BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME – Thu 15 Apr 10

Date­line: BP Share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing, ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Lon­don, Thu 15 Apr 10 – At the apex of the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’, at the entrance to the BP AGM, cli­mate chaos and human rights activists per­suade BP share­hold­ers to vote for the Fair­Pen­sions anti-Tar-Sands motion. Mobilised by the UK Tar Sands Net­work, Ris­ing Tide and Cli­mate Camp, we let BP share­hold­ers know, in no uncer­tain terms, that BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME.

Vidz at YouTube
• ‘BP + TAR SANDS = CLIMATE CRIME’ – 1, 2, 3, etc.
» LINKs to fol­low short­ly, once edit­ing and upload­ing is com­plete

TWO WEEKS OF INTENSE COLLECTIVE BP BRAND-TRASHING
Organ­ised in sol­i­dar­i­ty with our indige­nous First Nations sis­ters and broth­ers at the sharp end of the Cana­di­an Tar Sands cli­mate crime atroc­i­ty, the ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’ began on Fos­sil Fools Day, Thu 01 Apr 10, with wide­spread direct action pranks, includ­ing Lon­don Ris­ing Tide deliv­er­ing a ‘Back to Black’ Cor­poate ID rebrand­ing pack­age to BP’s glob­al head­quar­ters in St. James Square – see, eg:
• ‘BP Goes Back to Black’
» video, 2:38 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNLzN3zld7o

Then on Sat 10 Apr 10, the Lon­don direct action com­po­nent of an Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action on Cana­di­an Tar Sands saw 200+ peo­ple mount an “ille­gal” occ­cu­pa­tion of the Shep­herd’s Bush BP petrol sta­tion for a samba-&-ceillidh-powered ‘Par­ty at the Pumps’ – see, eg:
• ‘BP hit by nation­wide protests over plans to Enter the Tar Sands’
» video, 5:14 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An6-tdxd12M
» pix-&-vidz-led action report – http://london.indymedia.org.uk/articles/4613

The fort­night’s cul­mi­nat­ing protest occured along­side the Colom­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign, demand­ing “BP MUST RECOGNISE ITS RESPONSIBILITY TO CASANARE WORKERS, COMMUNITIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT”, on the west plaza entance to the ExCel Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, as vote-cast­ing investors arrived for the BP share­hold­ers Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing. First Nations Tar Sands cam­paign­ers Clay­ton Thomas-Muller and George Poitras from the Indi­gen­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work of North Amer­i­ca were on hand, giv­ing inter­views to jour­nal­ists and video­g­ra­phers, before going into the BP AGM at for the 11:30 start.
For more on the inter­na­tion­al anti-Tar Sands actions, check out:
• ‘Anti-Tar Sands Protests Gath­er Momen­tum’
» IMC UK Fea­ture arti­cle – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449169.html

MAKING A KILLING IN COLOMBIA, AGAIN AND AGAIN
Bruno Fed­eri­co of COSPACC (Cor­po­ración Social para la Asesoría y la Capac­itación Comu­ni­taria) spoke in his native Ital­ian, ably trans­lat­ed by Claire Hall of Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia, of the mass mur­der of social move­ments opposed to BP’s exploits in Casanare, east­ern Colom­bia, where BP has been oper­at­ing for twen­ty years.

“Dur­ing that time, 2600 peo­ple have been dis­ap­peared, 6500 peo­ple have been killed by para­mil­i­tary groups, right wing armed groups that have insti­tu­tion­al links to the Colom­bian gov­ern­ment.
More recent­ly there has been 100 doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of direct state assas­si­na­tions of civil­ians. Com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers were forced to flee and social organ­i­sa­tions that chal­lenged BP’s prac­tices were exter­mi­nat­ed.
There has also been severe envi­ron­men­tal dam­age caused by the extrac­tion; water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, water deple­tion, land­slides from seis­mic explo­ration. There has been very lit­tle chal­lenge to BP’s envi­ron­men­tal impact due to the com­mu­ni­ties being unable to organ­ise.
How­ev­er com­mu­ni­ties and work­ers are cur­rent­ly mobil­is­ing and have pre­sent­ed a list of demands to BP around five key themes:
— labour issues,
— social invest­ment,
— human rights,
— pub­lic good
— and envi­ron­ment.
More info – http://www.espacio.org.uk/bp/CasanareMission2007Report.pdf
[source: ‘Oil, Vio­lence and Social Move­ments in Colom­bia’ – http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449208.html ]

HOLDING BP TO ACCOUNT FOR CLIMATE CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES
The UK-based Fair­Pen­sions eth­i­cal invest­ment cam­paign had tabled Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion 25, a delib­er­ate­ly soft­ly word­ed pro­pos­al aimed at gar­ner­ing the widest pos­si­ble sup­port from share­hold­ers, to which Clay­ton, George and oth­er Tar Sands cam­paign­ers spoke:

“Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion
That in order to address our con­cerns for the long term suc­cess of the Com­pa­ny aris­ing from the risks asso­ci­at­ed with the Sun­rise SAGD Project, we as share­hold­ers of the Com­pa­ny direct that the Audit Com­mit­tee or a Risk Com­mit­tee of the Board com­mis­sions and reviews a report set­ting out the assump­tions made by the Com­pa­ny in decid­ing to pro­ceed with the Sun­rise Project regard­ing future car­bon prices, oil price volatil­i­ty, demand for oil, antic­i­pat­ed reg­u­la­tion of green­house gas emis­sions and legal and rep­u­ta­tion­al risks aris­ing from local envi­ron­men­tal dam­age and impair­ment of tra­di­tion­al liveli­hoods. The find­ings of the report and review should be report­ed to investors in the Busi­ness Review sec­tion of the Company’s Annu­al Report pre­sent­ed to the Annu­al Gen­er­al Meet­ing in 2011.”
[source: ‘Oil sands [sic] res­o­lu­tion and response’ – http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/set_branch/set_investors/STAGING/local_assets/downloads/pdf/IC_AGM_oil_sands_resolution.pdf ]

In an attempt to mar­gin­alise any crit­i­cism of the “right” of the BP Board of Direc­tors to com­mit what ever cli­mate crimes they deem to be a prof­itable “invest­ment”, Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion 25 was shunt­ed to the arse-end of the agen­da, to be rushed past at the hur­ry-up so that the share­hold­ers could adjourn for their free lunch, cour­tesy of the BP boss­es.

By mir­a­cles of mod­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tions tech­nol­o­gy, we were able to lis­ten in on the pro­ceed­ings of the debate inside the BP AGM on the sound sys­tem (see pic B7 above). So in the debate around the Fair­Pen­sions Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion, we got to hear the impas­sioned pleas from George, Clay­ton and oth­ers to BP to account for the finan­cial and eco­log­i­cal risks, the envi­ron­men­tal dam­age (local and glob­al), the health dam­age to down­stream First Nations com­mu­ni­ties, and the human rights vio­la­tions that BP’s Tar Sands encroach­ments would entail– and to the polite, bland, eva­sive, cor­po­rate green­wash reply sup­plied on behalf of the BP Board. But we did hear from a per­son sup­port­ing the Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion of and arti­cle in Wednes­day’s Finan­cial Times:

“BP has until now not had a pres­ence in the vast resources of Canada’s oil sands, which are sec­ond only to Sau­di Ara­bia in terms of proven reserves. It is now work­ing on the pro­posed $2.4bn (£1.5bn) Sun­rise project, split equal­ly with Canada’s Husky Ener­gy, and expects to make the final invest­ment deci­sion by ear­ly next year.”
[source: ‘BP to press on with Cana­da oil sands plan’, by Ed Crooks and Fiona Har­vey, at FT.com (free reg­is­tra­tion required), on 14 April 2010 23:27 – http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6828b3de-4813–11df-b998-00144feab49a.html ]

So in fact, as the ques­tion­er put in, BP had already POSTPONED their final invest­ment deci­sion for a FOURTH time, until 2011 – I won­der if all the pres­sure piled on them by our ‘BP Fort­night of Shame’ might have influ­enced them so to do?

As I was prepar­ing to leave for home, we got word on an iPhone from Fair­Pen­sions of the vot­ing per­cent­ages on the their Spe­cial Res­o­lu­tion:
In favour: 06%
Absen­tions: 09%
Against: 85% (ie: vot­ing as direct­ed to do so by the BP Board of Direc­tors)

WE WILL SHUT THEM DOWN
This is, of course, mere­ly a sin­gle bat­tle in the long-run­ning war over the Tar Sands atroc­i­ty, in a strug­gle for the future life-bear­ing capac­i­ty of our small blue jew­el of a home world, which pits the cli­mate crim­i­nal oil cor­po­ra­tions against peo­ple and plan­et. BP boss­es thought they could get away with apply­ing their cor­po­rate “Silent Run­ning” tac­tic (adopt­ed by anal­o­gy from the mil­i­tary sub­ma­nin­er’s tac­tic of that name) to their desire to mire BP in Tar Sands shit, where­by exec­u­tives would gain big bonus­es if they suceed­ed in keep­ing their cor­po­ra­tion’s cli­mate crim­i­nal activ­i­ties OUT of the pub­lic domain, unscru­ti­nised by jounal­ists, and under every­body’s radar. Thanks to the ini­tia­tive shown by our First Nations sis­ters and broth­ers like Clay­ton and George, plus Susan and Ariel Deranger (see, eg: ‘From Athabas­ca to Copen­hagen’, video, 3:49 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2vfa6qwKgw ), our cam­paign­ing direct action depth charges have blown them to the sur­face for all to see.

So now you know of the sigle most destruc­tive indus­tri­al cli­mate crim­i­nal atoc­i­ty on Earth, we invite you to find out more via the links below, then to make the most impor­tant tran­si­tion of all: from con­cerned cit­i­zen to active cli­mate chaos cam­paign­er. Because the greater our num­ber, the stronger our forces, and the more quick­ly we can score the telling vic­to­ry required for the future of our human civil­i­sa­tion and our pre­cious ecos­phere: SHUT DOWN THE TAR SANDS!

LINKS
» Cli­mate Camp UK – http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
» Colum­bia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Cam­paign – http://www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk
» COSPACC: Cor­po­ración Social para la Asesoría y la Capac­itación Comu­ni­taria – no web­site found
» Espa­cio Bris­tol-Colom­bia – http://www.espacio.org.uk
» Fair­Pen­sions – http://www.fairpensions.org.uk/tarsands/action
» Indige­nous Envi­ron­men­tal Net­work – http://www.ienearth.org/tarsands.html
» Ris­ing Tide UK – http://www.risingtide.org.uk
» Sup­port the Beaver Lake Cree – http://www.co-operativecampaigns.co.uk/toxicfuels/beavercreenation.php
• UK Tar Sands Net­work:
» web­site – http://www.no-tar-sands.org
» blog – http://www.tarsandsinfocus.wordpress.com

Foot­notes

More pho­tos at https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2010/04/449231.html?c=on#comments

All these pho­tos and video clips are ‘Copy­Left’
This means you are free to copy and dis­trib­ute any of my pho­tos and videos you find here, under the fol­low­ing license:
• Cre­ative Com­mons Attri­bu­tion-Non­com­mer­cial-Share Alike 3.0 Unport­ed License
» http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/
» Accred­i­ta­tion: tim.dalinian.jones@gmail.com

NB: These pix are edit­ed and down­sized ver­sions (up to 800x800px, 0.64Mpx, typ­i­cal­ly 100–900 KB) for onscreen dis­play. If you would like the free, edit­ed, full-sized ver­sions (up to 3072x2304px, 7.1Mpx, typ­i­cal­ly 1–2 MB) for print, poster, plac­ard, ban­ner, etc, please email your request to tim.dalinian.jones [at] gmail.com quot­ing the pic­ture title(s) you’d like.