Aug 04 2007
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Saving Iceland Conference 2007

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Global Consequences of Heavy Industry and Large Dams
Saturday & Sunday July 7 – 8th, 2007, Hótel Hlíð, Ölfus

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Click to enlarge

Updated July 5th

After three years of struggling against large dams and heavy industry, the Saving Iceland campaign will connect with struggles around the globe. The Saving Iceland Conference will be featuring speakers from South and North America, Africa, India and Europe, activists and scientists. Saving Iceland’s magazine Voice of the Wilderness (download pdf) introduces all the key issues and speakers, including for example Dr. Eric Duchemin (University of Montreal, consultant for the IPCC), Gudbergur Bergsson (writer), Cirineu da Rocha (Dam-Affected People’s Movement, Brazil) and many others, and the conference program.

Ráðstefna „Saving Iceland“ 2007 – Hnattrænar afleiðingar stóriðju og stórstíflna
Laugardaginn og sunnudaginn 7. og 8. júlí 2007
Hótel Hlíð, Ölfusi
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Aug 03 2007

Geysir Green Energy Acquires Shares in WGP

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Iceland Review
31 July 2007

Icelandic investment company Geysir Green Energy has acquired one fifth of the shares in the Canadian geothermal company Western GeoPower Corporation. Geysir Green Energy, which specializes in investments in the geothermal energy sector, paid ISK 600 million (USD 9.79 million) for the 40 million shares it bought.

Ásgeir Margeirsson, CEO of Geysir Green Energy, will become a member of the board of WGP. In an interview with Fréttabladid daily, he declared that the acquisition was a part of Geysir’s strategy to become an influential player in the American energy sector. WGP is constructing a geothermal plant in Sonoma County in California. The capital that Geysir has provided will be used to complete the construction.

Geysir Green Energy is owned by FL Group, Glitnir Bank and VGK-Hönnun. It is the biggest shareholder in the energy company Enex which has also undertaken projects in the US. “Therefore, we have a twofold connection to the US energy market,” says Margeirsson.

Aug 03 2007

UK Greens Back British Environmental Activist Imprisoned in Iceland

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31 July 2007

Twenty three year old British Saving Iceland activist Miriam R. has been arrested by the Icelandic police. She was protesting against the Icelandic government’s support for heavy industry, in particular Rio Tinto Alcan’s Straumsvik smelter in South-West Iceland. Reports suggest she is still being held by the police. (1)

Dr. Derek Wall, Green Party Principal Speaker, said: “Although Rio Tinto have been making the headlines for their recent purchase of the Canadian aluminium group Alcan for 38.1bn dollars (18.7bn pounds), it is the environmental degradation and damage that goes hand in hand with most of their projects that should be drawing the spotlight.

“Iceland is the largest remaining wilderness in Europe. Activists such as Mirian R., most of whom belong to the Saving Iceland campaign group, are protesting against plans to turn it into the heavy industry capital of Europe – with companies such as Rio Tinto reaping in the profits. Read More

Aug 03 2007

A Peter Parker Conforms: “The Truth Is Out There?”

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Marvin Lee Dupree, the Grapevine, Issue 11, 27 July, 2007

A great philosopher once said in a rather cryptic manner that nothing changes; one could say that our naked, tame souls cannot fathom this simple dictum of life, how our reality is merely constructed out of our simple hopes and childish beliefs. Meaning and change are part of the same illusion, stemming from a lack of ability to realise this uncomplicated truth. There is quite simply no single straightforward truth in life. In Buddhism, life is simply suffering until the final stage, Nirvana, is reached. Christianity invokes forgiveness and caritas or brotherly love. Islam is submission to the one true God head. For the neo-liberal it is money, stemming from greed, that is the alpha and omega. And for some the force is the truth. Others choose their own truth derived from a belief system as a cornerstone for their reality, or life, which is only a grain of sand in the whole cosmos. The many truths of the universe fill it up in a manner that recalls Archimedes’ famous sand corn experiment. Read More

Aug 02 2007

Danish Show the Icelandic State what They Think of the Ongoing Heavy Industry Policy

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9 August 2007

This morning Saving Iceland received this message from Danish friends of Icelandic nature:

“Last night, the 8th of August, the embassy of Iceland in Copenhagen, Denmark, was targeted for its complicity in the ecocide of Iceland’s precious wilderness. Read More

Aug 01 2007

So Close! Power Surge Almost Destroys Every Aluminium Factory in Iceland!

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7 August 2007

power lines

Today lovers of nature almost danced on the graves of ALCOA, ALCAN, Century and Elkem when a mysterious power “thump” in the national grid managed to knock out power to all their factories!

At around 3pm today a power surge which originated from around the Hvalfjordur region (where Century and Elkem run their aluminium-cancer and alloys factories), created such a surge that all power to the west, north and east of Iceland was brought down, even Reykjavik’s for a split second. Energy was not restored to the heavy industry factories for a number of hours. Unfortunately, whilst we were counting the minutes these factories were offline, we are told that the pots of molten aluminium did not cool down enough to destroy them entirely.
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Jul 31 2007

Icelandic Media Lie that No SI Prisoner is Being Held

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Updated: August 2nd
M.R. has been released having taken her sentence out in full. This leaves two more activists to do stints in prison in August. One for eighteen days and the other for four days.
The newspaper Frettabladid claimed on the 1st of August that M.R. had been imprisoned for “something else” than protesting against the heavy industry policy. The source for this was the Icelandic police, again. It seems that certain Icelandic news departments are just incapable of telling the truth. Miriam R. was imprisoned for eight days because of her protest against ALCOA in 2006.

It is obvious from this that the Icelandic media are at pains to hide the fact that the Icelandic State is imprisoning protesters against the heavy industry policy of the Icelandic government.
This is also the case with the Icelandic Embassy in London. When approached by members of the Green Party in the UK embassy officials claimed that no one was in prison in Iceland because of their political beliefs.
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Jul 30 2007

ELF Hits Rio Tinto Alcan in Essex in Solidarity with Saving Iceland

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ALCAN flag 

 

30 July 2007

The Earth Liberation Front sent Saving Iceland the following statement:

“In the early hours of 30/07/07, saboteurs struck at Smurfit Kappa, a plastics factory owned by Rio Tinto Alcan in Chelmsford, Essex. The gates were locked shut, office doors and loading bays were sabotaged with glue and a message left painted on the wall. Vehicles belonging to Rio Tinto were also sabotaged…”
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Jul 30 2007

Massive Solidarity from NY – Thank You!

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massive

Saving Iceland
31 July 2007

Today Saving Iceland received 89 beautiful postcards from the US.

We take this opportunity to thank all the people supporting our campaign with their love, energy and solidarity. Our campaign lives out of the work from every individual participating.

We suspect that the overflooding of our mailbox was commited by the Church of Stop Shopping.

Solidarity is a weapon.
Read More

Jul 29 2007

Rio Tinto Alcan to Sue Saving Iceland

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Iceland Review
07/26/2007

The aluminum company Alcan in Iceland has decided to sue activists who, on behalf of the campaign group Saving Iceland, broke into Alcan’s premises in Straumsvík, near Hafnarfjördur, on Tuesday and chained themselves to machines.

“To get the kids out, the company’s equipment had to be damaged,” Alcan’s finance director, Sigurdur Thór Ásgeirsson, told Morgunbladid. “They had chained themselves to a gate, rails and machines, and because the chains were around their necks we didn’t dare saw them off.”

Ásgeirsson added the smelter’s operations had been delayed because of the protests.

Alcan’s lawyers were asked to review the case yesterday and in the following days it will be decided how many protesters will be sued and on which charges. Thirteen individuals, most of them foreign citizens, were arrested on Tuesday, and about 20 protesters in total participated in Saving Iceland’s actions on Alcan’s premises.

The 13 protestors who were arrested have now been released. According to police, the case is still under investigation and the individuals may be facing deportation.

According to law, foreign citizens can be deported if they have been convicted for a crime or served a sentence in another country, if the crime they were convicted of would result in imprisonment in Iceland for more than three months.

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