Saving Iceland

‘Iceland is bleeding’

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Athygli, the public relations company of the National Power Company (Landsvirkjun) woke up this morning to find that during the night a splash of paint had been directed at their offices. A spokesman of the company said the words ‘Iceland Bleeds’ had been written on the house and that he suspected that Saving Iceland was behind this because his company was on a certain “deathlist” on www.savingiceland.org. We can only assume that he means ‘The Nature Killers’ section on this website.

Why would Athygli be on the list of companies responsible for the murder of Icelandic nature? Read More

“STOP PRODUCING ENERGY FOR WAR”

REYKJAVIK – Saving Iceland’s clown army has this afternoon entered the head office of Orkuveita Reykjavíkur (OR, Reykjavik Energy) on Baejarhals 1. Simultaneously, protestors climbed onto the roof of the building unfolding a banner stating ‘Vopnaveita Reykjavíkur’ (Reykjavik arms-dealers). Saving Iceland demands that O.R. stop selling energy to the aluminium corporations Century and ALCAN-RioTinto. 30% of aluminium produced goes to the military and arms-industry (1).

Currently, O.R. are expanding the Hellisheidi geothermal plant at Hengill. “The goal of enlarging Hellisheidarvrikjun is to meet industries demands of energy,” states the Environmental Impact Assessment, particularly the Century expansion at Grundartangi and possible new ALCAN and Century plants at Straumsvik and Helguvik (2, 3).
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Press Release – 20 July 2007

On the morning of 20th July, the Icelandic embassy on Queen St, Edinburgh was targeted by members of Saving Iceland . 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 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.”

Corporate Media Coverage
Scotsman.com

Press Release

GRUNDARTANGI – Saving Iceland has this afternoon closed the single supply road from Highway 1 to the Century/Nordural smelter in 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. Read More

July 15th Saving Iceland held a public meeting with inhabitants of Thorlakshöfn, accompanied by Lerato Maregele from EarthLife South Africa, struggling against ALCAN, and Attilah Springer from Rights Action, Trinidad, struggling against ALCOA. They talked about similarities in the way these companies operate in their respective countries and Iceland. Concern was expressed about pollution, climate, and the way the aluminium industry abandons towns to waste when they will close smelters in a few decades. Thorlakshöfn is named as a new smelter location by Rio Tinto ALCAN, Norsk Hydro, Arctus/Altech and Down Corning. The mayor of Thorlakshöfn has suggested his town as a location for two new smelters.

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10 July 2007 – The International Summer of Dissent begins!

Kringlan Shopping Mall protest, Laugavegur march, Parlaiment lawn speeches and Iceland’s Prime Minister has his office dammed! All in one day!

Kringlan Shopping Mall
Over 50 people from 5 different continents started the day at Kringlan Shopping Mall, Reykjavik, to protest against the consumer culture that demands new aluminium factories. Reverend Billy, from the Church of Stop Shopping, and his new deciple Reverend Snorri, lead a flock of devoted and extreemly noisy earth lovers (also known as Saving Iceland activists) through the consumerist hell that is a the shopping mall.

“The foreign corporations who want to dam Icelands great rivers, and put polluting smelters on our shores – they want us to keep shopping.

“The Aluminium industry makes most of its money from warplanes, tanks and missiles (30%, actually.) They propose the complete damming of Icelands wilderness rivers, this isnald’s famouse beauty buried under industrial reservoirs. Let us stop the war machine and the ruin of Iceland’s wilderness. The same corporations that keep us shopping, mnake war around the world. Isn’t a shopping mall like a ‘human’ dam? We re stopped, hypnotized, put in debt. Our energy is taken from us. Save the country and save ourselves…”

Laugavegur
Next, activists held a spontaneous demonstration through Laugavegur, Iceland’s mai n shopping street.

Alþingi
On the lawn outside the Alþingi, the Icelandic Parlaiment, people gathered together to speak out against the aluminium industry. People from Trinidad, who are winning a fight against Alcoa, from South Africa, who are fighting a nuclear powered Alcan plant, from the East of Iceland, who have been devastated by the recent Alcoa Reydarfjordur factory and Karahnjukar dams, from Brasil, who is fighting the damming of the Amazon for aluminium factory energy, and many more gave inspiring speeches and lead energy filled songs against the aluminium industry.

Prime Minister’s Office
Street theatre activists then set up an aluminium smelter, installed some tomb stones and handed out dirty Icelandic water (Iceland prides itself on its pure water, yet it is polluting and destroying its water for the sake of heavy industry dams).

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Hálslón, Kárahnjúkar, October 2006

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

Updated July 10th. The campaign to defend Europe’s vastest remaining wilderness continues. After the direct action camps in Iceland’s mountain highlands in the summers of 2005 and 2006 against the Kárahnjúkar dam and ALCOA’s Reydarfjordur aluminium smelter, the Saving Iceland campaign moves on to bring Iceland’s aluminium Heavy Industrialisation to a halt.

New plans for dams, power plants, aluminium smelters and other forms of heavy industry need to be stopped. The culprits include corporations such as ALCOA, ALCAN, Century Aluminum, Hydro, Rusal, Impregilo, Bechtel, Barclays, Mott McDonald, etc… Iceland, with it’s vast geothermal and megahydro possibilities, is a new frontier for cheap energy craving industrial moguls who see nothing worth saving in Iceland’s legendary wilderness.

This camp will bring together activists from all over the world, including activists from social movements in India, South America, Africa, Europe and North America. Stopping the industrialisation and ecological destruction of the last unspoilt country in the west would be a major victory for the green movement and a new incentive for a global movement against industrialisation and ecocide. Join us. Read More

“We have the passive mentality of the eternal colony.”

A talk delivered by Iceland’s foremost author Guðbergur Bergsson (1932-2023) at the Saving Iceland Conference 7 July 2007.

     

Jesus, a leader of an upcoming universal power knew that he would soon be physically destroyed when he heard women cry over his condition. He then turned to them and said: “Daughters of Jerusalem don’t cry over me, cry rather over you and your children.”
At that time the Roman Empire dominated the world and the lesson Jesus gave reminded people that destruction was not something that would only happen to him but also to future generations. He seems to have already known that in spite of being the Saviour of the world, his death, uprising and the ethics of his learning, destruction as such would go on having future and be constant in acting of Christian nations, at least the European.

Devastation was obviously the nature of great powers.

Till our days they succeed one after another and nothing has changed, people live in constant fear the land and they themselves would be destroyed. So daughters and sons of Iceland will still have to cry over their land which is only a small part of the world at this moment due to globalisation of economical growth which has in stead of promised glory brought widespread hate in form of terror, hate as ethics and revenge, a claim for justice. In our time hate has become a sense of justice.
Because of globalisation there is no reason why we in this country should only cry over our condition. Of course to everyone the nature of a homeland is dearer than the one of others. The world is too big for an individual to have true feelings for it, at least not in details. Feelings for faraway nations with strange sounding names tend to be abstract rather than real, more intellectual than emotional.
This is at least so in my case. I have sailed up the Yangtze River through the impressive XiLing Gorges before that beautiful phenomena of nature was going to disappear for ever in name of Chinas giant progress. I saw cities along the riverbanks, empty houses without dwellers; citizens had been chased away and the rivers turbulent brown water to supply power stations for heavy industry was to take their place. I listened to speeches of proud authorities and common people too. The population is obedient and as usual follow the words of mighty rulers. But at the end they become victims when it will be too late to resolve anything. Nations do not eye destruction until benefit brought to them is harm. Then women cry as daughters of Jerusalem but nothing can be repaired and no universal saviour.
I have seen Egyptian monuments destroyed at the Aswan dam and heard voices of pride but the poverty of neighbour people seemed to be as it always had been. In Spain during Franco’s time villages were wiped out to build dams in name of economical progress. The inhabitants protested, they climbed up to the rooftops to defend their homes and farmers were seen beating police with stick. But they lost. And now, years later, they still cry over the waterpower station producing electricity for heavy industry. Read More

Jornada internacional contra as corpora��es multinacionais apoiadas pelo gobernó local, que est�o investindo nos recursos hídricos da Isl�ndia, com a constru��o de barragens gigantescas, a ponto de produzirem uma catástrofe ambiental de propor��es inigualáveis, destruindo regi�es de uma beleza única, com características bot�nicas, geológicas, biológicas e ecológicas de importancia cientifica universal.

A campanha “Salve a Isl�ndia”, depois de outros dois acampamentos de a��o em 2005 e 2006, este último nas terras já inundadas de Káhrahnjúkar e contra a represa e a fábrica de alumínio Alcoa em Reydafjordur, volta � carga para deter a destrui��o dos ecossistemas islandeses pela industrializa��o capitalista. Read More

17 June 2007

The National Theatre is adorned with Iceland’s new flag.

At around 4pm on Sunday 17th June, National Day, a giant new Icelandic flag was revealed from the roof of the National Theatre, located on Hverfisgata, facing the Arnarholl on Lækjargata where thousands of people stood for the festivities. The flag, which was 25m long, had a shield with the logos of the alluminum companies: ALCOA, ALCAN and Norðurál (also known as Century Aluminum) in the centre of a new Icelandic flag. The activists wished to express that far from being an independant nation, Iceland has been taken over by the aluminium industry with all the democracy defecit that comes with such powerful corporations. Read More