Category: Climate Chaos

Saving Iceland Blockades Rio Tinto-Alcan Smelter in Hafnarfjordur

Sav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

Smelter blockade 25th JulySav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

HAFNARFJORDUR – Sav­ing Ice­land has closed access to RioTinto’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Ice­land. About 20 pro­tes­tors have locked their arms in met­al tubes and climbed onto cranes on the smelter site. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es plans for a new RioT­in­to-Alcan smelter in Keil­isnes or Thor­lak­shöfn, expan­sion of the exist­ing smelter, and a new coal and nuclear pow­ered smelter in South Africa.

“Protests against Alcan have been suc­cess­ful. Of course the peo­ple of Haf­nafjor­dur have stopped the expan­sion of Straumsvik and recent­ly, in Kashipur, North­east India, Alcan had to give up it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a baux­ite mine because of protests against their human rights vio­la­tions and envi­ron­men­tal deves­ta­tion. Alcan has been accused of cul­tur­al geno­cide in Kashipur, because min­ing and dams have already dis­placed 150.000 main­ly trib­al peo­ple there . Norsk Hydro left the project when police tor­tured and opened fire on pro­tes­tors, and then Alcan moved in,” says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son.

“This case and sim­i­lar cas­es, and Alcan’s involve­ment in arms pro­duc­tion, shows how ruth­less they are. The takeover by RioT­in­to is rather unlike­ly to make Alcan into a respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen.”

“RioT­in­to-Alcan haven’t blown off their inter­est in a new smelter in Ice­land. Haf­nafjor­dur is still being named by Alcan despite the ref­er­en­dum , and a new smelter might be built in Thor­lak­shöfn or Keil­isnes. Sav­ing Ice­land rejects this, and we express our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple in South Africa oppos­ing RioTinto-Alcan’s coal- and nuclear pow­ered smelter plans there. Landsvirkjun has also got­ten involved in this , so it is very impor­tant that peo­ple in Ice­land reject these neo-colo­nial devel­op­ments that destroy the envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. ” says Úlfhildar­son.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Alcan’s links to the arms indus­try, the South-African deal with Landsvirkjun, and some of the his­to­ry of Rio Tin­to is attached to this press release.

More infor­ma­tion:
http://www.savingiceland.org
Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son

ALCAN’S LINKS TO THE ARMS INDUSTRY
RioTinto-Alcan’s alu­mini­um alloys are sold for a whole range of mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Alcan is the main sup­pli­er for Euro­pean Aero­space and Defense and Space, pro­duc­er of mil­i­tary heli­copters, mil­i­tary satel­lites, the Eurofight­er Tycoon, Mirage F1, EF18 Hor­net and oth­er jets . EADS is the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of mis­siles . Deals made between the EADS and Alcan are pre­sent­ed as between Air­bus and Alcan, to cloud the mil­i­tary involve­ment ; it is com­mon for all alu­mini­um com­pa­nies to hide their ‘defense’ prod­ucts under the title ‘aero­space’. But at the same time, mil­i­tary prod­ucts need to be mar­ket­ed, so images of fight­er jets are dis­played on Alcan Aerospace’s web­site .

EADS claims to sell to coun­tries that “guar­an­tee a respon­si­ble approach to high-tech mil­i­tary air sys­tems. It draws on decades of exper­tise in mil­i­tary avi­a­tion.” But can you trust a com­pa­ny that is sick enough to add video frag­ments from Nazi Ger­many, glo­ri­fy­ing first world war and Nazi air­planes , on the same web­page as this quote?

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: ALUMINIUM TO IRAQ
Alcan fur­ther sup­plies Boe­ing a “vari­ety of high per­for­mance alu­minum-prod­ucts” . Boe­ing pro­duces the Apache and Chi­nook mil­i­tary heli­copters used in Iraq and less known prod­ucts that bright­en your day, such as the the ‘Small Diam­e­ter Bomb’ and the ‘Joint Direct Attack Muni­tion.’ Then there are Alcan’s asso­ci­a­tions with Das­sault ., a French arms man­u­fac­tur­er, which pro­duces a range of alu­mini­um fight­er-jets . Alcan has also been pro­mot­ing itself to Naval ser­vices .

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: PLANS FOR AFRICA
RioT­in­to-Alcan has signed a let­ter of intent with the Govt. of Cameroon to expand the exist­ing Alu­cam smelter with 150.000 Mtpy, and build a new 150.000 Mtpy smelter. The Lom Pan­gar Dam, to be con­struct­ed by the gov­ern­ment, would pow­er this . Alcan have a large num­ber of projects planned Africa – their “green­field project pipeline” includes Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Mada­gas­car and South Africa. ‘Green­field’ means that untouched nature will be destroyed for the mines, infra­struc­ture, smelters, and dams that would pow­er them.

APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA, ESKOM AND LANDSVIRKJUN
Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949–1986 . Now they want to come back and devel­op a new smelter in the near zero-tax ‘Coega Devel­op­ment Zone’ near Port Eliz­a­beth, pow­ered by coal and nuclear deliv­ered by Eskom, one of the worlds largest elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies. “Thir­ty per­cent of the poor com­mu­ni­ties of South Africa don’t have elec­tric­i­ty, and now that will be going straight to Alcan,” says Ler­a­to Maregele, a S‑African activist vis­it­ing Ice­land .
Elkom is a ‘sis­ter-com­pa­ny’ of Iceland’s Landsvirkjun . Landsvirkun want to be part of this deal and more gen­er­al­ly branch out to Africa.
Landsvirkjun can be expect­ed to try and sell their exper­tise to Eskom’s var­i­ous hydropro­jects in Mozam­biqu, Ugan­da and Con­go. They will try to be part of damming the Con­go riv­er, a project twice the size of China’s Three Gorges, that will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the cen­tral African rain­for­est.

RIO TINTO’S ABYSMAL RECORD
While we can con­clude that Alcan itself heav­i­ly sup­plies the arms indus­try and is invad­ing Africa as it invades Ice­land, it is now part of Rio Tin­to, the world’s largest pri­vate min­ing com­pa­ny, “long crit­i­cized for gross human rights vio­la­tions dat­ing back to its sup­port of apartheid in South­ern Africa.”
We will name some of the many cas­es. Rio Tin­to has been know to sub­ject it’s own work­ers to poi­son­ing in mines, hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards shoot­ing locals on the spot look­ing for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and hav­ing union-mem­bers spied upon or fired in its Brazil­ian gold mines.

Rio Tin­to has been involved with mer­ce­nary scan­dals. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) Gov­ern­ment, in joint ven­ture with Rio Tin­to, hired pri­vate mer­ce­nary com­pa­nies San­d­line Inter­na­tion­al, a Lon­don-based pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny, com­posed pri­mar­i­ly of for­mer British and South African spe­cial forces sol­diers, which had been involved in the civ­il wars in Ango­la and Sier­ra Leone and were now payed to fight the pop­u­la­tion of Bougainville, an island near PNG. The mine had been closed by the peo­ple of the island because of the dis­as­trous eco­log­i­cal effects .
Cit­i­zens of Bougainville have filed a class action law­suit in the Unit­ed States against Rio Tin­to aris­ing from the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the mine and war crimes occur­ring dur­ing the civ­il war years. In August 2006, the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir­cuit reject­ed Rio Tin­to’s effort to dis­miss the claim.

S. Das & F. Padel, “Dou­ble Death — Aluminium’s Links with Geno­cide”, Eco­nom­ic and Polit­i­cal Week­ly, Dec. 2005, also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/doubledeath
Chan­dra Sid­dan, “Blood and Baux­ite”, Mon­tre­al Mir­ror, Nov 20–26, 2003, Vol. 19 No. 23.
“Smelter Expan­sion on Land­fill?”, Ice­land Review, June 20th 2007.
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
EADS web­site, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/combat_aircraft/combat_aircraft.html
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “A Brief Glance at EADS”, http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/1/10/41434101.mov
AFX News, June 13, 2007, http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/13200786914.htm
Alcan Press Release, “Com­pa­ny To Pro­vide Crit­i­cal Alu­minum Mate­ri­als For Full Range Of Air­craft Includ­ing A380”, June 13, 2007, http://www.decisionplus.com/fr/fintools/stock_news.asp?Market=TSE&Symbol=AL&NewsID=20070613/021501
http://www.alcanaerospace.com/Aerospace/aerospace.nsf/html/FWFGHOME?Open&LG=1, dd. 22–7‑2007.
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “90 years of air­craft his­to­ry in Augs­burg”, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/mas.html and http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/0/64/41488640.asx
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.2.
Boe­ing Web­site Image Gallery of Small Diam­e­ter Bomb: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Boe­ing Image Gallery: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan Con­tributes to Suc­cess of Eighth Ari­ane 5 ECA Launch,” Dec 13th, 2006.
http://www.dassault-aviation.com/
“Pacif­ic 2004, Inter­na­tion­al Naval and Mar­itime Expo­si­tion for the South­ern Pacif­ic,” Aero­space Mar­itime and Defence Con­fer­ence, http://www.ideea.com/pacific2004/embassy/smithbriefing.pdf
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.5.
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan to Explore Devel­op­ment of Baux­ite Mine and Alu­mi­na Refin­ery in Mada­gas­car,” Sep­tem­ber 11th 2006.
Alcan’t web­site, http://www.alcant.co.za/history.html
Grapevine, Issue 10, July 13, 2007. Inter­view also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/node/870
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
Inter­na­tion­al Rivers Net­work & Earth­Life Africa, “Eskom’s Expand­ing Empire
The Social and Eco­log­i­cal Foot­print of Africa’s Largest Pow­er Util­i­ty,” June 2003, http://www.irn.org/programs/safrica/index.php?id=030601eskomfactsheet.html
Asia-Pacif­ic Human Rights Net­work, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Glob­al Com­pact,” July 13th 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=623.
SBS Australia’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram Date­line in a report on Rio Tin­to, August 2000.
Wikipedia Ger­many (22–7‑2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Affäre
Con­tract between PNG Gov­ern­ment and San­d­line: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/htmls/Sandline.html.
Sarei v Rio Tin­to, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.

S.I. Activist Imprisoned by the Icelandic State

Sav­ing Ice­land
24 July 2007

The Ice­landic gov­ern­ment and ALCOA have gained their first polit­i­cal pris­on­er with their repres­sion of protest against the heavy indus­try pol­i­cy.

Prisoner Solidarity 12Sav­ing Ice­land
24 July 2007

The Ice­landic gov­ern­ment and ALCOA have gained their first polit­i­cal pris­on­er with their repres­sion of protest against the heavy indus­try pol­i­cy.

A twen­ty three year old British Sav­ing Ice­land activist who was arrest­ed today on the action against Rio Tin­to-Alcan, has been impris­oned for eight days.

Appar­ent­ly the activist was told by the Ice­landic police that she was to pay a 100.000 kro­nur (£840) fine for her involve­ment in protests against ALCOA in the east of Ice­land in the sum­mer of 2006, or face prison. She chose the lat­ter.

At this time we do not know where she will be held.

Oth­er for­eign pro­test­ers have their pass­ports held at ran­som by the police for fines based on accu­sa­tions for obstruct­ing the police, but no actu­al charges.

Here at Sav­ing Ice­land we seem to remem­ber that pass­ports are the prop­er­ty of the States that they are issued in.

Thus, not for the first time, the Ice­landic police may actu­al­ly be breach­ing inter­na­tion­al law by black­mail­ing for­eign cit­i­zens who are exer­cis­ing their demo­c­ra­t­ic right to protest against the cor­rupt heavy indus­try pol­i­cy that the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to main­tain.

In March this year the Left-Green par­ty in Ice­land called in par­lia­ment for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into the con­duct of the Ice­landic police against Sav­ing Ice­land pro­test­ers in the the years of 2005 and 2006.

It is high time that the auto­crat­ic and fre­quent­ly vio­lent meth­ods of the Ice­landic police against peace­ful pro­test­ers come under seri­ous scruti­ny.

http://www.savingiceland.org/node/887

Saving Iceland Blockades Rio Tinto-Alcan Smelter in Hafnarfjordur, Iceland

military systems

Incrim­i­nat­ing pho­to evi­dence of ALCAN involve­ment in the arms indus­try

‘A Brief Look at EADS’ — ALCANs major mil­i­tary part­ner the way they want to be seen — Video

EADS proud­ly dis­play their con­tri­bu­tions to Adolf Hitler’s air­force and just about every war in the 20th Cen­tu­ry — Video

Sav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

HAFNARFJORDUR – Sav­ing Ice­land has closed access to RioTinto’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Ice­land. About 20 pro­tes­tors have locked their arms in met­al tubes and climbed onto cranes on the smelter site. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es plans for a new RioT­in­to-Alcan smelter in Keil­isnes or Thor­lak­shöfn, expan­sion of the exist­ing smelter, and a new coal and nuclear pow­ered smelter in South Africa.

Alcan arms trade

military systems

Incrim­i­nat­ing pho­to evi­dence of ALCAN involve­ment in the arms indus­try

‘A Brief Look at EADS’ — ALCANs major mil­i­tary part­ner the way they want to be seen — Video

EADS proud­ly dis­play their con­tri­bu­tions to Adolf Hitler’s air­force and just about every war in the 20th Cen­tu­ry — Video

Sav­ing Ice­land
Press Release (in Ice­landic below)
July 24th, 2007

LANDSVIRKJUN INVOLVED IN COAL & NUCLEAR POWERED RIO TINTO-ALCAN SMELTER IN AFRICA

HAFNARFJORDUR – Sav­ing Ice­land has closed access to RioTinto’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Ice­land. About 20 pro­tes­tors have locked their arms in met­al tubes and climbed onto cranes on the smelter site. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es plans for a new RioT­in­to-Alcan smelter in Keil­isnes or Thor­lak­shöfn, expan­sion of the exist­ing smelter, and a new coal and nuclear pow­ered smelter in South Africa.

“Protests against Alcan have been suc­cess­ful. Of course the peo­ple of Haf­nafjor­dur have stopped the expan­sion of Straumsvik and recent­ly, in Kashipur, North­east India, Alcan had to give up it’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in a baux­ite mine because of protests against their human rights vio­la­tions and envi­ron­men­tal deves­ta­tion. Alcan has been accused of cul­tur­al geno­cide in Kashipur, because min­ing and dams have already dis­placed 150.000 main­ly trib­al peo­ple there . Norsk Hydro left the project when police tor­tured and opened fire on pro­tes­tors, and then Alcan moved in,” says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son.

“This case and sim­i­lar cas­es, and Alcan’s involve­ment in arms pro­duc­tion, shows how ruth­less they are. The takeover by RioT­in­to is rather unlike­ly to make Alcan into a respon­si­ble cor­po­rate cit­i­zen.”

“RioT­in­to-Alcan haven’t blown off their inter­est in a new smelter in Ice­land. Haf­nafjor­dur is still being named by Alcan despite the ref­er­en­dum , and a new smelter might be built in Thor­lak­shöfn or Keil­isnes. Sav­ing Ice­land rejects this, and we express our sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple in South Africa oppos­ing RioTinto-Alcan’s coal- and nuclear pow­ered smelter plans there. Landsvirkjun has also got­ten involved in this , so it is very impor­tant that peo­ple in Ice­land reject these neo-colo­nial devel­op­ments that destroy the envi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties. ” says Úlfhildar­son.

Doc­u­men­ta­tion of Alcan’s links to the arms indus­try, the South-African deal with Landsvirkjun, and some of the his­to­ry of Rio Tin­to is attached to this press release.

More infor­ma­tion:
http://www.savingiceland.org
Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son

ALCAN’S LINKS TO THE ARMS INDUSTRY
RioTinto-Alcan’s alu­mini­um alloys are sold for a whole range of mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. Alcan is the main sup­pli­er for Euro­pean Aero­space and Defense and Space, pro­duc­er of mil­i­tary heli­copters, mil­i­tary satel­lites, the Eurofight­er Tycoon, Mirage F1, EF18 Hor­net and oth­er jets . EADS is the world’s lead­ing pro­duc­er of mis­siles . Deals made between the EADS and Alcan are pre­sent­ed as between Air­bus and Alcan, to cloud the mil­i­tary involve­ment ; it is com­mon for all alu­mini­um com­pa­nies to hide their ‘defense’ prod­ucts under the title ‘aero­space’. But at the same time, mil­i­tary prod­ucts need to be mar­ket­ed, so images of fight­er jets are dis­played on Alcan Aerospace’s web­site .

EADS claims to sell to coun­tries that “guar­an­tee a respon­si­ble approach to high-tech mil­i­tary air sys­tems. It draws on decades of exper­tise in mil­i­tary avi­a­tion.” But can you trust a com­pa­ny that is sick enough to add video frag­ments from Nazi Ger­many, glo­ri­fy­ing first world war and Nazi air­planes , on the same web­page as this quote?

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: ALUMINIUM TO IRAQ
Alcan fur­ther sup­plies Boe­ing a “vari­ety of high per­for­mance alu­minum-prod­ucts” . Boe­ing pro­duces the Apache and Chi­nook mil­i­tary heli­copters used in Iraq and less known prod­ucts that bright­en your day, such as the the ‘Small Diam­e­ter Bomb’ and the ‘Joint Direct Attack Muni­tion.’ Then there are Alcan’s asso­ci­a­tions with Das­sault ., a French arms man­u­fac­tur­er, which pro­duces a range of alu­mini­um fight­er-jets . Alcan has also been pro­mot­ing itself to Naval ser­vices .

RIO TINTO-ALCAN: PLANS FOR AFRICA
RioT­in­to-Alcan has signed a let­ter of intent with the Govt. of Cameroon to expand the exist­ing Alu­cam smelter with 150.000 Mtpy, and build a new 150.000 Mtpy smelter. The Lom Pan­gar Dam, to be con­struct­ed by the gov­ern­ment, would pow­er this . Alcan have a large num­ber of projects planned Africa – their “green­field project pipeline” includes Cameroon, Ghana, Guinea, Mada­gas­car and South Africa. ‘Green­field’ means that untouched nature will be destroyed for the mines, infra­struc­ture, smelters, and dams that would pow­er them.

APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA, ESKOM AND LANDSVIRKJUN
Alcan was active in apartheid South Africa between 1949–1986 . Now they want to come back and devel­op a new smelter in the near zero-tax ‘Coega Devel­op­ment Zone’ near Port Eliz­a­beth, pow­ered by coal and nuclear deliv­ered by Eskom, one of the worlds largest elec­tric­i­ty com­pa­nies. “Thir­ty per­cent of the poor com­mu­ni­ties of South Africa don’t have elec­tric­i­ty, and now that will be going straight to Alcan,” says Ler­a­to Maregele, a S‑African activist vis­it­ing Ice­land .
Elkom is a ‘sis­ter-com­pa­ny’ of Iceland’s Landsvirkjun . Landsvirkun want to be part of this deal and more gen­er­al­ly branch out to Africa.
Landsvirkjun can be expect­ed to try and sell their exper­tise to Eskom’s var­i­ous hydropro­jects in Mozam­biqu, Ugan­da and Con­go. They will try to be part of damming the Con­go riv­er, a project twice the size of China’s Three Gorges, that will have a dev­as­tat­ing effect on the cen­tral African rain­for­est.

RIO TINTO’S ABYSMAL RECORD
While we can con­clude that Alcan itself heav­i­ly sup­plies the arms indus­try and is invad­ing Africa as it invades Ice­land, it is now part of Rio Tin­to, the world’s largest pri­vate min­ing com­pa­ny, “long crit­i­cized for gross human rights vio­la­tions dat­ing back to its sup­port of apartheid in South­ern Africa.”
We will name some of the many cas­es. Rio Tin­to has been know to sub­ject it’s own work­ers to poi­son­ing in mines, hav­ing secu­ri­ty guards shoot­ing locals on the spot look­ing for small amounts of gold in one of it’s mines and hav­ing union-mem­bers spied upon or fired in its Brazil­ian gold mines.

Rio Tin­to has been involved with mer­ce­nary scan­dals. The Papua New Guinean (PNG) Gov­ern­ment, in joint ven­ture with Rio Tin­to, hired pri­vate mer­ce­nary com­pa­nies San­d­line Inter­na­tion­al, a Lon­don-based pri­vate mil­i­tary com­pa­ny, com­posed pri­mar­i­ly of for­mer British and South African spe­cial forces sol­diers, which had been involved in the civ­il wars in Ango­la and Sier­ra Leone and were now payed to fight the pop­u­la­tion of Bougainville, an island near PNG. The mine had been closed by the peo­ple of the island because of the dis­as­trous eco­log­i­cal effects .
Cit­i­zens of Bougainville have filed a class action law­suit in the Unit­ed States against Rio Tin­to aris­ing from the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the mine and war crimes occur­ring dur­ing the civ­il war years. In August 2006, the Unit­ed States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Cir­cuit reject­ed Rio Tin­to’s effort to dis­miss the claim.

S. Das & F. Padel, “Dou­ble Death — Aluminium’s Links with Geno­cide”, Eco­nom­ic and Polit­i­cal Week­ly, Dec. 2005, also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/doubledeath
Chan­dra Sid­dan, “Blood and Baux­ite”, Mon­tre­al Mir­ror, Nov 20–26, 2003, Vol. 19 No. 23.
“Smelter Expan­sion on Land­fill?”, Ice­land Review, June 20th 2007.
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
EADS web­site, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/combat_aircraft/combat_aircraft.html
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “A Brief Glance at EADS”, http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/1/10/41434101.mov
AFX News, June 13, 2007, http://www.abcmoney.co.uk/news/13200786914.htm
Alcan Press Release, “Com­pa­ny To Pro­vide Crit­i­cal Alu­minum Mate­ri­als For Full Range Of Air­craft Includ­ing A380”, June 13, 2007, http://www.decisionplus.com/fr/fintools/stock_news.asp?Market=TSE&Symbol=AL&NewsID=20070613/021501
http://www.alcanaerospace.com/Aerospace/aerospace.nsf/html/FWFGHOME?Open&LG=1, dd. 22–7‑2007.
EADS pro­mo­tion film, “90 years of air­craft his­to­ry in Augs­burg”, http://www.eads.com/1024/en/businet/defence/mas/mas.html and http://www.eads.com/xml/content/OF00000000400004/0/64/41488640.asx
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.2.
Boe­ing Web­site Image Gallery of Small Diam­e­ter Bomb: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Boe­ing Image Gallery: http://www.boeing.com/companyoffices/gallery/images/missiles/sdb/sdb.html
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan Con­tributes to Suc­cess of Eighth Ari­ane 5 ECA Launch,” Dec 13th, 2006.
http://www.dassault-aviation.com/
“Pacif­ic 2004, Inter­na­tion­al Naval and Mar­itime Expo­si­tion for the South­ern Pacif­ic,” Aero­space Mar­itime and Defence Con­fer­ence, http://www.ideea.com/pacific2004/embassy/smithbriefing.pdf
US Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, “Min­er­als Year­book 2005,” Sep­tem­ber 2006, p. 5.5.
Alcan Press Release, “Alcan to Explore Devel­op­ment of Baux­ite Mine and Alu­mi­na Refin­ery in Mada­gas­car,” Sep­tem­ber 11th 2006.
Alcan’t web­site, http://www.alcant.co.za/history.html
Grapevine, Issue 10, July 13, 2007. Inter­view also avail­able at http://www.savingiceland.org/node/870
RUV News, 26-02-2007, http://ruv.is/heim/frettir/frett/store64/item145391/. Note that RUV has Alcoa and Alcan con­fused.
Inter­na­tion­al Rivers Net­work & Earth­Life Africa, “Eskom’s Expand­ing Empire
The Social and Eco­log­i­cal Foot­print of Africa’s Largest Pow­er Util­i­ty,” June 2003, http://www.irn.org/programs/safrica/index.php?id=030601eskomfactsheet.html
Asia-Pacif­ic Human Rights Net­work, “Rio Tinto’s Record and the Glob­al Com­pact,” July 13th 2001, http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=623.
SBS Australia’s tele­vi­sion pro­gram Date­line in a report on Rio Tin­to, August 2000.
Wikipedia Ger­many (22–7‑2007), http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandline-Affäre
Con­tract between PNG Gov­ern­ment and San­d­line: http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/PNG/htmls/Sandline.html.
Sarei v Rio Tin­to, 456 F.3d 1069 (9th Cir. 2006), USA.

DEADLY ALCAN2

Rossport Solidarity Camp Face Threat of Eviction

Court Report.
23/07/07

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp tem­porar­i­ly thwart­ed Mayo Co. Council’s attempt to secure a per­ma­nent injunc­tion at Castle­bar Cir­cuit Court today. Judge Har­vey Ken­ny adjourned the case to next Tues­day 31st of July to give mem­bers of the camp time to seek legal advice. Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil was refused an inter­locu­to­ry injunc­tion against the camp but an inter­im order was upheld. The coun­cil has under­tak­en to not to act on this order while the case is adjourned.

Court Report.
23/07/07

Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp tem­porar­i­ly thwart­ed Mayo Co. Council’s attempt to secure a per­ma­nent injunc­tion at Castle­bar Cir­cuit Court today. Judge Har­vey Ken­ny adjourned the case to next Tues­day 31st of July to give mem­bers of the camp time to seek legal advice. Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil was refused an inter­locu­to­ry injunc­tion against the camp but an inter­im order was upheld. The coun­cil has under­tak­en to not to act on this order while the case is adjourned.

Ear­li­er this morn­ing mem­bers of the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp and sev­er­al local sup­port­ers arrived at Castle­bar Cir­cuit Court on foot of a Court Order issued by Judge Don­agh McDon­agh last Fri­day 20th of July. This order cit­ed Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was an unau­tho­rised devel­op­ment in a Can­di­date Area of Spe­cial Con­ser­va­tion.

Eoin O’Leidhin was the only one of the three peo­ple named on the court order present at the hear­ing. Mayo Co. Coun­cil was grant­ed an appli­ca­tion to have Niall Har­nett added as an extra respondent/defendant to the injunc­tion when he sub­mit­ted a state­ment rep­re­sent­ing the camp’s posi­tion. Judge Har­vey Ken­ny put the case back to the after­noon so that mem­bers of the camp could con­sult with the Co. Coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tives and their solic­i­tor Michael Browne.

When the court recon­vened, John Kiely JC, out­line the coun­cils case. Mr Kiely stat­ed that the camp has caused “irrepara­ble dam­age” at the site and that the camp was “an unau­tho­rised devel­op­ment” con­trary to the Plan­ning Act of 2000 sec­tion 160. He informed the court that the council’s deci­sion to act was due to a report from Karen Gaynor of the Nation­al Parks & Wildlife Ser­vice (NPWS) and not because of “greater and bet­ter” issues regard­ing the camps par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Shell to Sea Cam­paign.

Mr Kiely coun­tered Niall Harnett’s argu­ment that the coun­cil failed to give warn­ing [of the coun­cils inten­tion to seek evic­tion] stat­ing that “this is a nul­li­ty under sec­tion 3” of the Plan­ning act.

Speak­ing about the res­i­dents of the camp Mr Kiely stat­ed that they were “gen­uine pro­test­ers and con­sci­en­tious objec­tors to progress”. He acknowl­edged the many pre­cau­tions tak­en by the camp to min­imise the foot­print of the camp but argued that had “Joe Blogs been in front of the court he would be treat­ed the same way. He point­ed out that the coun­cil had an oblig­a­tion to enforce the plan­ning laws and that the court “with a heavy heart” had to deal with many trav­ellers in the same sit­u­a­tion.

In response, Niall Har­nett, who rep­re­sent­ed the Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp, dis­put­ed the council’s claims of irrepara­ble dam­age and that autho­ri­sa­tion of the site was “implic­it in the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and co-oper­a­tion between the camp and the NPWS”. Niall told the court that the camp had car­ried out the rec­om­men­da­tions set out by the ser­vice. Niall referred to an inde­pen­dent impact state­ment that was includ­ed in a state­ment that he had ear­li­er hand­ed up to the Judge. This report by, Bob Wil­son, a direc­tor of Celt – Cen­tre for Envi­ron­ment Liv­ing & Train­ing and the Clare Bio­di­ver­si­ty group stat­ed that he is con­fi­dent that the veg­e­ta­tion would soon take hold again.

Tak­ing issue with the urgency of the council’s action Niall told the court that the camp had just received the papers on Fri­day and that the camp had not time to seek legal advice. He point­ed out that the coun­cil stat­ed that they had expect­ed large num­bers to attend the camp at the week­end but num­bers were rel­a­tive­ly small at the camp over the week­end.

In his argu­ment Niall told the court that the camp had not been con­sult­ed or warned about the coun­cils intent to seek a court order. Niall said, “that although Agen­da 21 had not been rat­i­fied in law… it is coun­cil pol­i­cy” and that con­sul­ta­tion is a prin­ci­ple of Agen­da 21. Niall also stat­ed that the council’s solic­i­tor Michael Browne had accept­ed that short notice was giv­en. Niall then told the court that the order was inap­pro­pri­ate.

Niall request­ed to read his state­ment in to evi­dence for the court but the judge told him that the impor­tant points were made and that it may take some time to read.

Niall accept­ed that the site did not have plan­ning per­mis­sion but told the court “it is a gen­uine claim that we didn’t know” that the camp “was not an autho­rised devel­op­ment”.

Judge Ken­ny sug­gest­ed that there was no get­ting over the plan­ning per­mis­sion bar­ri­er. In an act of good­will Niall invit­ed Judge Ken­ny to vis­it the camp.

John Kiely JC assumed that Niall was mak­ing an appli­ca­tion to adjourn the case and said that he could see the court giv­ing “lib­er­al time” to seek legal advice. He went on to ques­tion the cre­den­tials of Bob Wil­son and reit­er­at­ed the council’s posi­tion that the camp was an unau­tho­rised devel­op­ment.

Niall Har­nett con­clud­ed that the “bal­ance of harm was a test for any injunc­tion” and that the harm to those liv­ing on the camp and would be greater.

Judge Ken­ny agreed that short notice was giv­en. Judge Ken­ny stat­ed, “that they were enti­tled to some breath­ing space” but would not con­cede to Niall’s request to putting the case back to after the courts sum­mer break. Before he rose Judge Ken­ny ensured that the coun­cil under­took not to act on the inter­im court order before the next court sit­ting. Judge Ken­ny adjourned the case to next Tues­day 31st of July 2007 when he will make his rul­ing on the mat­ter.

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print­able ver­sion with com­ments atom feed of com­ments

Dutch/Belgian Earth First! gathering 24–26 August 2007

Join the Dutch EF! gath­er­ing and get involved in DIY and ion­for­ma­tive work­shops on the three most exten­sive threats to this plan­et: cli­mate change, one third decrease in bio­di­ver­si­ty and the increas­ing abuse of nat­ur­al resources. We can’t wait any longer: NOW is the time to shrink or we’ll drown!

Join the Dutch EF! gath­er­ing and get involved in DIY and ion­for­ma­tive work­shops on the three most exten­sive threats to this plan­et: cli­mate change, one third decrease in bio­di­ver­si­ty and the increas­ing abuse of nat­ur­al resources. We can’t wait any longer: NOW is the time to shrink or we’ll drown!

From Fri­day evening the 24th until Sun­day evening the 26th of August there will be work­shops, dis­cus­sions, brain­storms and pre­sen­ta­tions about eg the five coal-fired pow­er sta­tions planned to be built in the Nether­lands, cur­rent cam­paigns, cli­mate neu­tral squat­ting, DIY wind­mills, eco­nom­ic shrink and much more!

For more info vis­it www.groenfront.nl or send an email to 2007@groenfront.nl Don’t hes­i­tate to sub­mit your own work­shop sug­ges­tions.

Chil­dren’s facil­i­ties avail­able. Don’t bring dogs or jour­nal­ists.

Iceland actions — Scotland & Iceland

Sav­ing Ice­land Block­ades Cen­tu­ry Smelter at Grun­dar­tan­gi
19.07.2007

News of Sav­ing Ice­land’s lat­est action as part of the Sum­mer of Resis­tance to the alu­mini­um indus­try in Ice­land.

Iceland smelter blockadeSav­ing Ice­land Block­ades Cen­tu­ry Smelter at Grun­dar­tan­gi
19.07.2007

News of Sav­ing Ice­land’s lat­est action as part of the Sum­mer of Resis­tance to the alu­mini­um indus­try in Ice­land.

GRUNDARTANGI – Sav­ing Ice­land has this after­noon closed the sin­gle sup­ply road from High­way 1 to the Century/Nordural smelter on Hvalfjor­dur and the steel fac­to­ry Elkem – Ice­landic Alloys. Sav­ing Ice­land oppos­es the planned new Cen­tu­ry smelter at Hel­gu­vik and the expan­sion of the Ice­landic Alloys fac­to­ry. Activists have used lock-ons (met­al arm tubes) to form a human block­ade on the road and have occu­pied a con­struc­tion site crane.

Cen­tu­ry Alu­minum, a part of the recent­ly formed Russ­ian-Swiss RUSAL/Glencore/SUAL con­glo­morate, want to build a sec­ond smelter in Ice­land in Hel­gu­vik with a pro­ject­ed capac­i­ty of at least 250.000 met­ric tons per annum. The planned site is designed to accom­mo­date fur­ther expan­sion. Grun­dar­tan­gi has this year been extend­ed to 260.000 mtpa.

Cur­rent­ly, an envi­ron­men­tal impact assess­ment (1) is under review for the Hel­gu­vik smelter, pro­duced by the con­struc­tion con­sul­tants HRV (Honnun/Rafhonnun/VST).

“It is absurd that an engi­neer­ing com­pa­ny with a vest­ed inter­est in the smelter con­struc­tion could be con­sid­ered to pro­duce an objec­tive impact assess­ment. The doc­u­ment makes absurd claims, such as that pol­lu­tion is real­ly not a prob­lem because Hel­gu­vik is such a windy place that the pol­lu­tion will just blow away,” says Sav­ing Iceland’s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son.”

“This smelter will demand new geot­her­mal pow­er plants at Seltún, Sand­fell, Aus­tureng­jar and Tröl­la­dyn­gju. In addi­tion to the Hengill area which has already been seri­ous­ly dam­aged by Reyk­javik Ener­gy. The impact assess­ment does not take these into account, nor the impact of the huge amount of
pow­er lines and pylons required. The plants will ruin the nat­ur­al and scenic val­ue of the whole penin­su­la. Also, the rec­quired capac­i­ty, 400 MW, exceeds the nat­ur­al capacti­ty of the geot­her­mal spots, and they will cool down in three to four decades (2). And Cen­tu­ry admits it wants the site to expand fur­ther in the next decades. So it is obvi­ous that this smelter will not just ruin Reyk­janes but also need
addi­tion­al hydropow­er.”

The impact pro­ce­dure seems to be com­plete­ly irrel­e­vant any­way, since the com­pa­ny has com­plet­ed an equi­ty offer­ing worth $360 mil­lion to be deployed for part­ly financ­ing the con­struc­tion of the Hel­gu­vik smelter project (3). This indi­cates that Cen­tu­ry already has high lev­el assur­ances that the project is to con­tin­ue no mat­ter what.

This com­plete­ly con­tra­dicts the claims the new gov­ern­ment of
Ice­land, and par­tic­u­lar­ly it’s envi­ron­ment min­is­ter Þórunn
Svein­b­jarnardót­tir, is opposed to new smelter projects.

Ice­landic Alloys wants to expand its facil­i­ty for pro­duc­ing
fer­rosil­i­con for the steel indus­try. It is in fact one of Iceland’s largest con­trib­u­tors to green­house gas­es and oth­er pol­lu­tants (4).

“Expan­sion of Ice­landic Alloys and Cen­tu­ry con­sid­er­ably con­tribute to Iceland’s green­house emis­sions. If there are no fur­ther expan­sions of heavy indus­try beyond Grun­dar­tan­gi and ALCOA Fjar­daal, Ice­land will emit 38% more green­house gas­es than in 1990. If oth­er expan­sion plans con­tin­ue, lev­els would rise to an incred­i­ble 63% above 1990 lev­els. (5). That is com­plete­ly irre­spon­si­ble.

This shows that all the talk about ‘green ener­gy’ from hydro and geot­her­mal is, in real­i­ty, a lie. Ice­landers have to rise up against these for­eign cor­po­ra­tions,” says Úlfhildar­son.

More infor­ma­tion:
http://www.savingiceland.org

Notes and ref­er­ences:
1. Envi­ron­men­tal Impact Ass­es­ment, HRV, may 2007, http://www.hrv.is/media/files/Frummatsskýrsla_2007-05–02_low%20res.pdf
2. Land­vernd, Let­ter to nation­al plan­ning agency, 28th June 2007, http://www.landvernd.is/myndir/Umsogn_Helguvik.pdf
3. Cred­it Suisse, June 12th 2007, http://www.newratings.com/
analyst_news/article_1548857.html
4. Ice­landic Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, March 2006, http://
unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/islnc4.pdf
5. Idem.

=================================
Ice­landic Embassy Tar­get­ed by Activists
Iceland Scottish consulate
On the morn­ing of 20th July, the Ice­landic embassy on Queen St, Edin­burgh was tar­get­ed by mem­bers of Sav­ing Iceland(1). Paint was thrown on the build­ing, the lock was glued and a mes­sage was affixed to the exte­ri­or read­ing “The Whole World is Watch­ing”. “Ice­land Bleeds” was also paint­ed on the steps. The action served as response to recent acts of police bru­tal­i­ty against Sav­ing Ice­land activists in Reyk­javik who con­tin­ue to oppose the assault on the Ice­landic wilder­ness by heavy indus­try.

Ice­landic Police attacked a non-vio­lent Reclaim the Streets protest in the cen­tre of Reyk­javik, on July 14th. Video evidence(2) shows Ice­landic police vio­lent­ly throw­ing pro­test­ers to the ground while oth­ers were punched and kicked. Five peace­ful pro­test­ers were held in police cells, one with a bro­ken rib after the police attack. The Reclaim the Streets demon­stra­tion was part of a con­tin­u­ing action camp held near Reyk­javik this sum­mer, involv­ing activists from across the globe, includ­ing Scot­land.

The recent expan­sion of large-scale alu­mini­um pro­duc­tion in Ice­land has involved a bare­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic process and a com­pre­hen­sive dev­as­ta­tion of vast nat­ur­al areas on a scale unprece­dent­ed in Europe today.

The Sav­ing Ice­land activists respon­si­ble for the action against the Ice­landic Embassy state:
“We are send­ing a clear mes­sage to the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment that the destruc­tion of unique ecosys­tems has envi­ron­men­tal impli­ca­tions for us all. The repres­sion of those who are oppos­ing these destruc­tive mega–projects is unac­cept­able. In the con­text of the cur­rent cli­mate cri­sis we must all take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the destruc­tion of our plan­et by crim­i­nal cor­po­ra­tions such as Alcoa. The whole world is watch­ing”.

The action in Edin­burgh was an expres­sion of sol­i­dar­i­ty with the activists and Ice­landic peo­ple who are attempt­ing to stand up to the unjust rule of the alu­mini­um indus­try over democ­ra­cy. Sav­ing Ice­land activists state: “We will not stop until the cor­po­rate inva­sion of the Ice­landic wilder­ness has ceased. The world is not dying, it is being mur­dered. And those who are doing it need to be held account­able.”

(1) Sav­ing Ice­land is an Ice­landic based direct action group opposed to con­tin­ued expan­sion of heavy indus­try in Ice­land. It involves par­tic­i­pants from all over the world in col­lec­tive resis­tance to the Ice­landic state’s “Mas­ter­plan” which includes the damming of every major glacial riv­er in Ice­land by 2020 sole­ly for the pur­pose of alu­minum smelt­ing. Sav­ing Ice­land has organ­ised three sum­mers of inter­na­tion­al protest to halt this vast destruc­tion. It will not cease it’s oppo­si­tion until all alu­minum pro­duc­tion leaves Ice­land. For more info vis­it www.savingiceland.org

(2) Video doc­u­men­ta­tion of the police vio­lence on Sat­ur­day 14th in Reyk­javik can be found at the fol­low­ing link. Note the use of pres­sure points applied for an extend­ed peri­od to the man on the ground and the accom­pa­ny­ing and pro­longed scream­ing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NenbTc0cQs4&mode=user&search

=====================================

The Clown Army and Sav­ing Ice­land invade Reyk­javik Ener­gy build­ing
20.07.2007

Clowns redec­o­rate Reyk­javik Ener­gy O.R.s inte­ri­or with ban­ner. Straw­ber­ries were offered by the cor­po­rate scum, but the clowns were not swayed from their action.

Today 25 pro­tes­tors from Sav­ing Ice­land went into Orku­veitu Reyk­javíkur (Reyk­javik Ener­gy, O.R.) and hung up a ban­ner inside stat­ing: ‘Vop­navei­ta Reyk­javíkur?’ (‘Reyk­javik Arms-deal­ers?’). The ban­ner was not hung out­side as planned ear­li­er because of weath­er con­di­tions. Pro­tes­tors stayed in the build­ing from 15.15 until 16.00 hrs.

Páll Erland speak­ing on behalf of O.R. states that they offered straw­ber­ries to pro­tes­tors and wel­comed Sav­ing Ice­land to put up the ban­ner. While Erland might be hap­py to dis­cuss straw­ber­ries with their vis­i­tors, they cer­tain­ly did not give per­mis­sion to hang up a ban­ner indi­cat­ing that they sell ener­gy to com­pa­nies known to be involved in arms pro­duc­tion and seri­ous human rights vio­la­tions (as doc­u­ment­ed in our ear­li­er press release). Sav­ing Ice­land has now con­tact­ed O.R., request­ing they put up the ban­ner and dis­cuss pub­licly with us the ethics of sell­ing ener­gy to cor­po­rate crim­i­nals such as Cen­tu­ry-RUSAL and Alcan-RioT­in­to.

Mayo shell site blockaded, later occupied, jailings & solidarity demo

13.07.2007

Local Pro­test­ers Block­ade Shell Con­struc­tion site in Mayo

A num­ber of Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers have estab­lished a non-vio­lent block­ade of the road lead­ing to the pro­posed gas refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Two pro­tes­tors are locked on to an immo­bi­lized vehi­cle, pre­vent­ing access to the site.

Bellanaboy car blockade13.07.2007

Local Pro­test­ers Block­ade Shell Con­struc­tion site in Mayo

A num­ber of Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers have estab­lished a non-vio­lent block­ade of the road lead­ing to the pro­posed gas refin­ery site at Bel­lan­aboy. Two pro­tes­tors are locked on to an immo­bi­lized vehi­cle, pre­vent­ing access to the site.

“It is vital for the preser­va­tion of Erris and the pro­tec­tion of its peo­ple that all work on this destruc­tive and exploita­tive project be stopped imme­di­ate­ly. Despite a con­temptible strat­e­gy by the author­i­ties that either ignores or mali­cious­ly per­se­cutes those oppos­ing the project, res­i­dents remain res­olute in their oppo­si­tion.” says John Mon­aghan

This action comes in the wake of the con­vic­tion of three local res­i­dents on a charge of assault, a charge they vig­or­ous­ly deny. The judges’ ver­dict has been met with sur­prise and cha­grin from the com­mu­ni­ty.

Today Shell to Sea sup­port­ers are clear­ly demon­strat­ing that they will not be deterred by Gar­dai vio­lence or false impris­on­ment

for time­line etc go to http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83416

Occu­pa­tion of refin­ery site

Break­ing news — 10pm

100 peo­ple have just occu­pied the pro­posed refin­ery site in Bal­linaboy!

Peo­ple jumped the main front gates of the refin­ery site and just walked on. Over 100 peo­ple occu­pied the site. The atmos­phere was very relaxed and peace­ful.

Peo­ple chat­ted to the secu­ri­ty staff and chal­lenged them as to why they feel the neces­si­ty to work for Shell.

Peo­ple stayed on site for rough­ly half an hour. They had a walk around, and a good look around. Peo­ple walked right to the top of the site and back down again.

There were no Gar­dai there for the dura­tion of the occu­pa­tion.

Peo­ple have just left the site togeth­er as a block and are going on to have a bon­fire togeth­er and with the fish­er­men that have just been released from prison.

This fol­lows a day of all out action by the peo­ple in Erris. Two peo­ple had locked on this morn­ing to a vehi­cle. This blo­cade, sup­port­ed by road blo­cades done by peo­ple on anoth­er road pre­vent­ed the trucks from work­ing for the vast major­i­ty of the day. The two men that ‘locked on’ have both been charged with numer­ous pub­lic order and road traf­fic offences. They are due to appear in the Dis­trict Court in Castle­bar on Wednes­day.

Shell to Sea cam­paign­ers jailed for police assault

A text mes­sage and short phone call last night revealed that three Shell to Sea pro­tes­tors have been jailed on assault charges against the Gar­da.

The text mes­sage from one at the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp said the three men were found guilty of assaults on the police.

One man received three months, anoth­er one month and the last is fac­ing four months in prison.

A forth man is also fac­ing the same charges.

An appeal is set for today to see if they can over turn the charges, but as the mes­sage I received last night said it did not look good.

For fur­ther updates keep your eye on here or on: http://indymedia.ie/mayo

Sol­i­dar­i­ty with Jailed anti-Shell Pro­test­ers- Pick­et at Depart­ment of Jus­tice, Dublin

No Jus­tice in Ross­port- the Gar­daí work for Shell
Mayo jail solidarity demo
Sup­port­ers of the cam­paign to have Shell site their refin­ery off­shore and for the Irish govt to secure Irish nat­ur­al resources for the peo­ple showed their sol­i­dar­i­ty with the three Erris fish­er­ment who have been wrong­ly jailed. A large group of about forty pro­test­ers hand­ed in a short let­ter (signed by them all) to the min­is­ter express­ing out­rage at the treat­ment of the three men.

The Gar­daí com­plained that the pres­ence of such as a large group of peo­ple at the entrance of the build­ing had health and safe­ty impli­ca­tions, and tried to order those present to move, but it was poined out the health and safe­ty impli­ca­tions of Shel­l’s scheme for Mayo were a much greater threat to us all.

Gar­da rein­force­ments arrived and tried to intim­i­date the pro­test­ers, who includ­ed some Sinn Féin and Green Par­ty mem­bers (as well as mem­bers of small­er groups and none), but no one paid any atten­tion to them, since they are wide­ly recog­nised as sim­ply being used as mer­cener­ies for Shell now, their author­i­ty is slip­ping away.

Relat­ed Link: http://www.youtube.com/shelltohell

First Directions to The Camp for Climate Action 2007.….

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

The camp dates are draw­ing near­er and near­er and we’re all des­per­ate to know where it will be… but we’ll just have to wait a lit­tle longer!

But what we do know is that if you get your­self to Staines rail­way sta­tion in West Lon­don by 10am on Tues­day 14th August, you will be greet­ed by our friend­ly wel­come team and prompt­ly trans­port­ed via a mag­i­cal mys­tery tour, to the camp! (There will also be lifts to the camp lat­er in the day and through­out the week.)

Camp for Cli­mate Action comes to Heathrow this sum­mer.

Avi­a­tion is the fastest grow­ing source of green­house gas emis­sions in the UK, and all our efforts to tack­le cli­mate change in oth­er sec­tors are undone by the mas­sive growth in air trav­el.
Hold­ing the camp at Heathrow aims to high­light the luna­cy of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans, tar­get indus­try giants prof­i­teer­ing from the cli­mate cri­sis, and raise aware­ness of the need to fly less.
The camp will also sup­port local res­i­dents in their long-term strug­gle against the build­ing of a third run­way and the destruc­tion of their com­mu­ni­ties.

There will be a day of mass direct action aim­ing to dis­rupt the activ­i­ties of the air­port and the avi­a­tion indus­try, but in the inter­ests of pub­lic safe­ty there will be no attempt to block­ade run­ways.

Although the loca­tion is dif­fer­ent, the phi­los­o­phy of the camp remains the same: to be a place for the bur­geon­ing net­work of peo­ple tak­ing rad­i­cal action on cli­mate change around the coun­try to come togeth­er for a week of low-impact liv­ing, edu­ca­tion, debate, net­work­ing, strate­gis­ing, cel­e­bra­tion, and direct action.
The camp will fea­ture over 100 work­shops cov­er­ing top­ics such as cli­mate change impacts, car­bon off­set­ting, bio­fu­els, peak oil, per­ma­cul­ture, prac­ti­cal renew­ables, cam­paign strat­e­gy, skills for direct action, and much more.
Run with­out lead­ers by every­one who comes along, it will be a work­ing eco­log­i­cal vil­lage using renew­able ener­gy, com­post­ing waste and sourc­ing food local­ly.

It all comes down to us, now. We are the last gen­er­a­tion that can do any­thing about cli­mate change. In 20 or 30 years’ time, should we not change our ways, we’ll be com­mit­ted to emis­sions increas­es that will see forests burn, soils decay, oceans rise, and mil­lions of peo­ple die. If we don’t get this issue right, so much else is lost too.

We still have time, but not for long. Make it count.

Why tar­get avi­a­tion?

It is the fastest grow­ing source of CO2 emis­sions.
It has been left out of the first fal­ter­ing frame­works to con­trol emis­sions, eg. the Kyoto Pro­to­col and the Cli­mate Bill.
It is the most dam­ag­ing form of trans­port.
Unlike the oth­er high emit­ting sec­tors (e.g. ener­gy and food pro­duc­tion), there is no alter­na­tive sus­tain­able tech­nol­o­gy.

The only way to reduce emis­sions from avi­a­tion is to reduce the num­ber of flights.
And unlike those oth­er sec­tors, avi­a­tion is not a neces­si­ty.
There is a major air­port expan­sion pro­gramme planned at 21 air­ports, with increas­es in capac­i­ty equiv­a­lent to a new Heathrow every 5 years. This expan­sion pro­gramme locks us into increased emis­sions, and undoes all our oth­er efforts else­where to reduce emis­sions.

Why tar­get Heathrow?

Nowhere in the UK is there a larg­er source of CO2 emis­sions. Most coun­tries emit less green­house gas­es than Heathrow’s planes.

Heathrow is the world’s busiest inter­na­tion­al air­port. It is an icon­ic glob­al sym­bol of avi­a­tion.
Heathrow is the heart of the UK?s avi­a­tion indus­try.
Heathrow is the cen­tral plank of the gov­ern­men­t’s air­port expan­sion plans. Heathrow has a planned third run­way that can be stopped.

The third run­way would bull­doze entire vil­lages and destroy com­mu­ni­ties. There is a big, estab­lished, long-term local cam­paign against Heathrow and BAA that we can join forces with.

There is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to high­light bias in the cor­rupt plan­ning process in favour of big busi­ness and devel­op­ment.

The pres­ence of Har­mondsworth deten­tion cen­tre near­by high­lights the plight of envi­ron­men­tal refugees and the fact that cli­mate change is fun­da­men­tal­ly an issue of social and glob­al injus­tice.

Cabinet refuses consultation with Herefordshire public: ‘Hereford Eight Arrested’

July 12 2007 — Here­ford­shire Coun­cil Cab­i­net refused this after­noon to guar­an­tee that they would con­sult with the pub­lic or even allow full coun­cil to debate the future of the Dine­dor Ser­pent.

July 12 2007 — Here­ford­shire Coun­cil Cab­i­net refused this after­noon to guar­an­tee that they would con­sult with the pub­lic or even allow full coun­cil to debate the future of the Dine­dor Ser­pent.

Cab­i­net mem­ber Cllr. June French told reporters and pro­test­ers that it would not be an agen­da item today, but that it would be dis­cussed at an unspec­i­fied future date. She could not guar­an­tee that it would be debat­ed by the full coun­cil or allowed a vote. Cllr. French announced an inter­nal inquiry into how the coun­cil had han­dled the pub­lic­i­ty around the Ser­pent.

8 pro­test­ers sub­se­quent­ly refused to leave the Coun­cil build­ing until Cab­i­net mem­bers guar­an­teed a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion. When this guar­an­tee was not forth­com­ing, the prostestors, includ­ing an elder­ly peo­ple, refused to leave. They were peace­ful­ly escort­ed from the premis­es by the police.

Update 10:15pm: The pro­test­ers were arrest­ed on charges of ‘aggres­sive tres­pass’. They have just been released on bail hav­ing spent sev­er­al hours in police cells in Worces­ter and are expect­ed back in Here­ford short­ly. They will have to report back on July 26th and face either a cau­tion or be tak­en to court.

“All the Coun­cil had to do today was guar­an­tee a prop­er pub­lic debate, and then this would not have hap­pened”, said a cam­paign spokesper­son. “What do they have to hide? Those arrest­ed are the Here­ford suf­fragettes — all because Here­ford­shire Coun­cil won’t be open and demo­c­ra­t­ic in it’s pro­ce­dures.”

Calls con­tin­ue to grow for Here­ford­shire Coun­cil to pause con­struc­tion to allow a full pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion and for all elect­ed coun­cil­lors to have a say in the final deci­sion and not just the Cab­i­net.

Back­ground info & oth­er cam­paign news at http://www.rotherwasribbon.com/

For court case updates, see July 2007 archive.

critical masses (reports from end June/beginning July 2007)

Man­ches­ter:Ace mass on fri­day woo! despite all the stu­dents being away for the sum­mer there was still an ace turnout of around 30–40 people.nice. and a few stayed for a nice bbq in the park which was real love­ly.

Man­ches­ter:Ace mass on fri­day woo! despite all the stu­dents being away for the sum­mer there was still an ace turnout of around 30–40 people.nice. and a few stayed for a nice bbq in the park which was real love­ly.

Crit­i­cal mass has a my space account
here:http://www.myspace.com/mcrcriticalmass
and a face­book account here:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=597661675&ref=mf

also an email list at http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/manccriticalmass

so if you have pho­tos or film of the mass­es please post or upload them or email for the pass­words and i’ll send them out to you. also please use these and this list to dis­cuss ideas and calls for help with future events for after the crit­i­cal mass. In the past we’ve had ben­e­fit gigs, par­ty in the woods, film nights, meals, beers in pubs, pic­nics, bike polo work­shops, art exhi­bi­tion, roller races etc etc. It would be ace if every­one could be involved in organ­is­ing these. maybe we could even get togeth­er a lit­tle cm events work­ing group..would any­one be inter­est­ed in this? we could get togeth­er either after cm or in the month to share ideas, organ­i­sa­tion and tasks.

these things can be dis­cussed on this list or on myspace com­ments or on the face­book note or wall

ALSO
At pre­vi­ous crit­i­cal mass­es in Man­ches­ter we decid­ed on the fol­low­ing tips to ensure that we are all safe,that we cause least annoy­ance as pos­si­ble, to make sure the ride stays togeth­er and to ensure that every­one feels com­fort­able. Remem­ber some­times peo­ple on crit­i­cal mass come because it is a chance to reclaim the road and to feel safe, peo­ple who would­nt usu­al­ly ride in cen­tral man­ches­ter and also chil­dren, so its good to keep the nice friend­ly atmos­phere to encour­age cycling and that safe environment…if peo­ple want to dis­cuss these its great, they were points that were agreed at sev­er­al crit­i­cal mass­es by peo­ple shout­ing and wav­ing hands and that kind of thing. there is no organ­is­er and every­one should be able to have their say. (in a way that is respon­si­ble and look­ing after each oth­er)

1. If the light goes on red as the ride approach­es the lights we stop and wait for green.
2. If the light changes part way through the ride get­ting through around 2 peo­ple per lane of oncom­ing traf­fic stop and cork the road. This basi­cal­ly means that they stand in the mid­dle of that lane hold­ing up their hand/ a sign say­ing ‘thank you for wait­ing’ so that cars will stop and let the ride stay togeth­er and go through the light safe­ly. Thank­ing the dri­vers when every­one is through..we are try­ing to get dri­vers onto bikes not to hate us!!!
3. Slow­er rid­ers and chil­dren and peo­ple with less con­fi­dence ride at the front of the ride and to the left hand side so that they can set the pace and help to stay togeth­er and also feel safer as they are less like­ly to be near traffic/ annoyed dri­vers.
4. We don’t have a set route for crit­i­cal mass, instead who­ev­er is at the front at the time can choose where we go, so we take it in turns! just shout left or right or straight on in plen­ty of time!
5. Have fun!

Future crit­i­cal mass dates are

MEET CENTRAL LIBRARY 6PM FRIDAY:
27th July
31st August
28th Sep­tem­ber
26th Octo­ber
30th Novem­ber
28th Decem­ber

2008
25th Jan­u­ary
29th Feb­ru­ary (woo leap year!)
28th March
etc etc

Lon­don: Crit­i­cal Mass 29th June — The June Crit­i­cal Mass, with a few hun­dred cyclists, was a fun ride through the City and Hol­born and man­aged to stay dry the whole way through!

Sev­er­al hun­dred peo­ple left Water­loo bridge at about 7pm, cycling across Black­fri­ars bridge, along Ludgate Hill, past the Muse­um of Lon­don and onto Liv­er­pool Street sta­tion. After some cir­cling of Fins­bury Cir­cus the mass kept mov­ing on to Old Street where we had a brief rest. Mov­ing off the mass head­ed for Cam­bridge Cir­cus along Theobalds road and High Hol­born. From there it moved up and along Oxford Street and down to West­min­ster Square where there were some skir­mish­es with the cops over the sound sys­tem (see the account: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/06/374738.html)

It was a fun ride. The police for the most part seemed to keep their dis­tance. Enter­tain­ing­ly a cou­ple of police start­ed head bob­bing to the music in Old Street — I’m hop­ing some­one got a film of it! Let’s hope next month is slight­ly sun­nier though.

Edin­burgh: It went pret­ty well. Around 50 peo­ple. Con­sid­er­ably more than last month. There was no police inter­ven­tion, apart from pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles to go across North Bridge, since it was shut again. We sim­ply divert­ed down Lei­th Street, went all the way round the round­about, then along Queen Street to the mead­ows from there. In the last 5 min­utes the heav­ens opened.

Glas­gow got the sun and a ride out to the West End com­plete with bike lifts and a film screen­ing after­wards.

July York Crit­i­cal Mass Ride Small but Suc­cess­ful

Well, it was­n’t a big ride, with just 19 peo­ple tak­ing part, but we had fun, made cycling vis­i­ble and encoun­tered some com­plete idiots who need their 2 ton weapons remov­ing from beneath them. The dri­ver of a bright red Audi on Nun­nery Lane expend­ed much petrol revving, over­tak­ing (twice) and gen­er­al­ly being an idiot with­out any gain for him­self, oth­er than a nice pic­ture show­ing that he, like a notable group of York’s dri­vers, has no con­cern what­so­ev­er for cycle lanes or cyclists. No one was hurt, but as one per­son put it lat­er “we gave as good as we got”, ver­bal­ly of course.

Next months ride will prob­a­bly also be small, but that’s no excuse not to show up. On Fri­day August 3rd we’ll be return­ing to the streets of York to pro­mote cycling, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and fun, same time and same place.