Category: Rest of Europe

Rest of Europe

Rossport Solidarity Camp eviction latest

Update on evic­tion threat to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

After over eigh­teen months of pro­vid­ing a base for activists sup­port­ing the local Shell to Sea cam­paign, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was served notice to quit by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil two weeks ago. For the past year and a half the coun­cil has accept­ed the cam­p’s exis­tence with­out com­plaint. It seems no coin­ci­dence that the coun­cil’s moves to evict the camp come at a time when Shell has been exten­sive­ly sur­vey­ing the estu­ary that runs along­side the camp in prepa­ra­tion for pipeline devel­op­ment. It is like­ly that pres­sure has been applied on the coun­cil to evict now to min­i­mize the risk of dis­rup­tion to the lay­ing of the pipeline.

Update on evic­tion threat to Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp

After over eigh­teen months of pro­vid­ing a base for activists sup­port­ing the local Shell to Sea cam­paign, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp was served notice to quit by Mayo Coun­ty Coun­cil two weeks ago. For the past year and a half the coun­cil has accept­ed the cam­p’s exis­tence with­out com­plaint. It seems no coin­ci­dence that the coun­cil’s moves to evict the camp come at a time when Shell has been exten­sive­ly sur­vey­ing the estu­ary that runs along­side the camp in prepa­ra­tion for pipeline devel­op­ment. It is like­ly that pres­sure has been applied on the coun­cil to evict now to min­i­mize the risk of dis­rup­tion to the lay­ing of the pipeline.

On Tues­day the 31st July, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the camp attend­ed a court hear­ing in Castle­bar. Fol­low­ing sub­mis­sions from the cam­p’s bar­ris­ter regard­ing due process and the lack of time giv­en to the camp to pre­pare a case, the judge reluc­tant­ly agreed to adjourn the case until Sep­tem­ber the 3rd. How­ev­er, in the mean­time he imposed an ‘inter­im order of injunc­tion’ which allows only two camp mem­bers to remain liv­ing on site. Notably, pri­or to the hear­ing, the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives of both par­ties had agreed terms for an adjourn­ment that allowed more peo­ple to remain on camp. The case is essen­tial­ly a civ­il dis­pute and the judge’s impo­si­tion of more strin­gent terms is indica­tive, once again, of the par­tial­i­ty of the judi­cia­ry with regard to Shell to Sea cas­es.

The pri­ma­ry func­tion of the camp is to pro­vide a space for peo­ple to sup­port the local cam­paign in resist­ing Shell. This can be done most effec­tive­ly if we have a secure base to work from. Con­se­quent­ly, at present, we have decid­ed to vacate the camp in accor­dance with the judge’s order. In an effort to be pre­pared for the dif­fer­ent poten­tial sce­nar­ios we could face, we have sought out pos­si­ble alter­na­tive loca­tions for the camp. Some peo­ple in the cam­paign will con­tin­ue to fight the evic­tion through the courts and after the hear­ing in Sep­tem­ber we will assess our options.

Com­mu­ni­ty sup­port fol­low­ing the evic­tion order has been over­whelm­ing. With­in a week an impres­sive fundrais­ing effort had been ini­ti­at­ed and we had offers of sev­er­al hous­es and fields to relo­cate to. We have also had help with mov­ing, clean­ing, dec­o­rat­ing and fur­nish­ing. Thanks to such incred­i­ble local assis­tance, one of these hous­es has been fixed up in the last week and is now being used as the tem­po­rary Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp base. Over the next few weeks we hope to make sev­er­al oth­er loca­tions inhab­it­able.

Two weeks ago our sit­u­a­tion seemed dire. Today, the spir­it of the camp is vibrant. It is clear that resis­tance here will not be ham­pered by repres­sion. So, while we’re sad to be tem­porar­i­ly giv­ing up our beau­ti­ful seashore home, the Ross­port Sol­i­dar­i­ty Camp lives on — albeit in a slight­ly less rus­tic form. As before, vis­i­tors are always wel­come.

Iceland camp closes — actions continue — arrest update

Protest Camp Clos­es but Actions Con­tin­ue

27 July 2007

Today we wrapped our protest camp at Bringur, Mos­fell­shei­di, but we are not through with this sum­mers actions.

This means that if you are plan­ning to join us in our fight against heavy indus­try in Ice­land you are not too late. We have plen­ty of ener­gy left and loads of tar­gets to protest at.

Protest Camp Clos­es but Actions Con­tin­ue

27 July 2007

Today we wrapped our protest camp at Bringur, Mos­fell­shei­di, but we are not through with this sum­mers actions.

This means that if you are plan­ning to join us in our fight against heavy indus­try in Ice­land you are not too late. We have plen­ty of ener­gy left and loads of tar­gets to protest at.

Write to us at savingiceland@riseup.net if you want to find us or call 8572692.

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Locals of Haf­nar­fjor­dur Protest Against May­or’s Betray­al of ALCAN Ref­er­en­dum

26 July 2007

Locals in Haf­nar­fjor­dur protest­ed on Thurs­day against the Coun­cil’s attempts to betray the results of the local ref­er­en­dum in March about the enlarge­ment of the ALCAN smelter which is sit­u­at­ed in near­by Straumsvik.

In spite of a mas­sive PR cam­paign paid for by ALCAN (includ­ing an ille­gal gath­er­ing by ALCAN of per­son­al data about indi­vid­u­als in Haf­nar­fjor­dur) the major­i­ty of the inhab­i­tants reject­ed the enlarge­ment.

After the ref­er­en­dum both ALCAN and the May­or of Haf­nar­fjor­dur, Lud­vik Geirs­son, issued a series of con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments claim­ing that the results of the ref­er­en­dum were not legal­ly bind­ing.

Lat­er they sur­faced with the idea that the ref­er­en­dum only applied to a plan­ning per­mis­sion of a cer­tain spot by the exist­ing fac­to­ry and that noth­ing could stop it being built on a land­fill on the oth­er side of the fac­to­ry. (1)

The locals dropped two dif­fer­ent ban­ners. One stat­ing that ‘NO MEANS NO — ENLARGEMENT IS CRIMINAL’ and the oth­er say­ing ‘NIETSCHE KILLED GOD — LUDVIK KILLED DEMOCRACY’.

Sav­ing Ice­land wish to con­grat­u­late the inhab­i­tants of Haf­nar­fjor­dur for their con­tin­u­ing oppo­si­tion to the evil that has now meta­mor­phised into Rito Tin­to-ALCAN.

1.- See: ALCAN and May­or decide: To Hell with Democ­ra­cy in Haf­nar­fjör­dur!

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State Harass­ment of Sav­ing Ice­land Activists

Sav­ing Ice­land demands that:
*The activist cur­rent­ly in prison is either moved to a wom­ens prison with a full apol­o­gy or released imme­di­ate­ly for lack of state resources.
*All stolen pass­ports must be released imme­di­ate­ly, accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al law.
*An end to the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and state harass­ment of envi­ron­men­tal activists.

The Ice­landic Police have stepped up their repres­sion of Sav­ing Ice­land activists whilst their 2007 Sum­mer protest camp fin­ish­es. [1] One activist has been refused the right to appeal her prison sen­tence and is cur­rent­ly in soli­tary con­fine­ment. Fif­teen have had their pass­ports stolen by the Police, who refuse to give any firm rea­sons as to why or when they will be returned. Five peo­ple were arrest­ed for putting up polit­i­cal street art, includ­ing the own­er of the build­ing that was to be paint­ed. Nine police vehi­cles turned up at a par­ty in which many SI activists were attend­ing and entered the build­ing with­out war­rant.

After being arrest­ed in the vicin­i­ty of the Rio Tin­to-Alcan alu­mini­um smelter in Straumsvik on the 24th of July [2], one activist had her sen­tence from the 2006 protest camp laid on her. Instead she was giv­en the choice to either imme­di­ate­ly pay 100,000 ISK or serve eight days in prison. She was refused her right to appeal, which would have giv­en her a month to choose her options. She chose to go to prison instead of pay­ing her fine. Now she is in Heg­ningarhusid, an all mens prison, and there­fore in soli­tary con­fine­ment.
”

“Why, if there were no spaces in a wom­en’s prison, and if she should have been giv­en her time of appeal, has she been rushed off into a mens prison, leav­ing her iso­lat­ed and in soli­tary con­fine­ment? This is ille­gal and feels like a polit­i­cal deci­sion designed to unfair­ly treat polit­i­cal activists.” says Sav­ing Iceland´s Snor­ri Páll Jóns­son Úlfhildar­son

Fif­teen utlendi­gar (for­eign) activists have had their pass­ports siezed by the Reyk­javik Police Dep. After many con­tra­dic­to­ry state­ments, Geir Jon, Head of Police, has stat­ed that all pass­ports will be sent to the Keflavik or Sey­d­is­fjor­dur police depart­ments who will return the pass­ports upon the activists depar­ture. We won­der whether this will be the case, or whether activists are to be kept in the coun­try ille­gal­ly until the time of their tri­al.

“Pass­ports are the prop­er­ty of the state that issues them, not the Ice­landic states to do with as they please. If some­one whose iden­ti­fi­ca­tion has been seized by the police needs urgent med­ical atten­tion or seeks a res­i­dents per­mit in Ice­land, for exam­ple, how are they to do this with­out their id?” says Úlfhildar­son

Four polit­i­cal street artists were about to apply paint to a wall in Lau­gave­g­ur, Reyk­javik, at 4am on the 28th of July, when they were sur­round­ed by nine spe­cial forces police. Whilst the own­er of the wall that was to be paint­ed made it clear that he gave full per­mis­sion to the artists, the police decid­ed to arrest not only the artists, but the own­er of the house too! In total, five were arrest­ed, pho­tographed, impris­oned for up to sev­en hours and final­ly released with­out charge.

On the same night a house par­ty in Selt­jarnar­ness which was attend­ed by Sav­ing Ice­land activists was sur­round­ed by police. Over twen­ty police­men in nine cars and vans turned up to tell the partiers to turn their music down. Also, two of the police­men were rel­a­tives of the peo­ple inside, one hav­ing been brought all the way from Haf­nar­fjor­dur. The police entered a wing of the house which was uncon­nect­ed to the par­ty with­out a war­rant.

Sav­ing Ice­land demands that:
*The activist cur­rent­ly in prison is either moved to a wom­ens prison with a full apol­o­gy or released imme­di­ate­ly for lack of state resources.
*All stolen pass­ports must be released imme­di­ate­ly, accord­ing to inter­na­tion­al law.
*An end to the crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion and state harass­ment of envi­ron­men­tal activists.

Parnitha fire & protests

Protest fol­low­ing ear­li­er march­es:

The morn­ing of Sun­day 29 July, an inter­ven­tion was made in Mont Parnes (a casi­no in ‚Mount Par­nitha which was recent­ly burned, the same casi­no which tries to expand to the burned grounds of the moun­tain): ban­ners where opened , some slo­gans where shout­ed and red paint was thrown.

Parnitha
Parnitha fire
Parnitha march
Parnitha cops
Protest fol­low­ing ear­li­er march­es:

The morn­ing of Sun­day 29 July, an inter­ven­tion was made in Mont Parnes (a casi­no in ‚Mount Par­nitha which was recent­ly burned, the same casi­no which tries to expand to the burned grounds of the moun­tain): ban­ners where opened , some slo­gans where shout­ed and red paint was thrown.

The mov­ing of the state mech­a­nisms was con­stant, many-sided and long, dif­fer­ent than the days the moun­tain was burn­ing. Riot police, under cov­er police and heli­copters where “guard­ing” the burned for­est of Par­nitha , the “nat­ur­al” source of prof­it. The pro­tec­tion of prof­it and the unblocked work of gam­blers seems to have greater impor­tance than the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment.

26 peo­ple (of the approx­i­mate­ly 35–40 that orig­i­nal­ly went there) were arrest­ed with the help of the casi­no work­ers and the may­or of Thrako­make­dones munic­i­pal­i­ty , Themis Oikodomou. The arrest­ed where beat­en up while they where hand-cuffed and then held in the GADA (Cen­tral Police Con­trol Athens) with­out med­ical help and even with­out water. It is also remark­able that when they com­plained about the con­di­tions of their arrest they where bru­tal­ly attacked inside the police head­quar­ters by a squat of riot police.

Imme­di­ate­ly after their move in GADA a group of peo­ple met in front of the head­quar­ters to express their sol­i­dar­i­ty. They stayed there until late in the night when charges where announced . Dis­tur­bance of peace and unpro­voked dam­ages. The charges where announced after the com­plaint of the Casi­no.

After the holo­caust of Par­nitha and the anx­ious res­cue of the casi­no (while the for­est was indif­fer­ent), the com­pa­ny Regency Εnter­tain­ment, few days before showed it’s hyp­o­crit­i­cal “eco­log­i­cal” feel­ings announc­ing that it will spon­sor the re-forest­ing of the area, after though the bestow­al of 62.5 acres for the expan­sion of Mont Parnes.

Athens, Greece

————-
Some his­tor­i­cal back­ground on the ‘pro­tect­ed’ forests of Par­nitha:

Par­nitha, with its mar­velous forests, a place with rich raw flo­ra, includ­ing a thou­sand species of plants and also some rich wild life (such as deers, chamoi­ses, fox­es, coy­otes, bun­nies, bad­gers, hedge­hogs, squir­rels, rep­tiles, amphib­ians and lots of fly­ing crea­tures, includ­ing rap­tors such as hawks and eagles, as well as lit­tle twit­ting birds, such as red­caps , goldfinch­es and pick­locks) was our favourite moun­tain, the one that host­ed many of our walks around the hills, the tops, the rivers and the canyons.

It has­n’t been more than one year since we last referred to the dan­ger of Par­nitha being destroyed, which, despite being accred­it­ed as a pro­tect­ed nat­ur­al for­est since decades, has the tops of its hills spot­ted by mil­i­tary bases, the broad­cast­ing cen­tre, the tourist shel­ters which work in cor­po­rate inter­est and the well-known Mont Par­ness Hotel/Casino, built by the Nation­al Organ­i­sa­tion of Tourism in 1958 on Mavrovouni top and giv­en to the Hyatt Cor­po­ra­tion in 2002 (and to the BC Part­ners in 2006), the rea­son for a lot of envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion in a wider area where extend­ed con­struc­tions are about to take place.

“Very close to Athens, there is the for­est group of Par­nitha, full of forests, which, not pro­tect­ed at all by the plans of the sta­tists and the hunger of the cap­i­tal­ists, is wait­ing its destruc­tion” (…) ” Giv­en the momen­tum of the cap­i­tal­ists, if the care­less­ness and the apa­thy against their plans keep up, Par­nitha will fol­low the rest of the Atti­ca moun­tains which have had and keep on hav­ing lots of irre­versible destruc­tions (Anar­chist Report, num 41, Octo­ber 2006).

This is why hun­dreds friends of the for­est, held a demon­stra­tion in Par­nitha, against the deci­sion for giv­ing 3 mil­lion square meters of for­est, in the heart of the pro­tect­ed for­est, for build­ing things as hos­tels, restau­rants, shop­ping cen­ters, result­ing to an envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter. (4th March 2002)

Though, there was a more seri­ous dis­as­ter; a real holo­caust was about to hapen in Par­nitha, before the real plans of the Hel­lenic Tourist Estates co. and the BC Part­ners would be imple­ment­ed.

It was a fire that result­ed from sparkles in a high-volt­age pylon of the Elec­tric­i­ty Com­pa­ny, in the vil­lage Stephani in Der­veno­cho­ria, due to the over­load on the net­work, that lead to a fire hur­ri­cane that burnt all over Par­nitha. The crim­i­nal delay in fac­ing the fire, in order to avoid an elec­tric­i­ty black-out in Athens, let the fire climb up the moun­tain and go giant, swal­low­ing the for­est. More than 25 mil­lion square meters of forests, out of the 38 mil­lion square meters of the ker­nel of the Pro­tect­ed for­est were burnt, along with some mil­lions of sq meters on the sur­round­ing area.

Although it was not the first time the fire hit Par­nitha, even if it had been expect­ed since years, as all the sur­round­ing moun­tain forests have been burnt, there was nei­ther an imme­di­ate response, nor a prepa­ra­tion, a basic orga­ni­za­tion and co-ordi­na­tion in order to avoid the worst case and have the nation­al park saved.

The for­est of Par­nitha, along with the rich wild life that lived there, are lost; they became a huge cloud of smoke and ash­es above Athens, spread­ing a dark­some and misty light of apoc­a­lypse. Mil­lions of met­ro­pol­i­tan res­i­dents were watch­ing the ter­ror, pas­sive, in their des­tiny, wor­thy of their future, while the min­is­ter of civ­il order Poly­do­ras was in a ridicu­lous tri­umph for sav­ing the Casi­no.

Final­ly, the unprece­dent­ed eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter in Par­nitha is not a result just of the stu­pid­i­ty and the inca­pa­bil­i­ty of the ones respon­si­ble. It is a result of the war that the Pow­er has declared against the human and the nature. It is a dis­as­ter with count­less social and cul­tur­al aspects, while the first envi­ron­men­tal con­se­quences will be imme­di­ate­ly notice­able in the fol­low­ing years, includ­ing the dis­as­trous increase of the tem­per­a­ture, dry-outs and floods in Atti­ca val­ley.

The ancient fir­ry for­est of Par­nitha will nev­er be the same, not even in 100 years; it will stay alive, as it used to be, only in our dreams and mem­o­ries. An amaz­ing­ly beau­ti­ful moun­tain­ous par­adise, a school of nature which offered end­less moments of joy, recre­ation, game, adven­ture and emo­tion, turned into an cal­vary place in one night.

As for the ques­tion on who is respon­si­ble for this crime, in this case, as in any sim­i­lar case, it is no-one apart from the sys­tem of the state and the cap­i­tal­ist organ­i­sa­tion of the soci­ety, where all the polit­i­cal and eco­nom­i­cal author­i­ties attack the human­i­ty and the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, destroy­ing and lut­ing, in an effort to max­i­mize prof­i­teer­ing and social con­trol. We are as guilty, for the destruc­tion and lut­ing which leave behind a burnt ground (both lit­er­al­ly and metaphor­i­cal­ly) in the soci­ety and the nature, as long as we bend in apa­thy just watch­ing.

Ora Nihil 30.6.2007
For the anar­chist report “Black Flag”

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

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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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.