs any more, these things iso­late us and dis­tract us from the real prob­lems. Instead, we will work togeth­er to build strong, sus­tain­able and pow­er­ful com­mu­ni­ties.

Whilst we haven’t decid­ed where the camp will be yet, there’s no short­age of options. Whole swathes of air­ports, coal pow­er sta­tions, open cast mines and agro­fu­el instal­la­tions and motor­ways are planned for Scot­land. We also have the lux­u­ry of host­ing the head­quar­ters of inter­na­tion­al banks like RBS and HBOS, whose greed got us into this eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal mess.

What’s hap­pen­ing in the run-up to the camp?

Some time between June 4–16 there will be a Cli­mate Camp Con­ver­gence, with infor­ma­tive and prac­ti­cal work­shops and dis­cus­sions, oppor­tu­ni­ties for build­ing links between cam­paigns, and the chance for us to col­lec­tive­ly plan the future of cli­mate activism across Scot­land. By the time the August Camp rolls around we’ll be a force to be reck­oned with.

How do I get involved now?

Mak­ing this hap­pen needs loads of ideas, ener­gy and input. In short, it needs you. And all your mates!

Come to an organ­is­ing meet­ing!

We organ­ise hor­i­zon­tal­ly, with­out lead­ers, and every­one has input into deci­sions. At the moment, most of the organ­is­ing is being done in Edin­burgh. We want this to change! We plan for local organ­is­ing meet­ings to feed into reg­u­lar Scot­land-wide Gath­er­ings.

Next meet­ing: Edin­burgh, Tues­day 24th March, 7pm
at the Autonomous Cen­tre of Edin­burgh (ACE) www.autonomous.org.uk

The fol­low­ing meet­ing will be on April 7th , 7pm, ACE in Edin­burgh.

On the agen­da, Tues­day 24th:

1.What focus each of the sum­mer con­ver­gences will have: direct action, edu­ca­tion, move­ment build­ing etc, And what some of the spe­cif­ic con­tent will be.
2. What the exact dates of each con­ver­gence will be.

Start organ­is­ing in your area!

- Get organ­is­ing with peo­ple in your area and see how much time, ener­gy and resources you can bring to a Cli­mate Camp in Scot­land. To be effec­tive, Cli­mate Camp Scot­land needs to have strong, decen­tralised groups doing the plan­ning and prepa­ra­tion.

- Please get in touch if you want to help organ­ise Cli­mate Camp Scot­land! so we can work togeth­er to find meet­ing times and loca­tions that as many peo­ple can get to from around the coun­try.

- Host the Cli­mate Camp Scot­land Info Tour in your area, to find out what’s hap­pen­ing this sum­mer, what has to be decid­ed and pre­pared, and how you can get involved.

- Email: climatecampscotland@riseup.net to request the Info Tour and with any ques­tions how­ev­er big or small!

Call for support for squatted island on Thames — come visit & use

Due to the need for urgent envi­ron­men­tal action. We have occu­pied an island in The Thames.

In these times of ris­ing tides and melt­ing ice shelves, we thought we should get a bit clos­er to study­ing the watery world and its rise.

Raven's AitDue to the need for urgent envi­ron­men­tal action. We have occu­pied an island in The Thames.

In these times of ris­ing tides and melt­ing ice shelves, we thought we should get a bit clos­er to study­ing the watery world and its rise.

Ravens Ait Island is a unique wed­ding and con­fer­ence cen­tre with halls, many rooms, (oppo­site Hamp­ton Court). Which we are trans­form­ing into an Eco Con­fer­ence Cen­tre. Come vis­it, help, book in to run a skill shar­ing work­shop and put it on the timetable. Net­work it.

There will be an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion here “how do we find SOLUTIONS to the envi­ron­men­tal­ly crit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion we face?”

The sit­u­a­tion we face along with all the species of the plan­et.

Ravens Ait Island, Portsmouth Road, Sur­biton, Sur­rey KT6 4HN. Oppo­site Cather­ine’s Road, Kingston British Rail or Sur­biton BR. (From Kingston BR turn right to Kingston Bridge, turn left at begin­ning of bridge and walk down Thames foot­path on the same side as Kingston BR for 10 min­utes untl you reach Lon­don Riv­er Yacht Club.

You will see the Island Ring us on 07769 791 387 or 07900 800 055 or 07964672922 to let us know you are com­ing and to arrange a boat to pick you up.

We need respon­si­ble and organ­ised peo­ple to help set this up as an Eco Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, please get in touch as soon as pos­si­ble if you can help in any way.

For Lat­est Info go to www.ravensait.org.uk or Face­book group or per­son: Ravens ait

WE net­work Agen­da 21 a blue­print for a sus­tain­able 21st cen­tu­ry.
We want to focus on solu­tions to be net­worked up to the Copen­hagen Summit,Ref “the AGE of Stupid”-(film see it). prob­a­bly one of the most impor­tant meet­ings in human his­to­ry.

We have just been to court got a pos­ses­sion order but are appeal­ing we need many peo­ple to come and save this his­toric piece of com­mon land that the coun­cil want to flog off to devel­op­ers.
We need net­work­ers, gar­den­ers, builders, design­ers, climbers, media, grafters, poets, musi­cians, stu­dents, skill­shar­ers of all variety,youngsters old­sters and all sorts to make a rain­bow. As soon as pos­si­ble.

Keep net­work­ing for a sus­tain­able future

Lots more info & films at our web­site.

Newcastle Coal Port closed down by Climate Protestors

21st March 2009

21st March 2009
Cli­mate pro­tes­tors have closed down the Port of New­cas­tle for the day, with a peace­ful block­ade of coal load­ing facil­i­ties. The Port of New­cas­tle is the world’s largest coal port, trans­fer­ring coal mined in the Hunter val­ley for export. Hun­dreds of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at Horse­shoe Beach with many launch­ing kayaks, canoes and small boats to block­ade the har­bour. New­cas­tle Port Cor­po­ra­tion can­celled all ships com­ing into the har­bour for the day due to safe­ty con­cerns.

NSW Greens MP Lee Rhi­an­non who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the block­ade organ­ised by cli­mate action group Ris­ing Tide Aus­tralia, was report­ed in an AAP news report “These peo­ple sent a seri­ous mes­sage that the gov­ern­ment, if they are going to be seri­ous about cli­mate change, they must address the coal indus­try,”

“On aver­age some eight ves­sels enter the port each day,” she said. “So it has been a suc­cess. It is the fourth time this block­ade has been held and each time it attracts plen­ty of sup­port and we will con­tin­ue with future peace­ful actions if we think it’s nec­es­sary.”

Ris­ing Tide spokes­woman Car­ly Phillips told the New­cas­tle Her­ald before the protest that “Aus­tralians are com­ing togeth­er to occu­py the world’s biggest coal port and this coun­try’s sin­gle biggest con­tri­bu­tion to cli­mate change,” she said. “Peo­ple are angry that State and Fed­er­al gov­ern­ments are over­see­ing a mas­sive expan­sion of coal exports at a time when the indus­try needs des­per­ate­ly to be phased out.”

Lee Rhi­an­non esti­mat­ed 500 peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ed in the peace­ful block­ade.

Back­ground Inter­view: Car­ly Phillips speak­ing with Erin Smith on Com­mu­ni­ty Radio 2SER’s Razors Edge Pro­gram, March 18, 2009 — Block­ade planned at the world’s biggest coal port

Sources:

Social Centre in Hackney Downs- London- is Calling for Support

Dear all
Social Cen­tre in Hack­ney Downs is call­ing for sup­port.
We have been squt­ting this place for 4 years. We have gone through lots and now that final­ly we could do some­thing with this beau­ti­ful place we have to be evicted.The land­lord wants to build new flats.

Social Centre in Hackney Downs is Calling for SupportDear all
Social Cen­tre in Hack­ney Downs is call­ing for sup­port.
We have been squt­ting this place for 4 years. We have gone through lots and now that final­ly we could do some­thing with this beau­ti­ful place we have to be evicted.The land­lord wants to build new flats.
We are still going to do as much as we can.
The local com­mu­ni­ty is also sup­port­ing us. The plan is to cre­ate a com­mu­ni­ty cen­tre, play cen­tre, youth club, art centre.We are cre­at­ing a coop with the neigh­bours.

But we need all the sup­port from every­one who wants to help.

Ongo­ing Gallery — Call for Artistes
Planned is Film Night-Call for inde­pen­dent film mak­ers- ani­ma­tors-short films
Chil­dren activ­i­ties in the after­noons end­ing with show case of their work and final chil­dren par­ty
Life draw­ing Class wed 25 March and week ends Open Class­es every­one wel­comed!
Fla­men­co Class­es from 1–3 every week day
Crit­i­cal Mass end­ing here with Film and sound system?cycles pow­ered — ( To be con­firmed)
Jum­ble sale to raise mon­ey for court case and future Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre organ­ised by the neigh­bours
Cafe’- we need peo­ple to bake-cook-help
Open mike-
Call for Acoustic musi­cians- Chill out ‑djs-min­i­mal elec­tron­i­ca- any­thing that is not gonna be too loud!
Although we could have live bands dur­ing the day;;we will keep you informed!

Events from Fri­day 20 March — Evic­tion 3 April 11.45am
Assem­bly Rooms
8, Andre Street
E8 2AA

utopia.unknown@gmail.com
WEBSITE UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Shell to Sea supporters occupy Shell office in Belmullet in Support of Maura Harrington

Mon­day, 16th March 2009, sev­en mem­bers of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp occu­pied the Shell office in Bel­mul­let, Coun­ty Mayo, for over an hour, in sup­port of Mau­ra Har­ring­ton. Mau­ra has now been in jail for six days of her thir­ty day sen­tence.

Shell office occupationMon­day, 16th March 2009, sev­en mem­bers of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp occu­pied the Shell office in Bel­mul­let, Coun­ty Mayo, for over an hour, in sup­port of Mau­ra Har­ring­ton. Mau­ra has now been in jail for six days of her thir­ty day sen­tence.

The camp mem­bers of the camp entered the office and held up a ban­ner read­ing “Free Mau­ra”. Shell’s Com­mu­ni­ca­tion offi­cer Christy Lof­tus came into the lob­by and field­ed ques­tions from the group for the entire peri­od. Some peo­ple made it into the main part of the build­ing; dur­ing this time the fire alarms went off in the build­ing. Gar­daí were called to the office, came inside and asked the group to leave. The group remained in the build­ing for anoth­er 45 min­utes ques­tion­ing Christy Lof­tus and then left lat­er of their own accord. No one was arrest­ed.

Also this morn­ing, the Shell to Sea trail­er was opened at Bel­lan­aboy refin­ery site.
Shell to Sea cam­paign­er Pat O’Donnell awoke this morn­ing to find that the win­dows on his boat had been bro­ken. It is not clear whether the van­dal­ism is relat­ed to the cam­paign against Shell, but it was clear­ly tar­get­ed at O’Donnell’s boat, which was the only one dam­aged out of a boat yard of over 20 boats. This is the sec­ond time his boat has been tar­get­ed in the past two years.

—-

On Wednes­day the 11th of March, Shell to Sea cam­paign­er, Mau­ra Har­ring­ton was sen­tenced to 28 days in prison after Judge Mary Devins found her guilty of assault­ing a Gar­da dur­ing the inci­dent at Pol­lath­omais Pier on the 11th June 2007. For sen­tenc­ing for the Sec­tion 2 assault, Judge Devins sen­tenced her to 28 days in prison along with a €1000 fine along with a €1000 dona­tion to the Gar­da Benev­o­lent Fund and that she be bound to the peace for 1 year. Ms Har­ring­ton how­ev­er refused to sign the bond and so received 2 days in prison for con­tempt to be run con­cur­rent with her oth­er sen­tence. Judge Devins also direct­ed Ms Har­ring­ton to under­go psy­chi­atric assess­ment. Judge Mary Devins is the wife of Gov­ern­ment Min­ster, Jim­my Devins.

On thw 11th June 2007, known local­ly as ‘Black Mon­day’, Gar­dai vio­lent­ly removed pro­test­ers attempt­ing to stop the ille­gal instal­ment of a Shell por­ta­cab­in on the land of pub­li­can Pad­dy McGrath near Pol­lath­omais. Pad­dy suf­fered a stroke and was hos­pi­tal­ized for sev­er­al months. Many peo­ple suf­fered injuries and despite com­plaints, no Gar­da has received even a cau­tion.

Please send mes­sages of sup­port to:
Mau­ra Har­ring­ton
Dochas Cen­tre
Moun­tjoy Prison
N Cir­cu­lar Road
Dublin 7

Shell are due to start work from April onwards, come over if you can!

rossportsolidaritycamp@gmail.com
http://www.rossportsolidaritycamp.110mb.com

The Greening of Peter Mandelson & Hoon ‘hooned’ — arrrested update

6th March

Mandelson slimed6th March
Green cus­tard was this morn­ing thrown in the face of the Labour gov­ern­ments Busi­ness Sec­re­tary, Peter Man­del­son by Plane Stu­pid activist Leila Deen. The for­mer North­ern Ire­land Sec­re­tary was accost­ed moments after step­ping out of his limo to attend a so-called ‘low-car­bon’ sum­mit in Lon­don. In full view of the assem­bled TV cam­eras he got a face full of cus­tard and hur­ried inside. Leila then explained to the cam­eras that the action had been over Man­del­sons unelect­ed and unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic role in grant­i­ng per­mis­sion for Heathrows third run­way on behalf of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

Man­dle­son referred to the inci­dent as an ‘ado­les­cent protest’. He joked, “I sup­pose in a democ­ra­cy peo­ple are enti­tled to have their say but I would rather peo­ple said it to my face rather than throw it. I am pre­pared to take my fair share of the green rev­o­lu­tion on my shoul­ders but I am less keen on hav­ing it in my face.”

When inter­viewed lat­er on the BBC Leila Deen described the move as a “last resort” after the demo­c­ra­t­ic process failed. She said that Man­del­son was an unelect­ed politi­cian and he was sid­ing with the “inter­ests of busi­ness” rather than the “inter­ests of the peo­ple and the plan­et” in back­ing the new run­way.

She jus­ti­fied the “direct action” as the best way of bring­ing about change, claim­ing she and oth­ers were exclud­ed from the demo­c­ra­t­ic process. “When democ­ra­cy is fail­ing you have to resort to any means nec­es­sary as long as it is peace­ful and does not harm oth­er human beings,” she said.

She con­tin­ued, “Peter Man­del­son is the same per­son who effec­tive­ly bul­lied Ed Miliband and oth­er mem­bers of the cab­i­net to accept a third run­way that nobody wants, a third run­way that no one was con­sult­ed on and no one is able to say no to. It’s not right that some­one like Peter Man­del­son can stand up and talk about being green.”

Leila Deen, 29, said:

“That such a clear­ly cor­rupt human being is still in gov­ern­ment, despite being unelect­ed, is an affront to democ­ra­cy and a threat to any hope we have of stop­ping the impact that cli­mate change is already begin­ning to have on our lives. We have a tiny win­dow left to stop cli­mate change. I want to tell my chil­dren that I did not stand back and applaud as Man­del­son ruined our last chance.”

—-

March 5th 2009

Hoon ‘hooned’ in sil­ly stunt

Geoff Hoon woke up yes­ter­day and went out to give a speech to the Roy­al Soci­ety about the many solu­tions to avi­a­tion and cli­mate change. The solu­tion, of course, is to let every­one fly as much as they like, because tech­nol­o­gy would save us. Tech­nol­o­gy and the Emis­sions Trad­ing Scheme, which, as he remind­ed his audi­ence, is a real and effec­tive cap on avi­a­tion emis­sions in Europe…

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!

The Sec­re­tary of State was cut off in mid-flow, as a loud honk­ing noise blared out across the room. Up popped a young woman who apol­o­gised for mak­ing a rack­et. She’d rather fool­ish­ly for­got­ten to turn off her lie detec­tor horn, which had picked up on Hoon’s rather bla­tant fib­bing. It would­n’t hap­pen again, she promised.

Of course it did; oth­er peo­ple in the audi­ence had brought their lie detec­tors and these kept sound­ing as Hoon tried to give his speech. If only, he thought to him­self, I’d remem­bered to tell the truth, instead of a bunch of non­sense that sound­ed good when Fly­ing Mat­ters told it to me. Maybe these sil­ly stunts have a pur­pose after all…

—-

Update: Leila Deen, Cus­tard Queen, Arrest­ed

8th March
Lon­don activist Leila Deen was arrest­ed Sat­ur­day for throw­ing green cus­tard over gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Peter Man­del­son on Fri­day to protest at his unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic involve­ment in the deci­sion to Heathrow air­port. She received a text mes­sage and phone call from the police to inform her she was to be arrest­ed for com­mon assault. After being inter­viewed she was released with­out charge, and bailed to return on the 9th of April.

Lelia had man­aged to avoid secu­ri­ty out­side the Roy­al Soci­ety on Fri­day morn­ing where Man­dle­son he was due to attend a co-called ‘low-car­bon’ sum­mit in Lon­don. After Leila threw the cus­tard over him, Man­dle­son rushed inside the build­ing drip­ping with green goo. About five min­utes lat­er he returned to face the media with some hasti­ly pre­pared dam­age con­trol ‘wit’.

There is con­flict­ing infor­ma­tion on whether Man­del­son had made a com­plaint or whether the police were oblig­ed to inves­ti­gate the inci­dent with­out a for­mal com­plaint being made. Lelia said that the police had been told that they had to take action although Man­del­son had appar­ent­ly not made a for­mal com­plaint but some of the main­stream media reports sug­gest­ed that Man­del­son had now mad a com­plaint. Man­del­son was also report­ed as say­ing he was sur­prised that his attack­er “could just saunter off with­out being appre­hend­ed”.

Bank climate rush at RBS

5th March 2009
About 100 peo­ple gath­ered out­side RBS this lunch time.

RBS Climate Rush 1RBS Climate Rush 25th March 2009
About 100 peo­ple gath­ered out­side RBS this lunch time.

Envi­ron­men­tal “Cli­mate Rush” activists gath­er out­side RBS (Roy­al Bank of Scot­land) to protest the pen­sion pay out to Sir Fred Good­win, for­mer RBS Chief Exec­u­tive, of 16 Mil­lion GBP.

The sec­ond event organ­ised by Cli­mate Rush in less than a week, around a hun­dred peo­ple gath­ered out­side the RBS head offices near Liv­er­pool Street Sta­tion, although a large per­cent­age of those were press or oth­ers with cam­eras. The police were there to in great num­bers guard­ing every door to the vast RBS build­ing and plen­ty more in reserve in vans hid­den away in the back street just in case. An uncom­fort­able mix of Met and City cops, they need­n’t have wor­ried as the hasti­ly organ­ised ‘rush’ had attract­ed only a small crew and the action turned into more of a pic­nic than an full frontal assault on the bank.

Despite being a cli­mate rush event it did attract the local Whitechapel Anar­chist, the Gov­ern­ment of the Dead and Class War’s Ian Bone. So-called ‘FIT’ were there too to take some snaps and make voice inac­cu­rate obser­va­tions about peo­ple per­son­al lives. Crowds of city work­ers took pho­tos with their mobiles from van­tage points on the oppo­site side of the road and RBS employ­ees watched from the bal­conies inside their glass fortress.

Speech­es where made (ampli­fied over the tan­dem towed trail­er sound sys­tem) and high­light­ed the how this bank which is now most­ly owned by the tax pay­er con­tin­ues to sup­ply fund­ing to indus­tries com­plic­it in cli­mate crimes. Much was made of a cer­tain wankers retire­ment pay-off and a cap was hand­ed round to top up his pen­sion should he choose to for­go his unde­served wind fall (the £8.27 col­lect­ed was lat­er giv­en to a home­less per­son who seemed more in need). Also raised dur­ing the speech­es was the mobil­i­sa­tions being planned around the G20 in April.

Many passers by enquired what was going on, at least one joined in. There were no arrests, no rush. Lots of cam­eras, lit­tle to shoot. Some food, some tea, lit­tle anger but a bit of danc­ing.

History Repeated — Skyr Thrown on Greenwashing PR Managers

March 5 2009
Yes­ter­day three black dressed indi­vid­u­als, masked with alu­mini­um foil, threw green Skyr (tra­di­tion­al Ice­landic dairy prod­uct) on rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ice­landic ener­gy com­pa­nies dur­ing a green­wash pre­sen­ta­tion in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ice­land. In June 2005 Sav­ing Ice­land threw Skyr on rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Alcoa and Bech­tel dur­ing an inter­na­tion­al alu­mini­um con­fer­ence in Reyk­javík.

Skyr chucked on PR greenwashersMarch 5 2009
Yes­ter­day three black dressed indi­vid­u­als, masked with alu­mini­um foil, threw green Skyr (tra­di­tion­al Ice­landic dairy prod­uct) on rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Ice­landic ener­gy com­pa­nies dur­ing a green­wash pre­sen­ta­tion in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ice­land. In June 2005 Sav­ing Ice­land threw Skyr on rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Alcoa and Bech­tel dur­ing an inter­na­tion­al alu­mini­um con­fer­ence in Reyk­javík.

Gaia — the stu­dent asso­ci­a­tion of Mas­ter stu­dents in Envi­ron­ment and Nat­ur­al Resources, had orga­nized a “Green Week” in the uni­ver­si­ty. Among activ­i­ties was this par­tic­u­lar pre­sen­ta­tion by e.g. Landsvirkjun (Iceland’s nation­al ener­gy com­pa­ny), O.R. (Reyk­javík Ener­gy) and Geysir Green Ener­gy; all com­pa­nies who are involved in the devel­op­ment of the alu­mini­um indus­try in Ice­land.

Green­wash­No­body has claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the action and no press release has been sent to the media. But the his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence is clear and one does not need a lot of imag­i­na­tion to get in mind what the mes­sage of this action was.

RÚV, Iceland’s nation­al TV sta­tion stat­ed in its evening news that Öskra!, a new­ly formed move­ment of rev­o­lu­tion­aly stu­dents, had claimed respon­si­bil­i­ty for the action. A lit­tle lat­er Öskra! sent out a press release say­ing:

Yes­ter­day green skyr (tra­di­tion­al Ice­landic food which has been used over the years in direct actions — show­ing dis­re­spect and dis­ap­proval) was thrown on the image man­agers of the ener­gy com­pa­nies that took part in the green-wash­ing days in the uni­ver­si­ty.

Öskra! — The rev­o­lu­tion­ary stu­dents move­ment, is not respon­si­ble for the skyr throw­ing action, and does not know who did it, but under­stands and sup­ports it com­plete­ly.

“Green Ener­gy” is one of the cap­i­tal­ists false solu­tions to the envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion which threat­ens all life on earth. If the ener­gy com­pa­nies want to call them self green, they can just be green.

Green­washThe Skyr throw­ers got away and no one was arrest­ed but accord­ing to Ice­land Review, a “uni­ver­si­ty staff mem­ber caught hold of one of the activists, but lost his grip as a spec­ta­tor dis­rupt­ed him. Police are inves­ti­gat­ing the case.”

Like Öskra!, Sav­ing Ice­land announces a com­plete sup­port with this great action!