Category: Wilderness Defence

Wilder­ness defence

Saving Iceland Blockades Hellisheidi Power Station

26.07.2007
Sav­ing Ice­land block­ad­ed two roads to Hell­ishei­di Pow­er Sta­tion in Ice­land at 7am this morn­ing.

The activists locked on to dif­fer­ent vehi­cles and one climbed a crane on the work­site and unfurled a gigan­tic ban­ner: “STOP PRODUCING ENERGY FOR WEAPONS”

Hellisheidi26.07.2007
Sav­ing Ice­land block­ad­ed two roads to Hell­ishei­di Pow­er Sta­tion in Ice­land at 7am this morn­ing.

The activists locked on to dif­fer­ent vehi­cles and one climbed a crane on the work­site and unfurled a gigan­tic ban­ner: “STOP PRODUCING ENERGY FOR WEAPONS”
Reports have just come in say­ing that 8 have been arrest­ed but that the climber in the crane is still free.

For more info please see:
http://www.savingiceland.org/hengill
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/857
http://www.savingiceland.org/node/858
http://www.savingiceland.org/vopnaveita

Tara’s Last Stand?

vio­lence on tara
7 arrests
court case today
urgent help need­ed

www.indymedia.ie click on ´watch revolt footage here‘

 faeryarmy@yahoo.co.uk

Tara’s Last Stand?

vio­lence on tara
7 arrests
court case today
urgent help need­ed

www.indymedia.ie click on ´watch revolt footage here‘

 faeryarmy@yahoo.co.uk

Tara’s Last Stand?

An open let­ter to all who are inter­est­ed in the defence of the earth and the stand­ing-up to pow­er.
Please for­ward, copy, or cir­cu­late.

Place: Tara Val­ley, Hill of Tara, Coun­ty Meath, Repub­lic of Ire­land
Time: NOW

His­to­ry: Tara Hill and Val­ley are part of an ancient tem­ple com­plex of earth­works, henges, raths (forts), and souter­rains (under­ground tomb cham­bers). Many of the works pre-date the pyra­mids. Tara was used as the crown­ing place of the old high kings of Ire­land. It is still in use for cer­e­monies today, and is par­tic­u­lar­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Samhain (Hallowe’en).

Threat: The Irish gov­ern­ment have sanc­tioned a route through the Tara val­ley of the M3 motor­way. This road will be tolled, is the least-favourable of the five options avail­able accord­ing to prin­ci­ples of road-build­ing and eco­nom­ic sense, will ’save’ fif­teen min­utes of time to the M50 bot­tle­neck (British M25 equiv­a­lent) dur­ing the morn­ing rush hour to Dublin, and is being sit­ed on a stretch of road that is not even that busy. A gigan­tic com­plex of shop­ping malls is planned at an inter­change, due to be sit­ed 1000 yards from the Hill of Tara. Many ancient mon­u­ments have already been destroyed. Many more new and unusu­al find­ings DUG UP DURING THE EXCAVATION OF THE LAND FOR THE ROAD have been either record­ed by record’ (ie made a note of in a book and destroyed) or are being stored in ware­hous­es. Such ancient arte­facts dug up include human bones from old graves.

Actions to date: Around ten to twelve reg­u­lar peo­ple have tak­en it in shifts for the past year in keep­ing an unbro­ken vig­il fire and camp burn­ing on Tara Hill. These peo­ple have held up the progress of the road by direct action, includ­ing dig­ger-div­ing thus far.

Cur­rent Sit­u­a­tion: The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment (EU) has told the Irish Gov­ern­ment that the work they are doing is ille­gal and to cease imme­di­ate­ly. Just after this was announced in the press, many more dig­gers and machines were sent, on Wednes­day July 18th, to a mon­u­ment on the site known as ‘Soldier’s Hill’ for the road com­pa­ny to estab­lish a com­pound. Hav­ing recruit­ed many more dri­vers, and turned them into nom­i­nal secu­ri­ty guards for the day, the com­pa­ny deployed its staff to aggres­sive­ly remove all pro­tes­tors from site. Sev­en pro­tes­tors were arrest­ed for not fol­low­ing a policeman‘s orders and pub­lic order offences. Three were bailed at 500 Euros, with the con­di­tion they cease to go to the sites to protest. A fur­ther four refused those bail con­di­tions and were remand­ed on a week’s cus­tody at Clover Hill prison, Dublin, until a court case pend­ing Wednes­day July 25th. Inter­net footage of the high lev­els of vio­lence utilised by the road company’s men sur­prised even the long-term cam­paign­ers at Ross­port, used to deal­ing with such intim­i­da­tion.

The Last Stand: A court case is pend­ing in the EU court, but the road com­pa­ny, aim­ing to save on much lost time and mon­ey has start­ed a big push, and has now reached the part of the route where a gigan­tic WOODHENGE was unearthed dur­ing the exca­va­tion. This site is cur­rent­ly being ‘record­ed by record’ by state-appoint­ed archae­ol­o­gists. Their work is SAID to need anoth­er two to three weeks to com­plete. The EU court case is due mid-to-late August The Henge is look­ing like the site of the last stand. The com­pa­ny has draft­ed in round-the-clock secu­ri­ty. The Irish Police has said it will arrest any­one found on site, even if they are mere­ly mount­ing a peace­ful protest. The road com­pa­ny and the Irish Gov­ern­ment have con­tin­ued destroy­ing mon­u­ments, even before the ‘record­ing by record’ process has fin­ished. There are cur­rent­ly around ten to twen­ty pro­tes­tors on site.

A Plea: If any­one out there has it in their heart, time, space, trip, what­ev­er to come and lend a hand, the fol­low­ing three gen­er­al areas would love to be catered for:

1. DIRECT ACTION: any­one with any expe­ri­ence of, enjoy­ment in doing and a con­tin­ued desire to do lock­ing-on, tree-house build­ing, rope­way-sling­ing and so on are instruct­ed to make their way to the site as soon as pos­si­ble. This plea is espe­cial­ly direct­ed to those who are part of the vic­to­ri­ous Nine Ladies camp in Der­byshire, who may be at a loose end and may want to get involved in this action. It may only last a month, one way or the oth­er. Although Irish police has said it will arrest any­one on site, there is still the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dig­ger-div­ing and road-block­ing, pro­vid­ed the num­bers are increased.

2. MAGIC ACTION: as part of a psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare front, music, dance, song, par­ty­ing and all the rest of it are very wel­come at this time. This is not only a call for Direct Action peo­ple. The fes­ti­val of Lugh­nasa (Lam­mas or Har­vest Fes­ti­val) starts on Wednes­day August 1st and it is intend­ed to hold cer­e­mo­ny, play games, sing, recite poet­ry, and have a par­ty in the woods, from then and through­out the week­end of July 3rd to 5th, and on and on. Even if you can only make it over for a few days, do come for the par­ty any­way!

3. PRACTICAL ACTION: All man­ner of kitchen work­ers, camp-clean­ers, fire-ten­ders- you-name-it-ers, what­ev­er it takes to main­tain a decent camp. There are always things to do, and there are not real­ly enough there yet to make the stand that is required.

THE NUMBERS GAME:

Expe­ri­enced Direct Action pro­tes­tors reck­on that a good stand could be made at the Henge if there are AT LEAST ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE THERE. If there are TWO HUNDRED, then the posi­tion is that much stronger, while THREE HUNDRED would, it is reck­oned, tip the bal­ance against the road com­pa­ny.

In order for the road to be stopped, AS MANY AS POSSIBLE are plead­ed with to help in any way they can, to come to Tara AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Oth­er­wise, it may be too late.

Thank you for your time.

We Hope to See you on the Hill

yours, in love of the land,

THE FIANNA FAERY (Sol­diers of Faery)
TARA BRIGADE
HILL OF TARA

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

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.

NATO Defeated by EarthFirst! in the Netherlands

For two years Groen­Front! — Dutch & Bel­gian Earth­First! — have been fight­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ty in Schin­veld, in the south­east of the coun­try, to pre­serve a for­est that would be destroyed for the sake of the NATO air­force base across the Ger­man bor­der. A direct action camp was evict­ed in Jan­u­ary, and 15 acres were destroyed, but 35 acres saved. Groen­Front! was prepar­ing to reoc­cu­py the woods awat­ing the final out­come of a legal bat­tle between the local coun­cil and nation­al gov­ern­ment, but now to great sur­prise, the pro­tes­tors have been vin­di­cat­ed and the forests are def­i­nite­ly saved from NATO’s bloody claws. On July 18th the Dutch high­est admin­is­tra­tive court ruled that the log­ging of Schiveld for­est is ille­gal. This means the min­istry of defence can­not con­tin­ue the log­ging of the for­est as request­ed by NATO, it also means the log­ging of the first six hectares in Jan­u­ary 2006 was ille­gal. The for­est would need to be destroyed to allow AWACS radar planes to lift off with more fuel in order to fly direct­ly to Afghanistan and Iraq.

For two years Groen­Front! — Dutch & Bel­gian Earth­First! — have been fight­ing with the local com­mu­ni­ty in Schin­veld, in the south­east of the coun­try, to pre­serve a for­est that would be destroyed for the sake of the NATO air­force base across the Ger­man bor­der. A direct action camp was evict­ed in Jan­u­ary, and 15 acres were destroyed, but 35 acres saved. Groen­Front! was prepar­ing to reoc­cu­py the woods awat­ing the final out­come of a legal bat­tle between the local coun­cil and nation­al gov­ern­ment, but now to great sur­prise, the pro­tes­tors have been vin­di­cat­ed and the forests are def­i­nite­ly saved from NATO’s bloody claws. On July 18th the Dutch high­est admin­is­tra­tive court ruled that the log­ging of Schiveld for­est is ille­gal. This means the min­istry of defence can­not con­tin­ue the log­ging of the for­est as request­ed by NATO, it also means the log­ging of the first six hectares in Jan­u­ary 2006 was ille­gal. The for­est would need to be destroyed to allow AWACS radar planes to lift off with more fuel in order to fly direct­ly to Afghanistan and Iraq.

For almost 30 years local pro­tes­tors in Schin­veld have fought against NATO, first to stop the reopen­ing of the base, then to reduce the nui­sance caused by the out­dat­ed AWACS radar planes, and, since the evic­tion of the action camp and the log­ging in 2006, rad­i­calised by GroenFront!‘s for­est camp, to close down the base.

When NATO want­ed 20 hectares of the for­est cut and it looked as if the local coun­cil would be over­ruled by the min­istries of defence (own­er of the for­est) and infra­struc­ture, they con­tact­ed Groen­Front! and start­ed a cam­paign where Schin­veld was high­light­ed in the New York Times.

Groen­Front! and the local com­mu­ni­ty protest group Stop Awacs start­ed a series of small­er actions. After thethe spring of 2005, the num­ber of actions increased when the min­is­ter of infra­struc­ture gave out a log­ging per­mit on August 3rd 2005, after a Nim­by-leg­is­la­tion pro­ce­dure (not in my back yard).
The local coun­cil and Stop Awacs tried to stop the log­ging until the final rul­ing (the one that came today) would have been made, but the court decid­ed against that on the 2nd of Decem­ber 2005. On Sun­day Decem­ber 4th 2005, Groen­Front! occu­pied the for­est and start­ed an inten­sive inter­na­tion­al cam­paign.

The camp was evict­ed on Jan­u­ary 9th 2006, the after­noon before about 2000 locals walked their demo in sup­port of the activist into the for­est, in spite of a restric­tion order, and cheered at the inter­na­tion­al group of more than 100 activist occu­py­ing the trees at that moment. Before the police could start evict­ing the trees, they had to remove sev­er­al hun­dred locals who stayed in the woods after the demon­stra­tion, try­ing to avoid police block­ades and com­mit­ting oth­er forms of civ­il dis­obe­di­ence as the may­or used emer­gency leg­is­la­tion against his own peo­ple.

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

Aboriginal Elders Occupy Barrick Gold’s Australian Head Office

July 13th, 2007
Wirad­juri Elders Neville “Chap­py” Williams (third from left) and Ron Gard­ner (back to cam­era in wheel­chair) in tense nego­ti­a­tions with Bar­rick­’s Steve Robin­son (fourth from left) while oth­er Bar­rick staff and pro­tes­tors look on. Bar­rick Gold office foy­er, Perth West­ern Aus­tralia 11 July 2007.

Barrick Gold occupied, AustraliaJuly 13th, 2007
Wirad­juri Elders Neville “Chap­py” Williams (third from left) and Ron Gard­ner (back to cam­era in wheel­chair) in tense nego­ti­a­tions with Bar­rick­’s Steve Robin­son (fourth from left) while oth­er Bar­rick staff and pro­tes­tors look on. Bar­rick Gold office foy­er, Perth West­ern Aus­tralia 11 July 2007.

(Span­ish ver­sion avail­able at: http://barrick.live.radicaldesigns.org/article.php?id=165)

Elders and sup­port­ers of the Wirad­juri Abo­rig­i­nal Nation have occu­pied the Aus­tralian head office of the world’s largest gold min­ing com­pa­ny, Bar­rick Gold.

Around 35 peo­ple peace­ful­ly occu­pied Bar­rick Gold’s Aus­tralian head­quar­ters in Perth, West­ern Aus­tralia on Wednes­day in a bid to force the com­pa­ny to meet Wirad­juri pro­to­cols relat­ing to peo­ple with blood­lines to Lake Cow­al in Cen­tral New South Wales where Bar­rick is oper­at­ing a gold mine.

Elders Neville ‘Chap­py’ Williams and Ron Gard­ner sought from Bar­rick:

* copy of the Cow­al Gold Project Ancil­lary Deed between Bar­rick Aus­tralia Lim­it­ed and the so-called ‘Wirad­juri Con­dobolin Native Title Claim Group’
* a response to an evic­tion notice deliv­ered to Bar­rick
* a meet­ing with Bar­rick senior man­age­ment, and
* any legal papers the com­pa­ny has that are the prop­er­ty of the Wirad­juri Elders.

Barrick’s response was to call the police and to ask the pro­test­ers to leave the premis­es say­ing they were ‘tres­pass­ing on pri­vate prop­er­ty’. After a sit-in last­ing around an hour and being threat­ened with arrest, the Elders and sup­port­ers agreed to leave on the con­di­tion that Bar­rick agree to respond to the Elders’ ver­bal and writ­ten demands in writ­ing.

“We’re fed up with Barrick’s lack of cour­tesy to Wirad­juri Elders so we’ve been forced to take this kind of action. We’ve been try­ing to get a copy of the ancil­lary deed and oth­er doc­u­ments like a full inven­to­ry of arte­facts col­lect­ed at Lake Cow­al for a long time now,” Mr Williams said.

“All the Wirad­juri with ties to Lake Cow­al have a right to see the deed and the inven­to­ry, not just the five sell-outs who have signed away our ancient cul­tur­al her­itage. We’ve gone through the cor­rect chan­nels, through Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion, let­ters to Bar­rick and a request I made per­son­al­ly to Bar­rick Chair­man, Peter Munk in Cana­da on only 2 May at their AGM. They keep say­ing the deed is ‘com­mer­cial-in-con­fi­dence’. So what have they got to hide? They should be open with all of us Wirad­juri peo­ple, but they keep on act­ing in secret and putting a lot of spin on their pub­lic­i­ty about the mine and its so-called ‘ben­e­fits’. Their Perth pub­lic rela­tions offi­cer was extreme­ly rude to us and showed us no respect at all.”

“Bar­rick has not gone through the appro­pri­ate pro­to­col, nor have they spo­ken to the right Wirad­juri peo­ple about Lake Cow­al,” Ron Gard­ner said. A nine-year vet­er­an of the cam­paign to stop the gold mine in the Wirad­juri Nation’s heart­land, Gard­ner has strong feel­ings about the mine. Until recent­ly ill health has kept him away from the lake.

“I was shocked and emo­tion­al­ly upset to the point of tears when I saw the mine infra­struc­ture on our sacred place,” he said.

“There are buri­als out there and it’s a mas­sacre site. There are thou­sands of arte­facts and scarred trees in the area that are tes­ta­ment to our People’s long and con­tin­u­ing occu­pa­tion of the region, yet Bar­rick won’t release an inven­to­ry of all the arti­facts they have col­lect­ed or tell us what has hap­pened to the scarred trees that have been removed to make way for the mine.

“The mine has split the Wirad­juri com­mu­ni­ty. You don’t know who you can talk to or trust any more. Bar­rick con­tin­ues to deal with just a small group over the $9.2 mil­lion deal they made. They’ve set up the Wirad­juri Con­dobolin Cor­po­ra­tion (WCC) but you have to join to become a mem­ber. As Chap­py says, “We know who we are. You’re born into Wirad­juri. You don’t need a mem­ber­ship appli­ca­tion”.

“The WCC is not ben­e­fit­ing the major­i­ty of Wirad­juri peo­ple. Most of us still have the same prob­lems, poor health, hous­ing in need of main­te­nance and upgrade and lack of edu­ca­tion and job prospects.

“Bar­rick are wreck­ing the ecol­o­gy out there at Lake Cow­al. The com­pa­ny is draw­ing up to 3650 mega­l­itres of water a year out the ground­wa­ter and Lach­lan Riv­er near the lake and we’re still in the worst drought in record­ed his­to­ry.”

“They are using cyanide to leach gold from the ore. This inevitably leach­es into the soil and can make its way into the water sys­tem. Despite what the com­pa­ny says in its PR spin, gold min­ing is just not safe. One tea­spoon of 2% cyanide can kill a human and a lot of cyanide spills have occurred around the world. They are dig­ging up a mas­sive mount of earth out there and will leave a pit 1 kilo­me­tre long, 825 metres wide and 325 metres deep. It will be there for­ev­er, nev­er to be filled in, a lega­cy for future gen­er­a­tions.”

“They’ve cut down thou­sands of old trees that take hun­dreds of years to grow and pro­vide habi­tat for lots of native species. Yes, they’ve replant­ed some veg­e­ta­tion but thou­sands of trees have died because they weren’t watered in the con­tin­u­ing drought”, Mr Gard­ner said.

“So we’re not going to stop our protests against Bar­rick until we get some jus­tice,” Mr Williams said.

“They’ve made their posi­tion very clear and looks like they won’t budge. But we’re not alone. We have many rock sol­id sup­port­ers here in Aus­tralia like Kungarakan/Gurindji Elder Speedy McGuin­ness from the North­ern Ter­ri­to­ry, who is fight­ing his own bat­tle against new ura­ni­um mines on Abo­rig­i­nal land there.

“We have great sup­port from the stu­dents who sat in at Barrick’s Perth head office and our Abo­rig­i­nal and non-Abo­rig­i­nal friends across Aus­tralia and the world in the Coali­tion to Pro­tect Lake Cow­al. We’ve also got a great inter­na­tion­al coali­tion going with First Nations peo­ples where Bar­rick is dam­ag­ing and destroy­ing Abo­rig­i­nal lands in Africa and North and South Amer­i­ca. We’ll nev­er give up the fight until the mine is stopped and our land is returned to us,” he said.

This is an ongo­ing sto­ry. Bar­rick faxed a let­ter to the Elders yes­ter­day after­noon Perth time in response to their demands. The Elders have referred it to their legal coun­sel for advice.

http://www.savelakecowal.org/intro.html
Con­tact: Neville ‘Chap­py’ Williams +61 416 316 774
Ron Gard­ner +61 414 098 536

Saving Iceland Summer of Resistance Kicks off in Reykjavik

12.07.2007
A day of action in Reyk­javik kick starts Sav­ing Ice­land’s Sum­mer of Resis­tance to heavy indus­try and the alu­mini­um indus­try’s cor­po­rate inva­sion of Europe’s largest wilder­ness.

Iceland blockade12.07.2007
A day of action in Reyk­javik kick starts Sav­ing Ice­land’s Sum­mer of Resis­tance to heavy indus­try and the alu­mini­um indus­try’s cor­po­rate inva­sion of Europe’s largest wilder­ness.

Fol­low­ing on from Sav­ing Ice­land’s inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence: ‘The Glob­al Con­se­quences of Heavy Indus­try’ where speak­ers and del­e­gates from five con­ti­nents gath­ered to unite strug­gles against the alu­mini­um indus­try, was a day of pub­lic actions.

The Inter­na­tion­al Sum­mer of Dis­sent begins!

First­ly at Kringlan Shop­ping Mall:

Over 50 peo­ple from 5 dif­fer­ent con­ti­nents start­ed the day at Kringlan Shop­ping Mall, Reyk­javik, to protest against the con­sumer cul­ture that demands new alu­mini­um fac­to­ries. Rev­erend Bil­ly, from the Church of Stop Shop­ping, and his new deci­ple Rev­erend Snor­ri, lead a flock of devot­ed and extreme­ly noisy earth lovers (also known as Sav­ing Ice­land activists) through the con­sumerist hell that is a the shop­ping mall.

“The for­eign cor­po­ra­tions who want to dam Ice­lands great rivers, and put pol­lut­ing smelters on our shores — they want us to keep shop­ping.”

“The Alu­mini­um indus­try makes most of its mon­ey from war­planes, tanks and mis­siles (30%, actu­al­ly.) They pro­pose the com­plete damming of Ice­lands wilder­ness rivers, this isnald’s famouse beau­ty buried under indus­tri­al reser­voirs. Let us stop the war machine and the ruin of Ice­land’s wilder­ness. The same cor­po­ra­tions that keep us shop­ping, make war around the world. Isn’t a shop­ping mall like a ‘human’ dam? We re stopped, hyp­no­tized, put in debt. Our ener­gy is tak­en from us. Save the coun­try and save our­selves…”

…Then a march down Lau­gave­g­ur (Reyk­javik’s busiest street)…

… for a ral­ly at Alþin­gi

On the lawn out­side the Alþin­gi, the Ice­landic Par­lai­ment, peo­ple gath­ered togeth­er to speak out against the alu­mini­um indus­try. Peo­ple from Trinidad, who are win­ning a fight against Alcoa, from South Africa, who are fight­ing a nuclear pow­ered Alcan plant, from the East of Ice­land, who have been dev­as­tat­ed by the recent Alcoa Rey­dar­fj­dur fac­to­ry and Karah­n­jukar dams, from Brasil, who is fight­ing the damming of the Ama­zon for alu­mini­um fac­to­ry ener­gy, and many more gave inspir­ing speech­es and lead ener­gy filled songs against the alu­mini­um indus­try.

…and final­ly at the Prime Min­is­ter’s Office
Street the­atre activists then set up an alu­mini­um smelter, installed some tomb stones and hand­ed out dirty Ice­landic water (Ice­land prides itself on its pure water, yet it is pol­lut­ing and destroy­ing its water for the sake of heavy indus­try dams).

activist video footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJF7uK4cCOM
RUV cov­er­age (Ice­land’s state TV): http://dagskra.ruv.is/streaming/sjonvarpid/?file=4338360/5

For updates and details of upcom­ing actions see: http://www.savingiceland.org/
For more videos of Sav­ing Ice­land actions and the recent con­fer­ence see: http://www.youtube.com/user/octoplasm

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.