Saving Iceland

Reception and presentation by Samarendra Das in Centenary Hall, St. Mary’s College, Thursday Oct. 1st, from 18:30 to 21:00.

Mr. Samarendra Das is an Indian national, global activist and research scholar based in London and Orissa. He has been involved for the last sixteen years in grassroots activism with the ‘Dongria Kondh’ and ‘Mahji Kondh’, tribal communities who have lived sustainable and self-sufficient lives for centuries in the mountains of Orissa. Kondh values and their mountains are in risk from multinational companies seeking to capture iron ore and bauxite  for the metal industries. Mr. Das has developed extensive knowledge of transnational corporations, NGO’s and the institutional architecture of the global elite who wield power over the earth’s resources. His academic backgrounds include a ‘first’ first class honors in  mathematics and a master of computer science with distinction. Mr. Das has co-produced films with his brother Amarendra, published books and written over 200 papers in his  mother tongue, Oriya. His work is both technical and artistic, covering culture, identity, conflict and political economy. His recent film with Amarendra, Sept. 2005, Wira Pdika (Earth Worm: Company Man) is feature-length campaign documentary on the resistance of the Orissa Kondhs.

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Read the beginning of this story by clicking here –  Yesterday, the Reykjavík City Council approved Reykjavík Energy’s (O.R.) contract about the company’s selling of their share in H.S. Orka. The share has been purchased by a Canadian geothermal company, Magma Energy, owned by Ross Beaty, a former owner of copper and silver mines companies in Latin America. O.R.’s share was 32% but Magma Energy had already bought 11% in H.S. Orka from Geysir Green Energy (GGE) and therefor owns 43% in the company. Recently, GGE bought the majority share in H.S. Orka from Reykjanesbær council, which means that the access to geothermal energy in the Reykjanes peninsula is now mainly in the hands of private companies. Magma and GGE have already announced ideas of the companies’ unification.

Well over 100 people attended the city council’s meeting yesterday to follow the discussion from the balcony of the council’s main meeting hall. Öskra! – the movement of revolutionary students, had amongst other, called on people to show up and protest against the decision making.  People were very angry and expressed their anger in many different ways; mostly by shouting and interrupting the councilors’ speeches, telling them to get out and calling them traitors. The meeting had to be stopped several times because of the disturbance, which lead to the building’s security guards calling for police assistance. Three men were arrested after one of them threw a role of toilet paper down from the balcony on to the floor were the councilors were sitting. When the police attempted to arrest him, two others tried to de-arrest him, which lead to the arrest of all of them. The arrest was quite brutal, enough to shock many of those who attended the meeting.  Read More

Chinalco, China’s biggest aluminium producer, has shown interest in buying a 32% share in Þeistareykir ehf., a geothermal energy company from the north of Iceland, owned equally by three companies; Landsvirkun (Iceland’s national energy company), Norðurorka and Orkuveita Húsavíkur (O.H. – Húsavík Energy). Norðuorka has shown interest in selling its share and according to information from the Chinesee Embassy in Iceland a committee from Chinalco will go north to Húsavík soon to discuss with those who the purchase concerns. Alcoa and H.S. Orka, which has been bought by the Canadian H.S. Orka, have also shown interest in buying a share in Þeistareykir ehf.

Chinalco owns 10% shares in Rio Tinto-Alcan, which owns an aluminium smelter in Hafnarfjörður, Iceland. Chinalco has been focusing on buying up companies in different metal industries and e.g. recently bought copper mines in Latin America from Ross Beaty, the director of Magma Energy, a Canadian geothermal energy company that is in the process of buying big shares in an Icelandic energy company, H.S. Orka and has mentioned the possibility of buying shares in Geysir Green Energy, the major owner of H.S. Orka.

The coming 1st of October, the memorandum of understanding between Alcoa, the government and Norðurþing county, expires. Norðurþing has announced their interest in renewing their contract with Alcoa, which is still looking for ways to use the geothermal energy from Þeistareykir.  Read More

Magma Energy, a Canadian company, wants to buy a majority share in H.S. Orka, a geothermal energy company based on the Reykjanes peninsula. In July this year Magma Energy bought a 11% share in H.S. Orka from Geysir Green Energy (GGE) and therefor became the first foreign shareholder in an Icelandic energy company. The purchase was a part of a bigger agreement between Reykjanesbær and GGE, which resulted in GGE owning a little more than 50% of H.S. Orka. Around the purchase, Ross Beaty, Magma’s director stated that the company did not plan to become predominant in H.S. Orka or meddle with the management of the company’s power plants.

In the middle of August, Orkuveita Reykjavíkur (O.R. – e. Reykjavík Energy) decided to start discussion with Magma Energy about the latter’s purchase of O.R.’s share in H.S. Orka, which is 32% and would therefor give Magma 43% share in the company and the possibility of increasing it 5%. Magma has bought the very small shares of the communities of Sandgerði and Hafnarfjörður, and has been discussing with communities like Vogar and Grindavík about buying their shares as well. If everything goes like planned, H.S. Orka, which e.g. is the biggest energy provider for the Century Aluminum’s planned smelter in Helguvík, will mostly be owned by to private companies; Magma and GGE, which will own c.a. half of the shares each. Read More

On Tuesday night or yesterday morning, a serious sabotage was done on a GMO testing field in Iceland. The field is owned by ORF Líftækni, a company that was experimenting with growing genetically modified barley for use in medical researches, the skin product industry and medicine development. According to the company’s CEO, Björn Lárus Örvar, all the barley was trashed, which means that the company will not get any harvest this coming fall. The financial loss runs on millions of Icelandic Krónur (ISK).

A group named Illgresi (Weeds) sent out a press release this morning, claiming responsibility for the action, saying:

On the 22nd of June 2009the bio-medical company ORF got permission for experimental planting of GMO medicinal barley in Gunnarsholt, Rángárvallarsýslu. These experiment´s would have paved the way for general planting of genetically modified plants in Iceland. All voices of criticism, both institutions and individuals are made suspect and the little media coverage has been homogeneous and in favour of ORF. Today this permission was revoked. The reasons are amongst others: Read More

UPDATE: 04:30 – Everybody has been released.

After a brutal arrest of 5 people during a Saving Iceland protest today (read about it with clicking here), around thirty people gathered by the police station in Reykjavík to protest against the arrest of their comrades and the police violence. During the noise demonstration, two more people were arrested after trying to blockade the fence of the parking lot by the station. According to witnesses, one of them was seriously injured by the police who beat him to blood.

We have received no proper photos yet, but hope to be able to put them on the website as soon as possible, as well as more information.

Yesterday, Friday August 7th, Saving Iceland protested by the Ministry of Industry. At the same time inside the building, a financial contract was signed between the government and Norðurál/Century Aluminum, concerning the latter’s smelter in Helguvík. When the protest was about to end, the police showed up, arrested 5 individuals and aggressively roughed up one of them. Most of the media has spoken about the event but not mentioned the police brutality at all. Instead, the media has unsparingly published the police’s smear about us: that a policeman was kicked in the head and that we threatened the police with iron sticks, without any evidence showing that anything like this ever took place. Saving Iceland rejects these accusations and renounces the media’s one-sided reports.

The contract that was signed today includes state support for the aluminium smelters in the form of a tax discount that amounts to 16,2 million US dollars – two billion Icelandic krónur – and gives Norðurál/Century exemptions from paying industry fees, market fees and electricity safety fees. Special rules will also apply concerning stamp duty and planning fees, and about new taxes. The emission permits that are now valid permit a 150 thousand ton smelter in Helguvík; the Environmental Impact Assessment permits 250 thousand tons, but Century/Norðurál plans to build a 360 thousand ton smelter and today’s contract gives the company the right to do so. (1) The energy for the smelter has not been found and Svandís Svarvarsdóttir, the minister of environment has officially said that enough energy to run the smelter does not exist in the Reykjanes peninsula. (2) At the same time, Katrín Júlíusdóttir, the minister of industry, has agreed with ideas about Landsvirkjun selling energy from the planned dams in Þjórsá river to Helguvík. (3) Read More

Last Tuesday, August 4th,  Saving Iceland targeted the aluminium producer Alcoa. We knocked on the doors of the company’s office by Suðurlandsbraut but nobody answered, so the green skyr (traditional dairy product – historical for being used in protests) and other filthy stuff we had, ended up on the door, walls and the floor in front of the office. Compared to Alcoa’s role in the destruction of Iceland’s wilderness and other environmental and human crimes across the globe, this was a minimum punishment.

Though Alcoa’s aluminium smelter in Reyðarfjörður (east of Iceland) is now working with full force, driven on by the highly critical Kárahnjúkar Dam, there is still a fair reason for attacking the company. The smelter in Reyðarfjörður was the beginning of the heavy industry madness, the first sign of how effect the government’s advertisement campaign about the country’s cheap energy and people’s little as no resistance, was. (1) The smelter in Reyðarfjörður was the ball the pushed forward the idea that aluminium production is the premise for life. After the construction of the Kárahnjúkar Dam, all other energy projects look so small that only very few people seem to see a reason for fighting against them. And the police’s mistreatment towards those who dared to put their feet in between the construction, did for sure not encourage many to continue the resistance.  Read More

In the night of July 30th, HRV’s headquarters were attacked because of its part in the destruction of the Icelandic wilderness.

HRV is a company that holds serious responsibility for the destruction of wilderness – not less then the aluminium and energy companies. On its website, the company proudly states that it is “one of the leading project management and consulting engineering companies within the primary aluminium production sector.” HRV has taken part in the construction process of Alcoa’s, Rio Tinto-Alcan’s and Century Aluminum’s smelters here in Iceland, as well as the Kárahnjúkar power plant. The company’s work of engineering and designing has according to itself “added some 700,000 tpy [ton per year] of primary aluminium production capacity to the world market.”  Read More

Dear Iceland(ers).

This morning we, the Aluminium Industry, hung a banner on Hallgrímskirkja (the biggest church in Iceland) to finally express cleary what we have been trying to tell you all of the time. We decided that the methods of greenwashing and manipulation are no longer needed, since we obviously managed to convince you already about the glory of heavy industry. 

We wanted the Icelandic Nation to fully understand, that we don’t care about anything else than our own advantages and of course our profit. We don’t care about the impacts of our actions, on people here in Iceland or elsewhere in the world. Many lives, human and non-human, have been effected by our work all over the globe:

• Whole tribes of indigenous people have lost their lives and/or livelihoods through a cultural genocides caused by our projects; bauxite mining, alumina refining, aluminium production, and transportation between continents. (1) (2)
• Earth-damage and pollution are constantly increasing as we keep trying to fulfill our never satisfying greed. 
• Due to our major role in warfare and the military industry many people could feel the impact of aluminium on their own bodies… (3)
• We do not take responsibility for any of these things. (4) Read More