Elec­tron­ic block­ade Wednes­day 17. August from 10 am.

Lets force Landsvirkjun to face up to what we think of their destruc­tion of Ice­land for their own per­son­al prof­it and that of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

It’s high time to paral­yse the destruc­tion of Ice­landic nature.

Elec­tron­ic block­ade Wednes­day 17. August from 10 am.

Lets force Landsvirkjun to face up to what we think of their destruc­tion of Ice­land for their own per­son­al prof­it and that of multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions.

We can do this by tele­phon­ing them, send­ing fax­es to them or e‑mailing them.

There are plen­ty of ques­tions we would like to ask them.

For exam­ple: How comes Impregi­lo where at such an advan­tage dur­ing the bid­ding process for the con­tract­ing of the build­ing of the Kárahnjúar dams? Was there a leak of infor­ma­tion? Who hired Bech­tel to build the ALCOA fac­to­ry in Ice­land if it was not ALCOA them­selves? Could it have been Landsvirkjun employ­ee Sig­ur­dur St. Arnalds who hired them? What was dis­cussed at meet­ings between Mr. Arnalds and Bech­tel in Mon­tre­al “Long before even Alcoa got into the pic­ture”? If that is the case what did Mr. Arnalds get for arrang­ing the con­tract for Bech­tel to
build an ALCOA fac­to­ry in Ice­land? What are the names of the var­i­ous envi­ron­men­tal sci­en­tists that Landsvirkjun have threat­ened or per­se­cut­ed when they deliv­ered sci­en­tif­ic results that were con­sid­ered incon­ve­nient by Landsvirkjun. Whose envi­ron­men­tal ass­es­ments did Landsvirkjun fal­si­fy sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly?

Lets have a looooooong good talk with them, send them huge attach­ments or end­less black fax doc­u­ments. Put their e‑mails on post lists and spread the word as wide as pos­si­ble.

Landsvirkjun, head offices
tele­phone: 00354–515-9000
fax: 00354–515-9007
e‑mail: landsvirkjun@lv.is

Friârik Sophus­son, direc­tor of Landsvirkjun
tele­phone: 00354–515-9011
e‑mail: fridrik@lv.is

JÃhannes Geir Sig­urgeirs­son, pres­i­dent of the board of Landsvirkjun
e‑mail: johannes@lv.is

157.157.138.213

hregg@lv.is
471 2951

hronn@lv.is
470 2602

 kristjank@lv.is
515 9241

more email address­es here-
http://www.lv.is/EN/employees.asp?catID=90
eg-
bjarnibj@lv.is
edvard@lv.is
bjarnimar@lv.is
einarmat@lv.is
eddaros@bi.is
stefanp@lv.is
kristjan@lv.is
thorbergur@lv.is
thrainn@lv.is
ofeigur@lv.is
agnar@lv.is
arni@lv.is
bjornst@lv.is
gunnlaugur@lv.is
olis@lv.is
thorsteinn@lv.is
orlygur@lv.is
ragnheidur@lv.is
gudmundurp@lv.is
bergur@lv.is
asgeirg@lv.is
bjornj@lv.is
gunnhildurm@lv.is
sigthrud@lv.is
stefan@lv.is
ragnvig@lv.is
adalsteinn@lv.is
agnar@lv.is
albert@lv.is

http://vefprofun.lv.is

Today, the Depart­ment of Trans­port was tar­get­ted for the first time in about a year by anti-roads pro­test­ers.

Tues­day 16th August was an incred­i­ble day for our lit­tle cam­paign group from Southend on Sea. As some of you may now be aware we staged the lat­est in our series of ‘Save Pri­o­ry Park!’ direct actions today, for the first time yet with the cho­sen venue being in the cen­tre of Lon­don.

At 10.40am Tues­day morn­ing, a small team of activists from the group, tailed by a Lon­don Tonight film crew and inde­pen­dent video­g­ra­phers, entered the Depart­ment for Trans­port (DfT) main office lob­by on Mar­sham Street, lock­ing down for an inside occu­pa­tion that ran into the ear­ly after­noon.

The DfT is due to make a deci­sion regard­ing fund­ing for the F5 road scheme immi­nent­ly, so we took action to draw media and pub­lic atten­tion to the deci­sion mak­ers, to try to influ­ence the process, and to show that the peo­ple of our town — plus our great friends from fur­ther afield — feel strong­ly enough to take direct action as need be to stop the road.

In con­junc­tion with the inside team, who deployed hand­cuffs and lock on equip­ment to stay in posi­tion, a larg­er group unfurled two 12′ ban­ners out­side the entrance, in addi­tion to posters depict­ing finds from the threat­ened East Sax­on king’s bur­ial site. This enabled us to main­tain pub­lic engage­ment through­out the event, as the access doors to the DfT were
prompt­ly locked after our arrival.

Nego­ti­a­tions ensued, with the office being unwill­ing to speak to the inside team, unless we first took the deci­sion to leave the build­ing. Our stance was agreed to be that we would only unlock if a senior rep­re­sen­ta­tive from the DfT spoke to us in per­son, oth­er­wise we would have to be forcibly removed by the author­i­ties.

Even­tu­al­ly after a polite stand off that last­ed for over two hours, the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police were called and we were giv­en one final oppor­tu­ni­ty to go at around 1.00pm. We were then eject­ed from the build­ing, whilst still being locked togeth­er as we had been for the dura­tion of the event.

Although being threat­ened with var­i­ous pos­si­ble charges includ­ing a breach of the peace — even after our forced relo­ca­tion out­side — we chose to stay and con­tin­ue the protest to max­imise our impact, with lunchtime office work­ers tak­ing much inter­est in the pro­ceed­ings. Sur­pris­ing­ly for us, and in light of all of the above, no arrests were made.

Look­ing back for once, we have come a long way since we formed Park­life in June 2001. We have shown yet again that local peo­ple can empow­er them­selves, by tak­ing action to stand up for what they believe in. We remain a sin­gle issue and high­ly focused campaign/action group, but at the same time we hope that peo­ple will say, ‘If they can do it then we can!’

Park­life video 6mins (6.6mb mpeg4 ver­sion) -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/09/323692.mp4
A short sequence of clips from tues­days action at the depart­ment of trans­port. 2 mins 4 mb -
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/321318.mov

e‑mail: priory_parklife@yahoo.co.uk
Home­page: http://www.savepriorypark.org

Ear­li­er this sum­mer an ille­gal road­stone quar­ry at Back Dale Quar­ry, on Long­stone Edge Nr Bakewell was tar­get­ed by sabo­teurs.

The quar­ry owned by Bleak­low Indus­tries, was being mined by Mer­ri­mans (Mer­ri­mans, Gleabe, and Stan­cliffe — 9 Ladies — are the main com­pa­nies rip­ping up the Peak Park).

The Quar­ry was grant­ed per­mis­sion for min­er­al extrac­tion (Flurspar) in the 1950’s. Due to protest about the quar­ry which eats into Long­stone Edge and the Combe Dale SSSI,(Sites of Spe­cial Sci­en­tif­ic Inter­est) includ­ing men­tion in Par­li­ment, quar­ry­ing by RMC stopped. Mer­ri­mans took over and to max­imise their prof­its start­ed to ille­gal­ly extract road­stone.

The pres­sures on our Nation­al Parks will increase as the new road build­ing pro­gram gets under­way. At the start of this year the Peak Park Author­i­ty took out an injunc­tion to stop Mer­ri­mans from extract­ing road­stone at Back Dale, as the quar­ry is eat­ing into the Edge and the woods there at a rapid pace. Mer­ri­mans have refused to stop extract­ing the stone, even step­ping up their extrac­tion.

Due to these facts per­sons unknown took it upon them­selves to take direct action againts machin­ery used there and 2 exca­va­tors and 2 crush­ing and sort­ing con­vey­ers had their engines destroyed, 2 crush­ing and sort­ing con­very­ers and a drilling rig had their engines sab­o­taged, 2 lor­ries and a bull­doz­er had locks glued, and a dust lor­ry was sab­o­taged.

The Save Hap­py Val­ley Cam­paign has tak­en the fight against Sol­id Ener­gy to a new lev­el. In a care­ful­ly planned protest, three activists ‘locked on’ to train tracks at about 11.50am today pre­vent­ing Sol­id Energy’s coal trains reach­ing Lyt­tel­ton port [first press release]. Two were locked onto the track direct­ly and a third was hang­ing from a tree 30m up with his sup­port rope con­nect­ed to the track.

Three trains were forced to stop and police quick­ly turned up [sec­ond press release]. Those locked-on refused to move and police were forced to dig up the con­crete that been laid to remove the two direct­ly con­nect­ed. The third in the tree took longer for the police to get down. In all, the pro­test­ers held up the coal trains for just under 4 hours.

All three have been arrest­ed and charges of tres­pass, wil­ful dam­age and tres­pass under the Rail­ways Act. They have vowed to fight the charges and as well as Sol­id Ener­gy’s intim­i­da­tion tac­tics, who plan to sue them for two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars [third press release].They will be stag­ing a protest at their first court appear­ance this Thurs­day, 9.00am at the Dis­trict Court in Christchurch.

Sol­id Ener­gy has been push­ing very aggres­sive­ly to destroy Hap­py Val­ley, a beau­ti­ful area of native bush, frag­ile wet­lands and a thriv­ing ecosys­tem of native birds and ani­mals locat­ed on the West Coast of New Zealand, with an open-cast coal mine and have just recent­ly cleared the nec­es­sary legal hur­dles. The mine will not only destroy the val­ley and the sur­round­ing area, but fur­ther add to cli­mate change which is expect­ed to have dev­as­tat­ing glob­al con­se­quences if left to con­tin­ue unabat­ed.

Check out www.savehappyvalley.org.nz for more infor­ma­tion about Sol­id Ener­gy’s plans and the cam­paign against them.

Cor­po­rate Watch is a small inde­pen­dent research co-op, pub­lish­ing info on cor­po­ra­tions to help resis­tance to cor­po­rate pow­er. We pub­lish newslet­ters every two month and email­news updates every two weeks. To sub­scribe to either vis­it www.corporatewatch.org.uk

CORPORATE WATCH LATEST NEWSLETTER NOW OUT

URGENT — SUPPORT TESCO AGENCY WORKERS

Work­ers in Tesco’s Irish dis­trib­ut­ing cen­tres have been protest­ing against con­di­tions since Thurs­day 28th. Main­ly Pol­ish agency staff, they have been brought over by Tesco, pre­sum­ably in the hope that they will work for low­er pay and not know their rights. Two work­ers who com­plained at the a back-break­ing tar­gets were moved to anoth­er work­place. Now they are call­ing for sol­i­dar­i­ty pick­ets of all Tescos on Thurs­day the 6th of August, at 6pm. free­lance @mailworks.org

MORE NEWS…

CHINA: BACK ON THE SCENE

Dur­ing the last ten years Chi­na has become a full part of the glob­alised cor­po­rate econ­o­my. This is a return to nor­mal­i­ty for the coun­try that dom­i­nat­ed world trade for most of its his­to­ry. On the basis of Chi­na’s mas­sive labour force, most ana­lysts are pre­dict­ing a sim­i­lar role in the near future. Read more:  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1865

CHINA’S CORPORATE BABIES

The news that Nan­jing Auto­mo­tive had suc­ceed­ed in its bid to buy fail­ing car com­pa­ny MG Rover, 22nd July, was greet­ed as yet more evi­dence of Chi­nese eco­nom­ic strength. ‘There is a new kid on the world’s eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal block; every­thing is going to change’ — Will Hut­ton. As for­mer edi­tor of the Observ­er and Chief Exec­u­tive of the Work Foun­da­tion (a busi­ness think tank, for­mer­ly the Indus­tri­al Soci­ety), Hut­ton is a good indi­ca­tor of what the UK elite are think­ing — and it seems that they view Chi­na’s ris­ing econ­o­my with both excite­ment and a fris­son of fear. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1866

CORPORATE WATCH G8 MINI POSTER

See the lat­est A3 Poster from Cor­po­rate Watch. Lie 8 at the G8.
Down­load the image here:  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1868

BOOK REVIEW: THE CORPORATION

Joel Bakan’s sem­i­nal anti-cor­po­rate work, The Cor­po­ra­tion — prob­a­bly the most read book in our office since David Kor­te­n’s When Cor­po­ra­tions Rule the World — has been re-released in a new revised and expand­ed edi­tion (*now with added Chom­sky*). Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1881

CORRUPTION IN IRAQ: AKA ‘THE NORMAL’ WAY TO DO BUSINESS

The cor­po­rate invaders of Iraq have found them­selves mired in cor­rup­tion. Many report that sweet­en­er pay­ments for those who fix them with clients and sub- con­trac­tors have become part of the rou­tine. In typ­i­cal colo­nial fash­ion, the occu­piers blame Iraq’s endem­ic bribery and fraud, not on the way that the Amer­i­can firms like Hal­libur­ton con­duct them­selves. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1867

SEA SHELLS AND PIPE DREAMS

Shell are up to some more land­scape trash­ing, lead­ing a con­sor­tium propos­ing to build an over­land pipeline through the west of Ire­land. Wend­ing its way six­ty five kilo­me­tres off the North West coast, pass­ing through vil­lages and farm­ers’ land, the pipeline will got from the Cor­rib gas field in West­ern Ire­land to a refin­er then end at Gal­way. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1870

WEIR — REAPING THE BENEFITS OF WAR

Sup­port­ed by the British gov­ern­ment, Weir  ‘Scot­land’s 20th largest com­pa­ny’ is play­ing a key role in eco­nom­ic impe­ri­al­ism and feed­ing the west­’s oil addic­tion. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1871

WHO’S PULLING THE EU LOBBY STRINGS?

Cor­po­rate lob­by­ists first began migrat­ing to Brus­sels after the sign­ing of the Sin­gle Euro­pean Act in 1986, sens­ing the rich pick­ings to be had from Europe’s neolib­er­al slide. Near­ly two decades lat­er there are over 15,000 lob­by­ists, 70 per cent rep­re­sent­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests, oper­at­ing in hun­dreds of lob­by­ing con­sul­tan­cies, PR agen­cies and EU affairs offices in an indus­try which gen­er­ates an esti­mat­ed €90m every year. Yet unlike in the Unit­ed States, there are still no bind­ing require­ments for EU lob­by­ists to dis­close who they are lob­by­ing for, what they are lob­by­ing on, or how much they are being paid. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1872

YOUR DEBT DRIVES THE ECONOMY

Ever felt guilty about tak­ing out a loan to buy that car, fridge or presents at Christ­mas? Well don’t — with all the fac­to­ries clos­ing down and even the call cen­tres being sourced over­seas, con­sumer spend­ing is one of the only things dri­ving the UK econ­o­my. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1892

PANDA-ING TO THE SOYA BARONS?

‘In the past the big con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tions used to believe that nature reserves should not include peo­ple, so many were moved out, and indige­nous peo­ple lost their lands. Now it seems as though the WWF is mak­ing anoth­er big mis­take, with seri­ous impli­ca­tions for small farm­ers, rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and food sov­er­eign­ty.’ Hele­na Paul, EcoNexus. Read more:  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1873

WWF REPLIES TO CORPORATE WATCH’S ARTICLE:

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1890

DIRECT ACTION FLOODS ICELAND

Direct action against the Karah­n­jukar hydro-elec­tric dam project in Ice­land has start­ed in earnest. The dam will dev­as­tate West­ern Europe’s last pris­tine wilder­ness, sole­ly to pow­er an Alcoa alu­mini­um smelter (see Cor­po­rate Watch num­ber 23, April May 2005, page 9). Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1889

DIARY:

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1864

CORPORATIONS THROUGH HISTORY: HSBC

The ‘world’s local bank’ start­ed off as a British com­pa­ny that took over the lucra­tive trade with Chi­na, after the Opi­um wars of the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry had opened up the econ­o­my to for­eign traders. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1874

–
Cor­po­rate Watch
Oxford, UK
www.corporatewatch.org.uk
01865 791 391

Cor­po­rate Watch is an inde­pen­dent research co-op. Please help us out by donat­ing mon­ey or sub­scrib­ing to the newslet­ter

Original press release:

Today a group of activists invad­ed the Alcoa con­struc­tion site at Reyðar­fjörður and climbed cranes on the site. The aim of this action was to stop the work on the site. Alcoa have been tar­get­ed because of their involve­ment in the Kárahnjúkar dam project and the oth­er pro­posed dam projects and alu­mini­um smelters in the Ice­landic high­lands as well as envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion world­wide. The Ice­landic high court has judged that the build­ing of the Alcoa fac­to­ry in Reyðar­fjörður is ille­gal; we demand that the con­struc­tion of this fac­to­ry is imme­di­ate­ly halt­ed in obser­vance of this court rul­ing.

This action was only one of many that shall be tak­en against Alcoa and their like in Ice­land and across the world. The last clean wilder­ness in West­ern Europe, heavy indus­try must not be allowed to despoil Ice­landic nature. This is a call out to the peo­ple of Ice­land and all in peo­ples of the earth to stand up and fight against the destruc­tion of our envi­ron­ment and cul­ture.

As you will see in the video at the end. some strong Alcoa sup­port­ers were try­ing to bust one of the protest sup­port­ers car and got arrest­ed for it (dum fuck)

The crane shown in the pic­ture is from a com­pa­ny called Weldex, based in Inver­ness, Scot­land:

Tel: 01463 220333
Fax: 01463 241616
E‑mail: info@weldex.co.uk
Web: http://www.weldex.co.uk/

How about call­ing and e‑mailing them and demand­ing that they remove their equip­ment from the site?!

Short video of action -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/320344.mov

On the first of August 2005 a group of activists dropped a ban­ner at the Karah­n­jukar Dam Site in Protest abainst all planned Heavey Indus­try in Ice­land..

A paint­ed crack indi­cat­ed the dan­gers of such col­los­al con­struc­tion on a sub­struc­ture already weak­ened by geot­her­mal pres­suresIn 2003 Landsvirk­in­jun’s chief, fridrik Sophus­son, was asked what would hap­pen if there was an Earth­quake under the Dam. “It would burst. A cat­a­sproph­ic wall of water would anni­hi­late every­one in this .…and all the neigh­bour­ing farms wold be swept away.” Though he said “this won’t hap­pen”, sev­er­al days of con­ti­nous Earth­quakes in 2004 sug­gest oth­er­wise pro­test­ers com­ment­ed. The crack is also a sym­bol of sol­i­dar­i­ty with oth­er Dam Cam­paign­ers glob­al­ly. In 1980 the eco­log­i­cal resis­tance group ‘Earth first’ dropped a 100 metres  ban­ner from Glen Canyon Dam on Col­orado Riv­er (U.S.A.).

Twen­ty years lat­er a strong move­ment is suc­cess­ful­ly chal­leng­ing devel­op­ment and has achived rever­sal of some plans. It is hoped the same will hap­pen here.

In 2001 The nation­al plan­ning agency (NPA) reject­ed plans for Karah­n­jukar because of the“substantial, Irre­versible, neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact” — yet it is still going ahead.If these projects con­tin­ue, ice­land will and itself destroyed, pol­lut­ed, enslaved to for­eign com­pa­nies and liv­ing with a time­bomb. This action is to high­light the dan­gers of heavy Indus­try, the suc­cess­es of resis­tance in oth­er coun­tries and to call out to the ice­landic peo­ple to join in and defend their coun­try and cul­ture.

The group of activists were detained for 9 hours in Egilsstadir with­out bee­ing for­mal­ly arrest­ed. The cas­es are bee­ing dealt with cur­rent­ly.

Video -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/320242.mov

e‑mail: saveingiceland@riseupnet.is
Home­page: http://www.savingiceland.org

On Tues­day, the 29th June, 2005, in Dublin, Ire­land, 5 farm­ers from Ross­port, Co. Mayo,Ireland were sent to Moun­tjoy Prison in Dublin, for vio­lat­ing an order imposed by the High Court to stop block­ing Shell access to their lands to con­stuct the onshore sec­tion of the Cor­rib Gas Field pipeline.

The men have appeared in Court sev­er­al times since that date and have been asked whether or not they wish to purge their con­tempt and agree to obey­ing the injunction,a request the have flat­ly refused on each occa­sion.

A Nation­wide cam­paign of Boycotts,Blockades,Pickets,Fundraisers,Large ‑Scale Demos,Occupations and sit-ins, Sol­i­dar­i­ty gath­er­ings as well as a per­ma­nent activist camp and block­ade at the remote site of the pro­posed pipeline has explod­ed in Ire­land since the men’s jail­ing.

The Irish Gov­ern­ment has giv­en Shell carte blanche with Ire­land’s ener­gy resources. Shell and sta­toil plan to build the world’s first-ever onshore gas pro­cess­ing plant in Mayo, and can now have the courts imprison any­one who tries to get in their way.

The High Court has jailed five peo­ple at the request of Shell for attempt­ing to stop the multi­na­tion­al from lay­ing a con­tro­ver­sial, high-pres­sure, “off­shore” gas pipeline through their land in Ross­port, Co Mayo. The judge ordered that the five men — four small landown­ers and a local sup­port­er — be impris­oned “until they purge their con­tempt”, mean­ing they will not be released until they have promised to allow Shell to dig up their land.

The pipeline is pro­posed to run along­side the men’s homes as well as those of many oth­er local res­i­dents at sev­er­al times the nor­mal pres­sure of such oper­a­tions due to the dis­tance the­gas must trav­el form the sea-source to the onshore refinery.Shell have built 3km of the pipeline with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion and have told the Min­is­ter they are report­ing to-Mr Noel Dempsey,of the right wing Fian­na Fail party,that they will be “more careful@ in future”

The jail­ing comes 10 years after the exe­cu­tion of nine Ogo­ni activists for their oppo­si­tion to Shel­l’s oper­a­tion in Nige­ria.
The sup­ply pipeline will be car­ry­ing raw, unprocessed gas at high pres­sure, in close prox­im­i­ty to hous­es and through a pro­tect­ed estu­ary. The pro­cess­ing plant will burn waste oil on site and dis­charge it into the atmos­phere, and will dump tox­ic waste direct­ly into the estu­ary, which is a habi­tat for rare marine life. The Co. Mayo coastal area itself is a Whale and Dol­phin sanc­tu­ary.

This issue rais­es again the incred­i­ble sit­u­a­tion where­by the fab­u­lous gas wealth off the coast of Co. Mayo has been giv­en by the Gov­ern­ment to Shell and Sta­toil for not a pen­ny in roy­al­ties to the Irish peo­ple and with huge tax write offs against the cost of exploit­ing it. The alter­na­tive is that the gas would be treat­ed and puri­fied in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way to the present pro­pos­als by Shell and Sta­toil. The fact is that the intense pres­sure of raw gas mixed with con­den­sate oil and water, which is pro­posed to be brought through the dis­put­ed pipeline, is unprece­dent­ed by world stan­dards and gives rise to poten­tial unprece­dent­ed risks for the local com­mu­ni­ty. To have res­i­dents exposed to this kind of pres­sure to facil­i­tate a multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion is intol­er­a­ble.

The Irish peo­ple are ris­ing up against these cor­po­rate thiefs and the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment that gift­ed them our nat­ur­al resources!
Like so many oth­er issues we stug­gle on,this is and has become more so an Inter­na­tion­a­tion­al issue of cor­po­rate repres­sion with state assis­tance!
The cam­paign is esca­lat­ing and shall do so until the 5 men are released and receive jus­tice for them­selves and their fam­i­lies and until Shell have been stripped of the resources they have stolen from the Iirsh peo­ple!

BOYCOTT SHELL AND STATOIL!

More info,statistics,campaigns,how to get involved—
www.shelltosea.com
www.indymedia.ie
www.indymedia.ie/mayo

On Tues­day 19th July 2005.a group of approx­i­mate­ly 20 of us hiked to the main junc­tion approach­ing the site. Four of our group locked on to a pick up truck and a HUGE cater­pil­lar con­struc­tion vehi­cle. We man­aged to block 2 oth­er access roads and hault work on the site for three hours. This was a first in Ice­landic history:the police had to make up a word for lock-on. Thir­teen of us were detained, appar­ent­ly arrest­ed, and lat­er released with­out charge.…with the warn­ing that Impregi­lo were look­ing at this inci­dent with grave eyes and were like­ly to make a civ­il case. Impregi­lo have since changed their mind. For a change, the media did report that the pro­test­ers were friend­ly!

We have gath­ered to protest the con­tin­u­ing dev­as­ta­tion of glob­al ecol­o­gy in the inter­est of cor­po­rate prof­its. The strug­gle to save our plan­et, like the strug­gle against inhu­man­i­ty, is glob­al, so we have to be too. We are here to pre­vent the Karah­n­jukar Dam project from destroy­ing West­ern Europe’s last great wilder­ness.

Dodgy Ital­ian con­struc­tion con­glom­er­ate Impregi­lo, is in charge of build­ing most of the dam . One of Impregilo’s con­sul­tants has already been found guilty in 2003 of offer­ing bribes to a Lesotho hydro-elec­tric firm, and the com­pa­ny itself will face anoth­er hear­ing before the Lesotho courts in April 2005. Impregi­lo were also involved in build­ing the Argenti­na’s Yacyre­ta dam, which went almost $10 mil­lion over bud­get and was labeled by Pres­i­dent Car­los Men­em ‘a mon­u­ment to cor­rup­tion’ . Impregi­lo were also one of the firms plan­ning to build the infa­mous Ilisu dam in Turkey which, had it gone ahead, would have made 30,000 Kurds home­less and drowned the world his­toric site of Hasankeyf..

Alu­mini­um smelters emit enor­mous quan­ti­ties of green­house gas­es. In 2001, super-clean Ice­land was able to nego­ti­ate a 10% increase in per­mit­ted emis­sions under the Kyoto pro­to­col — the biggest increase in the world. In effect, Alcoa is buy­ing Ice­land’s licence to pol­lute, as well as cheap elec­tric­i­ty. The min­istry of envi­ron­ment also gave Alcoa a licence to emit 12 times the lev­el of sul­phur diox­ide the World Bank expects from mod­ern smelters. SO2; and flu­o­ride, the most dan­ger­ous pol­lu­tants in terms of pub­lic health and land dam­age, will be pumped direct­ly into the air via giant chim­neys.

Many geol­o­gists fear cat­a­stroph­ic results, espe­cial­ly as con­struc­tion is on a sub­struc­ture weak­ened by geot­her­mal fis­sures. Thorsteinn Siglaugs­son, a risk spe­cial­ist, pre­pared a recent inde­pen­dent eco­nom­ic report on Karah­n­jukar for the Ice­landic Nature Con­ser­va­tion Agency. It states that the project would nev­er have attract­ed pri­vate finance: “Karah­n­jukar will nev­er make a prof­it, and the Ice­landic tax­pay­er may well end up sub­si­dis­ing Alcoa.” A respect­ed fig­ure of the Ice­landic uni­ver­si­ty sent out an email declar­ing that it will take the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment 250 years sim­ply to recoup the finan­cial costs of the dam (which is unlike­ly to be oper­a­tional by that time). Nobody will be mak­ing a prof­it except for Alcoa. The only expla­na­tion for this project is one which con­firms the find­ings of the 2001 Gre­co (EU anti-cor­rup­tion group) report, that “the close links between the gov­ern­ment and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty [in Ice­land] could gen­er­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for cor­rup­tion”. This project is cor­rupt to the core, and it is the first of many planned for the future. Ice­land’s unique beau­ty is-lit­er­al­ly- to be sac­ri­ficed to pow­er the cor­po­rate machine.