Saving Iceland

The Guardian
Jórunn Edda Helgadóttir and Guðjón Idir

Nine protesters on trial for entering the Iceland parliament may be jailed despite a lack of evidence against them

Nine people went on trial in Iceland last week, charged with threatening the country’s parliament – a charge that has only been used once before and that carries a maximum life sentence. They were among 30 demonstrators who entered the parliament building via the visitors’ door during a small protest in December 2008 at a time when thousands of Icelanders took to the streets to express their outrage at the government’s part in the financial crisis. Read More

German MP, Andrej Hunko, condemns the trial of the RVK9 and calls for dialogue with Icelandic parliamentarians about the illegal police spying on Saving Iceland.

“The trial of the ‘Reykjavik 9’ is an attempt to criminalise retroactively Iceland’s democratic protests in 2008 and thus depoliticise them. The defendants include Solveig Jonsdottir, the leader of Attac,” said Andrej Hunko, Member of the German Bundestag, regarding the trial of the nine Icelandic activists. “The charges are based on the accusation of an ‘offence against Parliament’. This can mean up to life imprisonment, and carries a minimum sentence of one year’s imprisonment,” explained Mr Hunko, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

It was the determined mass protests in December 2008, known as the “saucepan revolution”, which finally forced the resignation of the conservative government, which was embroiled in the banking scandal. Two days before the blockade of Parliament at the heart of the current trial, 15-year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos was shot dead by the police in Greece. Across Europe, social movements had taken to the streets. Read More

The Saving Iceland collective is at the moment inundated with requests  from the corporate media for detailed information about the infiltration of our network by police spy Mark Kennedy . We have also been receiving pressure from individuals who have been active with SI to collaborate with journalists.

Saving Iceland would like to make it clear that we are mindful about keeping our vow to respect and protect the privacy of all the great people who have taken part in our struggle against the corporate destruction of Icelandic nature.

By entering into discussions with journalists on matters outside the sphere of the issues of our struggle, such as the private lives of individuals in our network, we would be in serious breach of the trust and solidarity that has been the core of our network.

Below is a statement Saving Iceland released to the Guardian on 13 January 2011. This is the only platform that we are prepared to discuss Mark Kennedy’s time with Saving Iceland. Read More

A good friend and comrade through the years, Jason Slade, is facing heavy charges in the US for his participation in a protest against the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, in Washington D.C. on April 26th 2009. For the last years Jason has lived back in forth in Iceland and is a veteran Saving Iceland and Food Not Bombs activist over here, to name only a few examples. We are calling for support of him, especially financial assistance at this moment.

During the above-mentioned protest, Jason was handcuffed after wanting to check out a friend of his who had been attacked by the police and arrested. In the end he was though not arrested until the next day when leaving the city in a car with that same friend. They got pulled over by a policeman who told them they had not given a turn signal. Shortly afterwards a policeman from the day before turned up and arrested Jason. Read More

An international week of actions has been called for 10th – 16th of January, 2011 in support of the Reykjavik Nine, nine individuals including anarchists and radical leftists, who face up to 16 years in prison for protest against the Icelandic parliament.

In December 2008 the bullet that killed Alexandros Grigoropoulos set fire to the streets of Athens, a fire that soon spread to every city across Greece. That same December on the opposite shore of Europe, in Iceland another revolt was already under way born out of the wreckage of the economy that had collapsed that fall. In the winter of 2008, Iceland, the first ‘victim’ of this global crisis, was witness to the largest mobilization in its history. Demonstrations, mass gatherings and popular assemblies, direct action and confrontation on a daily basis and finally mass riots managed to bring down the right wing government at the time. But, just like in Greece that bullet was only one cause to a revolt that had a thousand reasons behind it, in Iceland the bubble that burst that fall was only the spark for the pent up rage and frustration resulting from two decades of neoliberal government – and well, against the political and economic system in its entirety.

As we speak, the Icelandic state threatens with imprisonment nine individuals chosen to be the scapegoats of the uprising that brought down the government in January 2009. They are the Reykjavik Nine. Read More

This video shows the founder of Saving Iceland at the London Anarchist Bookfair, which he attended in order to bring worldwide focus on the case of the Reykjavík Nine and call for international solidarity for them.

A brand new solidarity brochure about the case of the RVK-9 was distributed at the Bookfair as well.

Watch the video below and download the brochure here. Be sure to visit the support site of the Reykjavík Nine at rvk9.org.
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Supporters of the Reykjavík Nine have prepared a brochure in solidarity and support of the RVK-9, as the nine are often referred to.

The nine currently stand trial, accused of having attacked the parliament of Iceland on the 8th of December 2008 and threatened the independence of the parliament.

Read more about the case and the context around it in the brochure, which can be downloaded in PDF format here, or by clicking on the picture above.

Please mail, print and distribute as widely as possible.

Click here to visit the support site for the Reykjavík Nine.

Orissa is the most mineral rich state in India. It is green and fertile, a patchwork of tiny fields and thickly forested mountains with waterfalls tumbling over their red rocks. Like many of the world’s remaining areas of natural fertility, these mountains are largely populated by tribal peoples, which in India are called Adivasis – meaning literally ‘the original inhabitants’ – and are thought to be one of the oldest civilisations in the world. One quarter of the Orissan population are tribal, making it also the ‘poorest’ state in India according to the World Bank. But its figures judge well-being only by monetary exchange, and fail to mention that there has never been a famine recorded here, and that many Adivasis rarely use money, living in balance with the mountains, streams and forests which provide everything they need. In thanks for natures’ providence many Adivasi cultures worship the mountains on which they depend as Gods, and vow to protect their bountiful natural systems from damage. Some of the Orissan mountains are among the last ancient forest capped hills in India, thanks to the determination of tribal inhabitants against British colonial efforts to log them.

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The following text and photos came from Barcelona:

On Thursday, July 8th at about 12:30, 20 people went to the Icelandic consulate in Barcelona to show there outrage against the Icelandic state; for there existence and there heavy repression of the 9 people of Reykjavík because of their actions at the parliament December 8th 2008. If there were any kind of true democracy their demands would have been welcomed and allowed a space. But since obviously there can never be true state democracy, the peoples demands were repressed and silenced. Read More

Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel
By Felix Padel and Samarendra Das
Published by Orient BlackSwan

Aluminium is a metal that many take for granted in hundreds of artifacts but fewer understand where it comes from and its real costs. Behind the shining image of aluminium is a dark side of environmental catastrophes, political manipulations and cultural genocide.

Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel written by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das is an extraordinary book that explores the aluminium industry over its entire life cycle, from the mining of Bauxite to its various end uses.

With a foreward by Arundathi Roy it focuses on the Adivasis struggle against  mining activities in the state of Odisha (former Orissa). There industrialization is imposed under the guise of development, growth and poverty alleviation, a process that has already displaced thousands of people and destroyed tribal society‘s structures. The book traces a hidden history of how one country after another has swallowed promises of prosperity and plunged into a cycle of exploitation and unrepayable debt. One of the real contributions of Out of This Earth is the commendable effort of the authors to painstakingly trace the forces that actually drive and control the global aluminium industry – how it is driven by a cartel that fuses mining companies, investment bankers, government deals, metals traders and arms manufacturers. Read More