Category: Unnecessary Developments

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

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.

Enawene Nawe blockade succeeds

29 June 2007
The Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment has agreed to sev­er­al key demands of the Enawene Nawe Indi­ans after they block­ad­ed a major high­way. The gov­ern­men­t’s Indi­an agency, FUNAI, will sur­vey lands claimed by the Enawene Nawe and oth­er tribes, with the aim of offi­cial­ly recog­nis­ing the areas as indige­nous.

29 June 2007
The Brazil­ian gov­ern­ment has agreed to sev­er­al key demands of the Enawene Nawe Indi­ans after they block­ad­ed a major high­way. The gov­ern­men­t’s Indi­an agency, FUNAI, will sur­vey lands claimed by the Enawene Nawe and oth­er tribes, with the aim of offi­cial­ly recog­nis­ing the areas as indige­nous.

For three days in May, the Enawene Nawe, a small and remote Ama­zon tribe, erect­ed bar­ri­cades in Mato Grosso state to protest against plans to build a series of hydro­elec­tric dams along the Juru­e­na riv­er. They were also demand­ing the offi­cial recog­ni­tion of their vital fish­ing waters in the Rio Pre­to area, which are being rapid­ly destroyed by cat­tle ranch­ers.

Neigh­bour­ing tribes joined the protest in sup­port of the Enawene Nawe’s demands, swelling the num­ber of pro­tes­tors to 200.

The gov­ern­ment respond­ed quick­ly by dis­patch­ing offi­cials to nego­ti­ate with the Indi­ans on the bar­ri­cade.

It agreed to pay for rep­re­sen­ta­tives of var­i­ous tribes in Mato Grosso to trav­el to Brasília to meet with the Pres­i­dent of FUNAI.

Despite the recent con­ces­sions, how­ev­er, the dams still look set to go ahead.

For pre­vi­ous news on the block­ades go to: http://www.survival-international.org/news/2459

EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS — Yes Men hit

June 14, 2007 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS
Con­fer­ence orga­niz­er fails to have Yes Men arrest­ed

Vivoleum tributeJune 14, 2007 — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

EXXON PROPOSES BURNING HUMANITY FOR FUEL IF CLIMATE CALAMITY HITS
Con­fer­ence orga­niz­er fails to have Yes Men arrest­ed

Text of speech, pho­tos, video: http://www.vivoleum.com/event/
GO-EXPO state­ment: http://newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/June2007/14/c5086.html
Press con­fer­ence before this event, Fri­day, Cal­gary: http://arusha.org/event/7214
Con­tact: mailto:fuel@theyesmen.org
More links at end of release.

Imposters pos­ing as Exxon­Mo­bil and Nation­al Petro­le­um Coun­cil (NPC) rep­re­sen­ta­tives deliv­ered an out­ra­geous keynote speech to 300 oil­men at GO-EXPO, Canada’s largest oil con­fer­ence, held at Stam­pede Park in Cal­gary, Alber­ta, today.

The speech was billed before­hand by the GO-EXPO orga­niz­ers as the major high­light of this year’s con­fer­ence, which had 20,000 atten­dees. In it, the “NPC rep” was expect­ed to deliv­er the long-await­ed con­clu­sions of a study com­mis­sioned by US Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Samuel Bod­man. The NPC is head­ed by for­mer Exxon­Mo­bil CEO Lee Ray­mond, who is also the chair of the study. (See link at end.)

In the actu­al speech, the “NPC rep” announced that cur­rent U.S. and Cana­di­an ener­gy poli­cies (notably the mas­sive, car­bon-inten­sive exploita­tion of Alber­ta’s oil sands, and the devel­op­ment of liq­uid coal) are increas­ing the chances of huge glob­al calami­ties. But he reas­sured the audi­ence that in the worst case sce­nario, the oil indus­try could “keep fuel flow­ing” by trans­form­ing the bil­lions of peo­ple who die into oil.

“We need some­thing like whales, but infi­nite­ly more abun­dant,” said “NPC rep” “Shep­ard Wolff” (actu­al­ly Andy Bichlbaum of the Yes Men), before describ­ing the tech­nol­o­gy used to ren­der human flesh into a new Exxon oil prod­uct called Viv­oleum. 3‑D ani­ma­tions of the process brought it to life.

“Viv­oleum works in per­fect syn­er­gy with the con­tin­ued expan­sion of fos­sil fuel pro­duc­tion,” not­ed “Exxon rep” “Flo­ri­an Osen­berg” (Yes Man Mike Bonan­no). “With more fos­sil fuels comes a greater chance of dis­as­ter, but that means more feed­stock for Viv­oleum. Fuel will con­tin­ue to flow for those of us left.”

The oil­men lis­tened to the lec­ture with atten­tion, and then lit “com­mem­o­ra­tive can­dles” sup­pos­ed­ly made of Viv­oleum obtained from the flesh of an “Exxon jan­i­tor” who died as a result of clean­ing up a tox­ic spill. The audi­ence only react­ed when the jan­i­tor, in a video trib­ute, announced that he wished to be trans­formed into can­dles after his death, and all became crys­tal-clear.

At that point, Simon Mel­lor, Com­mer­cial & Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Direc­tor for the com­pa­ny putting on the event, strode up and phys­i­cal­ly forced the Yes Men from the stage. As Mel­lor escort­ed Bonan­no out the door, a dozen jour­nal­ists sur­round­ed Bichlbaum, who, still in char­ac­ter as “Shep­ard Wolff,” explained to them the ratio­nale for Viv­oleum.

“We’ve got to get ready. After all, fos­sil fuel devel­op­ment like that of my com­pa­ny is increas­ing the chances of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change, which could lead to mas­sive calami­ties, caus­ing migra­tion and con­flicts that would like­ly dis­able the pipelines and oil wells. With­out oil we could no longer pro­duce or trans­port food, and most of human­i­ty would starve. That would be a tragedy, but at least all those bod­ies could be turned into fuel for the rest of us.”

“We’re not talk­ing about killing any­one,” added the “NPC rep.” “We’re talk­ing about using them after nature has done the hard work. After all, 150,000 peo­ple already die from cli­mate-change relat­ed effects every year. That’s only going to go up — maybe way, way up. Will it all go to waste? That would be cru­el.”

Secu­ri­ty guards then dragged Bichlbaum away from the reporters, and he and Bonan­no were detained until Cal­gary Police Ser­vice offi­cers could arrive. The police­men, deter­min­ing that no major infrac­tions had been com­mit­ted, per­mit­ted the Yes Men to leave.

Canada’s oil sands, along with “liq­uid coal,” are key­stones of Bush’s Ener­gy Secu­ri­ty plan. Min­ing the oil sands is one of the dirt­i­est forms of oil pro­duc­tion and has turned Cana­da into one of the world’s worst car­bon emit­ters. The pro­duc­tion of “liq­uid coal” has twice the car­bon foot­print as that of ordi­nary gaso­line. Such tech­nolo­gies increase the like­li­hood of mas­sive cli­mate cat­a­stro­phes that will con­demn to death untold mil­lions of peo­ple, main­ly poor.

“If our idea of ener­gy secu­ri­ty is to increase the chances of cli­mate calami­ty, we have a very fun­ny sense of what secu­ri­ty real­ly is,” Bonan­no said. “While Exxon­Mo­bil con­tin­ues to post record prof­its, they use their mon­ey to per­suade gov­ern­ments to do noth­ing about cli­mate change. This is a crime against human­i­ty.”

“Putting the for­mer Exxon CEO in charge of the NPC, and solic­it­ing his advice on our ener­gy future, is like putting the wolf in charge of the flock,” said “Shep­ard Wolff” (Bichlbaum). “Exxon has done more dam­age to the envi­ron­ment and to our chances of sur­vival than any oth­er com­pa­ny on earth. Why should we let them deter­mine our future?”

About the NPC and Exxon­Mo­bil: About the NPC and Exon Mobil
About the Alber­ta oil sands: About Alber­ta oil sands
About liq­uid coal: Sier­ra club on liq­uid coal

Nottingham Against Incineration and Landfill [NAIL]: A Video

This video shows it is a nation­al issue, affect­ing many peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties.

There has been a large cam­paign, with much sup­port over recent times. A plan­ning appli­ca­tion to extend the oper­a­tion of the East­croft Incin­er­a­tor in Not­ting­ham was denied. WRG, the oper­a­tors of the plant, appealed. This process has now been stopped and a new appli­ca­tion has been lodged.

NAIL demoThis video shows it is a nation­al issue, affect­ing many peo­ple and their com­mu­ni­ties.

There has been a large cam­paign, with much sup­port over recent times. A plan­ning appli­ca­tion to extend the oper­a­tion of the East­croft Incin­er­a­tor in Not­ting­ham was denied. WRG, the oper­a­tors of the plant, appealed. This process has now been stopped and a new appli­ca­tion has been lodged.

Now, folks have to go round again.

The film explains the back­ground and dan­gers.

Video”>https://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2007/06//373597.mpg”>Video Video by George’s Broth­er — video/mpeg 90M

Enawene Nawe block highway to stop dam

4th June 2007
A few days ago the Enawene Nawe set up a road block­ade in protest to a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which will destroy their fish­ing grounds, which they depend on.

Today they dis­man­tled the block­ade and have begun trav­el­ling to the cap­i­tal of Brazil to meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

4th June 2007
A few days ago the Enawene Nawe set up a road block­ade in protest to a series of hydro­elec­tric dams which will destroy their fish­ing grounds, which they depend on.

Today they dis­man­tled the block­ade and have begun trav­el­ling to the cap­i­tal of Brazil to meet gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

From Sur­vival Inter­na­tion­al — The Indi­ans mount­ed the block­ade on 31 May to protest against plans to build a series of hydro­elec­tric dams along the Juru­e­na riv­er, which they say will destroy their vital fish­ing grounds.

Accord­ing to local press reports, sev­er­al neigh­bour­ing tribes joined the protest and about 100 Indi­ans armed with bows and arrows effec­tive­ly iso­lat­ed the north­west­ern part of the state.

A com­mis­sion com­posed of gov­ern­ment offi­cials and the police nego­ti­at­ed with the Enawene Nawe who agreed to halt their block­ade if they could meet with the pres­i­dent of FUNAI (the Brazil­ian government’s Indi­an affairs depart­ment) to raise their con­cerns.

A del­e­ga­tion of Enawene Nawe set out today on the long jour­ney to Brasília. (source. Also see this arti­cle about the block­ade)

Basement Clean Up — update

We now have access to the Bas­ment Social Cen­tre and the clean up is begin­ning. There is a lot of work to do. It’s pret­ty damp and mucky in places, but not as bad as we feared.

There is still no elec­tric­i­ty but this is being worked on.

We now have access to the Bas­ment Social Cen­tre and the clean up is begin­ning. There is a lot of work to do. It’s pret­ty damp and mucky in places, but not as bad as we feared.

There is still no elec­tric­i­ty but this is being worked on.

A group of vol­un­teers went down Mon­day night to make an ini­tial assess­ment of the dam­age. It is not fan­tas­tic but can be sort­ed out with a lot of elbow grease and love!

The first 3 (of many) work­days are as fol­lows:

Sat­ur­day 27th May — 10am onwards

Sun­day 28th May — 10am onwards

Mon­day 29th May 10am onwards

Tat list to fol­low on Fri­day

BASEMENT MOBILE NO: 07925 771 017 — please text rather than ring unless important/no access to mobile

mustsocial@yahoo.com
http://thebasement.clearerchannel.org/new/

Earth First! summer gathering — Wednesday 18th July until Sunday 22nd July 2007 — location & programme announced

What is the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing?

* Are you fed up with bare-faced lies from politi­cians, big busi­ness and the media?
* Have you had enough of a world where cor­po­rate prof­it comes before life and dig­ni­ty?
* Do you want to see an end to mind­less con­sump­tion>
* Then this Gath­er­ing is for you! Read on…

EF! gathering '07 logo (rabbit/fence)What is the Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing?

* Are you fed up with bare-faced lies from politi­cians, big busi­ness and the media?
* Have you had enough of a world where cor­po­rate prof­it comes before life and dig­ni­ty?
* Do you want to see an end to mind­less con­sump­tion>
* Then this Gath­er­ing is for you! Read on…

Explor­ing alter­na­tives to the cor­po­rate world of greed, lies & exploita­tion -

The Earth First! Sum­mer Gath­er­ing is the place where peo­ple involved in rad­i­cal eco­log­i­cal direct action — or those who want to be involved — get togeth­er for five days of time and space to talk, walk, share skills, learn, play, rant, find out what’s going on, find out what’s next, live out­side, strate­gise, hang out, incite, laugh and con­spire.

The gath­er­ing is also a prac­ti­cal exam­ple of non-hier­ar­chi­cal low-impact liv­ing in action.

We are a diverse com­mu­ni­ty with a wide range of approach­es to our action, so there should be plen­ty to inter­est and inspire every­one whether you have been active for years or are com­plete­ly new to it all.

More info at earthfirstgathering.org.uk

EAST KENT EARTH FIRST!

This report announces the for­ma­tion of a new cam­paign­ing and action group to be called EAST KENT EARTH FIRST!

The group is based in Can­ter­bury, but already has sup­port from peo­ple in the Med­way Towns, Sit­ting­bourne, Herne Bay and Thanet as well as Can­ter­bury. Most of the peo­ple involved have a back­ground in the Ani­mal Rights move­ment and recog­nise the need to broad­en out into Eco Action and relat­ed issues. Be it GM crops, Air­port expan­sion, unnec­es­sary devel­op­ment, or diverse oth­er issues we shall seek to edu­cate, inform and protest, notwith­stand­ing the cur­rent clam­p­down on rea­son­able protest. There will short­ly be a web­site up and run­ning, but in the mean­time any­one inter­est­ed in being involved should

This report announces the for­ma­tion of a new cam­paign­ing and action group to be called EAST KENT EARTH FIRST!

The group is based in Can­ter­bury, but already has sup­port from peo­ple in the Med­way Towns, Sit­ting­bourne, Herne Bay and Thanet as well as Can­ter­bury. Most of the peo­ple involved have a back­ground in the Ani­mal Rights move­ment and recog­nise the need to broad­en out into Eco Action and relat­ed issues. Be it GM crops, Air­port expan­sion, unnec­es­sary devel­op­ment, or diverse oth­er issues we shall seek to edu­cate, inform and protest, notwith­stand­ing the cur­rent clam­p­down on rea­son­able protest. There will short­ly be a web­site up and run­ning, but in the mean­time any­one inter­est­ed in being involved should
con­tact the fol­low­ing email address. mattclowes@riseup.net