Saving Iceland

1/1/2007

Already beset by the devastating effects of a global warming caused by the heavy industrialisation of the planet, the glacial island of Greenland is now under an even more immediate industrial threat: this time by the aluminium industry. Norsk Hydro recently announced that it is considering plans to build a 300,000 tonne and 500 Megawatt primary aluminium smelter in Greenland, powered by the damming of a yet undisclosed part of the island. Read More

Click here for the Saving Iceland Press Release Regarding the RUV News About the ELF Action in Hafnarfjordur

Earth First
January 2007

In the first week of the new year ELF (Earth Liberation Front) struck in Iceland for the first time. The target was the Alcan Aluminium smelter in Hafnarfjordur which is being expanded into pristine lavafields without local democratic consent which was promised in the town council elections.
This factory is part of ongoing heavy industrialisation of the Icelandic wilderness powered by large dams and geothermal power stations all around the country.

Three peices of machinery (2 diggers and a crane truck) were heavily sabotaged and the ELF signature was left on a workshed wall. Read More

“It’s ALCAN the Aluminium Man
The Aluminium Man with the Aluminium Plan
For making lots of aluminium
Out of other peoples land!

Will this Man of Aluminium
Realize what he’s done,
Once he’s done what he is about to start?
He’s got aluminium, but he’s got no heart!”

UPDATE 2007: Recently Alcan had to give up its participation in the bauxite mine because of protests against its human rights violations and environmental devastation. Alcan has been accused of cultural genocide in Kashipur because mining and dams have already displaced 150,000 mainly tribal people there.

Canadian mining and aluminium giant Alcan (in Iceland Alcan Iceland Ltd. and ISAL) want to get their hands on one of the world’s richest deposits of bauxite – the raw material for aluminium – in the Kashipur region of India. The $1.4 billion monster strip-mine and refinery promises to displace up to 20,000 people, destroy their livelihoods and culture, contaminate food and water sources and obliterate their spiritual sites.

Villagers have been fighting the mine for the past 12 years but in November 2004 politicians decided that the Alcan mining project was to be launched at any cost – since then repression has been seriously stepped up. People have been murdered by the police and recently it surfaced that the ALCOA sharks have smelt the blood and are now showing interest in joining in… Read More

Brighton Gathering Poster .PDF – Please print and stick all over the world!

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A summer of International dissent and action against Heavy Industry – swarming around Iceland from the 6th of July 2007

 

The Camp and Conference:

The camp will start 6 July. The conference on the Global Consequences of Heavy Industry takes place at the camp 7-8 July. Academics, activists and other people affected by the aluminium industry, dams and environmental destruction will come together to discuss their experiences and think about how to build up stronger local and global resistance.

Immediately following from this the protest camp will be set up. It will be a space in which creative and direct opposition to heavy industry can be mounted. There will be workshops, discussions and concerts (by emerging Icelandic groups as well as world famous bands) during this period. There will be a strong focus around direct action, as in previous camps. For example, at the past two camps there were a number of actions whereby protestors got into dam and smelter construction sites, sometimes chaining themselves to machinery, sometimes not. People of all experiences of this kind of protest are extreemely welcome. Read More

On New Years Day activists targeted 2 Alcoa front companies, (Kawneer in central London and ASA in North London.) Both companies had their front access doors locked shut with D-locks and chains, and were left grafitti messages that they should leave Iceland straight away. They are destroying the largest pristine wilderness in Europe right now, as well as trashing other communities and ecosystems all over the world.
Read More

Millennium Bridge

On New Years Day, campaigners from Saving Iceland climbed St.Pauls Cathedral and the Tate Modern in London as part of our campaign to challenge the destruction of the Icelandic hihghlands, Europe’s last remaining great wildernesses, and the destruction of communities in Trinidad, both at the hands of the aluminium industry and in particular ALCOA, ALCAN and Century Aluminum.
Read More

Trinidad Express
29/12/2006

Errol McLeod yesterday bought fresh fish where he usually does-from a vendor at Otaheite Bay. But he feared it may not be long before he would not be able to do so. Read More

In his Christmas year-end review, Trinidadian Prime Minister Patrick Manning announced that he is to scrap his plans to build an Alcoa Aluminium smelter by the towns of Chatam and Cap de Ville, where local residents have fiercely campaigned against the government’s smelter plan. Read More

For Better or for Worse??
Poem by Marcel, a Cedros resident

So, Mister Man, you’re giving us a Plant
Against our wishes- not the kind we want
Approaching with incentives and bright smiles
To destroy our plants for three square miles.
The fauna too, are going to be dead
‘Cause money Madness gone to someone’s head. Read More