Saving Iceland

The latest action to take place was a total success; a few protesters climbed the huge cranes at the building site of the Alcoa aluminium smelter in Reydarfjordur. Work was stopped for five hours on the whole of the site and the protesters managed to stretch a big banner saying: ALCOA PROFITS, ICELAND BLEEDS – ALCOA GRÆÐIR, ÍSLANDI BLÆÐIR. Of course the police went out of line again and showed unnecessary physical brutality against the protesters.

Click here for the First Crack Video!

6 August 2005

7 protesters managed to get into the construction site of the dam despite the fact the authorities had 22 police in 9 cars monitoring the area plus all the security personnel of Impregilo and Landsvirkjun. The protesters put up a banner on the dam wall displaying a massive crack. The first crack of many to come. The Kárahnjúkar dams are being built right on top of a cluster of active geological fissures.

Of course the police got very upset about this and arrested people from the protest camp and kept them at the police station for 12 hours. Yet they didn’t manage to catch anyone during the action, so they couldn’t charge them for anything.

We have gathered to protest the continuing devastation of global ecology in the interest of corporate profits. We have come here to tip the balance of a struggle portrayed to be national, while actually being much larger: from the Narmada Dams in India, to the proposed Ilisu Dam in Turkey, the story is one of big business and oppressive government. The struggle to save our planet, like the struggle against inhumanity, is global, so we have to be too. We’re here to prevent the Kárahnjúkar Dam project from destroying Western Europe’s last great wilderness.

The industrialization of Iceland’s natural resources will not only devastate vast landscapes of great natural beauty and scientific importance, but impair species such as reindeer, seals and fish, and the already endangered pink-footed goose and several other bird species. Through this mindless vandalism against nature, the Icelandic tourist industry will also be affected and the health and life of the Icelandic people. This industrialization will bring pollution such as Iceland has not seen before. Sulphur dioxide, Nitrogen, and many other chemicals used to process aluminium, are all products of the unnecessary and short-sighted profit-driven environmental barbarism of the aluminium industry. Under the burden of Kárahnjúkar, only one of many dams planned, rivers will choke, and people will choke.

If this dam goes ahead, it will pave the way for similar dams of glacial rivers all over the Icelandic highlands; Thjórsárver (protected by the international treaty of Ramsar!), Langisjór (one of Europe’s most beautiful lakes), the rivers in the Skagafjördur region and Skjálfandafljót. All just to generate energy for aluminium corporations. If this will be allowed to happen Iceland will face the same sad fate as other global communities, which have suffered under similar projects.

Across the world, people are coming together to oppose the blatant lies, corruption and oppression generated by corporations and governments alike. In this spirit, we are asking that all those opposing the Kárahnjúkar Dam organize or partake in solidarity actions globally or locally.

The world isn’t dying, it is being killed – there is no excuse for silence.

The camp is going really well with loads of people turning up from all over the world as well as Iceland.

Today 25 activists from the International Protest Camp locked on to Caterpillar bulldozers and trucks on their way to wreak more devastation at the dam site.

Work was completely halted at the dam which will destroy huge swathes of pristine wilderness – if it ever gets finished, which the protestors vow it will not – just to power one Alcoa aluminium plant, itself an immense ecological disaster which will ruin a beautiful crystal clear fjord – if it gets built….

The protest lasted well over three hours with local police in complete disarray. Read More

Icelandic police order drivers to start machinery risking protestors’ lives.

Police and security guards at the Karahnjukar Dam construction site in Iceland, last night ordered the bulldozers drivers to start their engines and move off, despite there being more than 25 people locked on to the underside of their vehicles.

“It was terrifying, if someone hadn’t jumped up on the front of the truck and pulled out the fuel line then I think people may have been killed last night” said Rob, one of the protesters from the UK. Read More

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 two other access roads and halt 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”!

The camp is east of Jökulsá á Brú, just before the bridge, 2 km. south of Kárahnjúkar. It is easily accessible by normal cars, about one and half hours drive from Egilsstaðir. Most of the road is asphalted but soon before you arrive at the camp it turns into a dust road and winds in sharp bends down towards the river. The camp is at the second bend towards the bridge.

Read More

Answers to common questions about the ‘skyr action’ at Hotel Nordica 14 June, 2005.

 

Why this conference?

* It was a conference for aluminium and the related industry leaders from all over the world.

* They were here because they think Iceland is right for heavy industrial development. Ironically, this is down to its clean environmental record.

* The people gathered there were key decision makers, financiers and policy drivers behind the Karahnjukar project and other heavy industry developments across Iceland which we oppose.

* A session entitled “An Approach to Sustainability for a Greenfield Aluminium Smelter” started at 11:45 on the day. Hosted by Joe Wahba of Bechtel Corporation and T.M. Sigurdsson of Alcoa, the outrageous hypocrisy of the seminar was extremely provocative to those who truly aspire to the ecological value of sustainability. Read More

Whitewashing efforts by multinational vandals Bechtel and Alcoa were thwarted when environmentalists decided to Greenwash THEM instead.

Update: Paul Gill was released Saturday morning. He is to be detained in the country for two weeks and has to report twice a day to the police station in Reykjavik, which is unprecedented!

Delegates at the 10th World Aluminium Conference on Tuesday 14th June in Reykjavik were happily nodding and snoozing their way through a hypocritical sermon enjoying the oxymoronic title ‘An Approach to Sustainability For A Greenfield Aluminium Smelter’ when they suddenly found themselves rudely awoken by a group of protesters who ran in and drenched the speakers – industry fat cats Joe Wahba (Bechtel) and Tomas Mar Sigurdsson (Alcoa)- in green skyr (a kind of Icelandic runny yoghurt). Numerous other delegates were also spattered with the stuff. Read More

In the 1930s, dust storms swept the southern plains of the United States. The “Black Blizzards,” as they were called, had come about because of overfarming, which had caused the topsoil to wear thin and become dust. Crops failed, and as the banks that held the mortgages realised they would not be getting returns on their interest, farmers were run off of their land. Their plight is immortalised in the songs of Woody Guthrie and John Steinbeck’s book “The Grapes of Wrath”, which went on to become a Hollywood film starring Henry Fonda as Steinbeck´s protagonist Tom Joad. Read More