Saving Iceland

Ólafur Páll Sigurðsson, the founder of Saving Iceland, has been acquitted. Sigurðsson had been accused of vandalizing a police car, using only his fists.
In the end of July 2006, during the 2nd protest camp of Saving Iceland against the dams at Kárahnjúkar, an unmarked 4×4 police car came driving towards the camp site and started photgraphing people having their lunch. A few of the protestors walked towards the car, including Sigurðsson. When he stepped in front of the stationary vehicle the driver of the car, Arinbjörn Snorrason, accelerated suddenly and drove into Sigurðsson, who saved his life by putting his hands on the bonnet of the car and jumping out of its way.
Armand: Brave Cops of Iceland Read More

On Monday 21st April 2008 Saving Iceland Founder, Olafur Pall Sigurdsson, will appear before the District Court of East Iceland charged with property damage. The charge relates to an incident at Snæfell Mountain protest camp in the end of July 2006.

All the civilian witnesses recount that a police 4×4 was deliberately driven into Sigurdsson at a potentially fatal speed. The driver, officer 8716 Arinbjorn Snorrason, a high ranking officer in charge of operations at Kárahnjúkar, also attempted to run over other protestors on multiple occasions that same summer, at Lindur (now submerged location of a SI action camp) and at an action on Desjarárstífla dam construction site. Read More

The United Nations Human Rights Committee has determined that Icelandic authorities violated the rights of two Icelandic fishermen who were not allocated any fishing quota after applying for it and were deemed to go fishing on a boat that had none.
The Human Rights Committee concluded that the Icelandic state should give the fishermen full compensation and establish a fisheries control system that fulfills the demands of international law, Morgunbladid reports. Read More

A talk which opened a panel discussion at the ‘Reykjavikur Akademia’ with the topic ‘What are the Fundamental Values of Society’ 20 November 2007. Panelists included Reykjavik Chief of Police Stefán Eiríksson, historian and Left Green MP Guðfríður Lilja Grétarsdóttir and philosopher Viðar Thorsteinsson.

For those of you who don’t already know me, my name is Miriam Rose, and I am an activist and environmental scientist from the UK. I have been asked to speak today on my experience of the basic values of Icelandic society, based on an interview I did on Kastljos in October, after I was threatened with deportation from Iceland for my part in actions against the heavy industry policy of your government. The letter of requested deportation which I received explained that I may be expelled from Iceland for a minimum of three years as my behavior constitutes a ‘threat to the fundamental values of society’.
Read More

Töfrafoss, now ‘unexpectedly’ underwater

Saving Iceland

What a surprise! After five years of listening to news of delays, accidents, deaths and so on at the Kárahnjúkar worksite, who would ever have imagined that there was something strange about Landsvirkjun’s portrayal of the whole affair?

In Morgunblaðið on the 28th of November Völundur Jóhannesson, tourist industry pioneer in the east of Iceland, spoke about Töfrafoss (the magic waterfall) dissappearing under Hálslón. Read More

7/11/2007

Prime minister Geir H. Harde has revealed his opinion that Iceland should negotiate for another special deal on carbon emmissions in the upcoming 2012 Kyoto agreement renewal. Read More

By Lowana Veal, Inter Press Service, 19 November 2007

“I am of the opinion that Iceland should not ask for a repeat of the Iceland Provision in the upcoming climate change negotiations,” says Iceland’s environment minister Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir.
The Iceland Provision was the exemption given to Iceland when the Kyoto Protocol went into effect in 2005. Because Iceland derives 72 percent of its energy needs from renewable energy and had little heavy industry at the time the Protocol was agreed, the country was allowed to increase its greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent from their 1990 level, rather than decrease emissions by at least 5 percent like most of the other signatories are required to do.
During the first commitment period, 2008-2112, the Iceland Provision allows for emissions averaging 1.6 million tonnes annually of carbon dioxide from energy-intensive industries that had not existed prior to 1990.
Read More

On Friday night the 9th of November a dramatic and theatrical action took place outside the Icelandic parliament, in which politicians who voted for the environmentally disastrous Kárahnjúkar project, were ridiculed and cursed. The event marked the turning on of the power station and first turbines in Fljótsdalur on Monday the 5th, and serves as a reminder to the Icelandic government that we have not forgotten their corrupt behavior towards this unrivaled magical wilderness. Read More

photo by Tom Olliver

Saving Iceland
7 November 2007

Only two days after the glorious inauguration of the turbines at Kárahnjúkar dam, further structural problems are already emerging.

Icelandic paper Morgunbladid revealed today that severe leakages in the tunnels leading to the turbines are releasing 200 litres of water per second onto the ground surface, forming a swamp currently about a third of a hectare in size. When asked to comment on the situation, Kárahnjúkarvirkjun spokesperson Sigurdur Arnalds said the water loss was of no consequence.

Regardless of whether or not we should believe Arnalds, the revelation that tunnel water is reaching the ground water breaches one of Siv Fridleifsdottir’s [ex-Minister of Environment who pushed through the project] fundamental stipulations (no. 14):
That Kárahnjúkarvirkjun should NOT interfere with ground water levels. Read More

Saving Iceland
17 October 2007

The Directorate of Immigration has decided that they will not grant the request of the Icelandic police and deport SI activist Miriam Rose.

The Directorate confirmed this tonight speaking to the Icelandic National TV news program Kastljos.

So far we are not aware of any legal reasoning for the decision. But it was clear already some time ago that the police had lost the propaganda war almost from the beginning. The “…serious threat to the fundamental values of society” claim, in the letter requesting that Miriam Rose was to be deported, was for example something that the Icelandic public was just not going to swallow so easily. Instead the deportation request caused great alarm with the public about the state of civil rights and democracy in Icelandic society, not without reason.

It has not passed unnoticed here in Iceland that even if the police are used to getting away with all sorts of power abuse most of the time, they have frequently got so carried away in the heat of the moment that they have repeatedly shot themselves badly in the foot. This website has reported a considerable number of such instances when it comes to SI protests.

Now that the police have finally exhausted the bogus threat of deporting environmental protesters they should maybe pause for some reflection.

Instead of constantly making fools of themselves with thuggish persecution and illconceived plots, perhaps the time has come that they do something sensible for a change. Like turning their attention to the corruption that is ripe in the Icelandic energy companies and not least the multinational corporate criminals they have tried so hard to protect from legitimate protest.

Miriam Rose is a co-author of ‘Aluminium Tyrants’, an article published this month in The Ecologist. /?p=1021

The decision of the DI finally spurred the Kastljos editors to transmit an interview they recorded three weeks ago with Miriam Rose. This had obviously been kept off the air in order not to further Miriam’s cause:
 http://dagskra.ruv.is/streaming/sjonvarp…

About the deportation case(s) see also:

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