Category: Oil

Autumn EF! Action Update out — and advance notice of the Winter Moot, 22–24 February (gathering of eco-activists), Nottingham

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

The lat­est issue of the quar­ter­ly EF!AU was dished up at the Anar­chist Book­fair — burst­ing at the seams, it had to be turned into a bumper issue, with a round-up of the actions around the time of the Camp for Cli­mate Action, plus loads of action reports from around the world since then — from pieing oil exec­u­tives, blockad­ing garages & air­ports, polar bears lock­ing-on, sab­o­tage, pris­on­ers, occu­pied spaces, dig­ger-div­ing, GM crop-trash­ing, to cake and the cun­ning use of mung beans (oh, and of course, much much more).

Down­load it to print out and share here. Do get in touch with the edi­to­r­i­al col­lec­tive to let them know if you’re dish­ing it up round your way, or need paper copies, or want to give them one of the rar­er ingre­di­ents, dosh (to send it to pris­on­ers, protest camps and far beyond) — their con­tact details and more are here

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The EF! Win­ter Moot will hap­pen from 22nd — 24th Feb­ru­ary 2008, in Not­ting­ham — more details near­er the time, as this is just advance notice.

It’s a gath­er­ing for envi­ron­men­tal activists — in the past, it’s been a chance for peo­ple involved in all kinds of eco­log­i­cal direct action to get togeth­er for a week­end indoors to chat about where things are at in the UK, and so improve all aspects of how we work togeth­er, in order to take direct action in defence of the earth.

Con­tact 0845–0223 5254 for more info

24-hour Total petrol station shuts due to protest

18.10.2007
Dur­ing the Thurs­day evening rush hour, the 24-hour Total petrol sta­tion on Maryle­bone Road in Lon­don shut down due to the pres­ence of pro­tes­tors call­ing for Total to pull out of Bur­ma.

London 24 hour Total demo18.10.2007
Dur­ing the Thurs­day evening rush hour, the 24-hour Total petrol sta­tion on Maryle­bone Road in Lon­don shut down due to the pres­ence of pro­tes­tors call­ing for Total to pull out of Bur­ma.

Fif­teen pro­tes­tors began their peace­ful protest at 5.00pm with ban­ners and leaflets inform­ing motorists and pedes­tri­ans of Total’s links with the Burmese dic­ta­tor­ship. Sev­er­al cam­paign­ers talked to motorists who drove in to buy petrol. Many motorists were sup­port­ive and vowed not to buy Total again.

How­ev­er Total com­plained to the police (after about an hour and a half) and the cam­paign­ers were asked to leave the fore­court. Short­ly after­wards the sta­tion was shut down com­plete­ly. Employ­ees moved cones and bins to block vehic­u­lar access to the sta­tion and the lights were switched off, includ­ing the 24-hour sign!

The petrol sta­tion remained closed until the protest fin­ished.

http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com/

BP Executive pied as Europe’s largest BioFuels Event disrupted, Blockade of D1 Oils & demo outside exhibition

17th Octo­ber, 2007

BP speaker pied at Biofuel conference
BP biofuel conference stage invasionBiofuel lock-on17th Octo­ber, 2007
The exhi­bi­tion, fea­tur­ing over a hun­dred trade stands, ran along­side a con­fer­ence which opened on Wednes­day with a key note speech from BP Bio­fu­els’ Europe & Africa Direc­tor Oliv­er Mace, but was quick­ly thrown into chaos when a num­ber of peo­ple dressed in suits marched onto the stage to tar­get BP’s ‘dan­ger­ous and dis­hon­est’ green­wash and protest at the cat­a­stroph­ic effects of replac­ing cli­mate-sta­bil­is­ing ecosys­tems with arable crops for bio­fu­el feed­stocks.

A stunned audi­ence gasped as a cream-pie was launched at Mace, while activists swarmed the stage and hand­ed out leaflets to atten­dees. One of the pro­test­ers D‑locked him­self to the podi­um, telling del­e­gates “we need to reduce our con­sump­tion now – tech­no­log­i­cal fix­es are not the answer.” Pan­ic alarms were then set off around the room and the con­fer­ence was halt­ed.

Lat­er a press con­fer­ence was held at which East­side Cli­mate Action gave a state­ment say­ing: “Bio­fu­els are not part of the solu­tion, they are part of the prob­lem. We need lifestyle and eco­nom­ic change, a reduc­tion in con­sump­tion and local pro­duc­tion of all our own needs.”

BP, the main spon­sor of the Bio­fu­els con­fer­ence, did not rep­re­sent them­selves at the press con­fer­ence through fears that atten­tion would be focussed on the protest. Oliv­er Mace was said to be ‘shak­en’ by the morning’s events.

Richard Price, con­fer­ence organ­is­er and Bio­fu­els Media direc­tor, said that one of the aims of the event was to have some debate which sur­rounds issues such as food ver­sus fuel. He also offered a plat­form for those want­i­ng to raise objec­tions and con­cerns with the bio­fu­els indus­try.

Price point­ed to future bio­fu­el tech­nolo­gies, known as sec­ond gen­er­a­tion bio­fu­els, which use plant mat­ter such as Jat­ropha and algae, and do not nor­mal­ly enter the food chain. Price and oth­ers are claim­ing that these may offer advan­tages such as high­er oil yields and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of using oth­er­wise unvi­able land.

Price admit­ted “we should be using less fuel, being more eco­nom­i­cal, as well as explor­ing bio­fu­els. Next year we’ll see what the issues are, but clear­ly we need a much wider base.” Asked if the con­fer­ence would accept spon­sor­ship from BP in the future, Bio­fu­els Media have so far declined to com­ment.

Lat­er on there were fur­ther protests as cam­paign­ers gath­ered at the main gates to the Newark show­ground, where the con­fer­ence was held. Activists from pres­sure group Bio­fu­el­watch were in atten­dance to explain their con­cerns, and those attend­ing the con­fer­ence were engaged in dis­cus­sions and hand­ed leaflets explain­ing that defor­esta­tion ‑such as to make way for oil palms for fuel in Asia- is a major cause of cli­mate change, account­ing for up to 30 per­cent of glob­al green­house gas emis­sions.

Bio­fu­el­watch cam­paign­er Deep­ak Rughani referred to a recent study by sci­en­tist Paul Crutzen, which found that Bio­fu­els pro­duced from arable crops are direct­ly respon­si­ble for green­house gas emis­sions of up to 70% more than the equiv­a­lent of fos­sil-fuel. Rughani added, “when you add in ele­ments of defor­esta­tion or land-use change, you are look­ing at mas­sive fur­ther emis­sions due to the release of car­bon stored in trees, plants and with­in the soil.”

Bio­fu­el­watch cam­paigns against the use of bio-ener­gy from unsus­tain­able sources, name­ly bio­fu­els that are linked to accel­er­at­ed cli­mate change, defor­esta­tion, bio-diver­si­ty loss­es, water and soil degra­da­tion, and the dis­place­ment and impov­er­ish­ment of local pop­u­la­tions and loss of food sov­er­eign­ty and secu­ri­ty. Aside from tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions, Bio­fu­el­watch and oth­er envi­ron­men­tal groups believe cuts in green­house gas emis­sions must be based on over­all demand reduc­tion. This means reduc­ing ener­gy use and trans­port as opposed to replac­ing one type of fuel with anoth­er.

Bio­fu­els Con­fer­ence — Audio clip (intro & pie) — mp3 1.7M

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Press release —

Date: 17th Octo­ber, 2007
Embar­go: Imme­di­ate Release
CONTACT: 07880 937 511
Newark Show­ground, Newark, Not­ting­hamshire

This morn­ing a group of 15 cli­mate change activists from protest group Food Not Fuel entered the Bio­Fu­el Expo & Con­fer­ence tak­ing place at the Newark Show­ground and took over the keynote speech. Oliv­er Mace, CEO of BP Fuels, the lead spon­sors of the event received a cream pie in the face. Anoth­er cam­paign­er was D‑locked to the podi­um and var­i­ous alarms were placed around the place. The hall was emp­tied and talks were can­celled. There were no arrests.

They were protest­ing against planned expan­sion of bio­fu­els cit­ing its con­tri­bu­tion to defor­esta­tion and the fact that it will con­tin­ue to con­tribute to cli­mate change. The activists com­plained that bio­fu­els on a large scale is green­wash and com­pa­nies such as BP are ignor­ing its neg­a­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment.

Pro­test­er Michelle Lynch said, “What they are pro­mot­ing is a replace­ment to fos­sil fuels, but the real­i­ty is that they are lit­tle bet­ter. Large scale plan­ta­tions are not the solu­tion; reduc­ing our con­sump­tion is the only real­is­tic way for­ward.”

Anoth­er pro­test­er, Thomas Brad­shaw point­ed out, “Bio­fu­els will be tak­ing food from the mouths of the hun­gary when there are already 800 mil­lion peo­ple suf­fer­ing from mal­nu­tri­tion. These cor­po­ra­tions are effec­tive­ly encour­ag­ing the ero­sion of valu­able arable farm­land and rain­forests vital for com­bat­ing cli­mate change.”

-end-

Notes for edi­tors:

1. The pro­tes­tors can be con­tact­ed at 07880 937 511. Their cri­tique argues that rad­i­cal social change is need­ed to deal with the impact of peak oil and cli­mate change, and that seek­ing solu­tions such as car­bon trad­ing and bio­fu­els are not the answer, as the real prob­lem is unsus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth.

2. The Bio­Fu­els Expo & Con­fer­ence (www.biodiesel-expo.co.uk) is the largest of its kind in Europe, and brings togeth­er big indus­try play­ers such as BP Fuels, Deloitte & Touche and many chem­i­cal, agri­cul­tur­al and man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­nies.

3. A com­pre­hen­sive cri­tique of bio­fu­els can be found at Bio­Fu­els Watch (www.biofuelwatch.org.uk) who are a dis­tinct group from Food Not Fuels, but are host­ing their own demon­stra­tion against the Con­fer­ence.

4. Text of leaflet dis­trib­ute to atten­dees.


Bio­fu­els & Fos­sil Fuels: Bio­fu­els that are not pro­duced by recy­cling waste oil are the direct prod­uct of large scale mono­cul­ture. Cur­rent­ly the amount of fos­sil fuels required to pro­duce bio­fu­els is greater than the amount of fuel you get out: you have to make the fer­til­iz­er, run the agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery, trans­port the feed­stocks and fuels, and refine the plant mat­ter into fuel.

Bio­fu­els & Food: The land that is used to farm bio­fu­els has to come from some­where. If it is agri­cul­tur­al land used for food then there will be less food. Maize, Mex­i­co’s sta­ple crop, have increased mas­sive­ly due to Amer­i­can demand for bioethanol. Adding to the num­ber of peo­ple liv­ing below the pover­ty line.

Bio­fu­els & Land use: If not agri­cul­tur­al land, then bio­fu­els will be grown on vir­gin rain­for­est or wet­land. 1/3 of all green­house gas emis­sions come from the destruc­tion of liv­ing car­bon sinks. The Ama­zon rain­for­est is the largest dri­ver of the cli­mate on the plan­et and expand­ing bioethanol plan­ta­tions will push it to extinc­tion. Wet­lands, eg peat, con­tain more car­bon that the whole atmos­phere and cov­er just 1% of the worlds sur­face. The largest peat bogs in the world, in Indone­sia, are cur­rent­ly being drained for palm oil plan­ta­tions. If green­house gas emis­sions con­tin­ue as they cur­rent­ly are we will go beyond the cli­mate tip­ping point caus­ing mass extinc­tion of life on earth.

Bio­fu­els & Local Con­trol: The dri­ving force beyond the expan­sion in bio­fu­els are big cor­po­ra­tions such as BP & Mon­san­to, and gov­ern­ment — the very peo­ple who have got us into this mess. They are using bio­fu­els as a way to con­tin­ue their posi­tion of pow­er into the post peak oil world. To stand a chance of sur­vival the con­trol of land must be by local peo­ple for local peo­ple.

The Solu­tion: We will need to reduce our con­sump­tion to lev­els that we can meet our­selves. This WILL mean a reduc­tion in lux­u­ries, like the lux­u­ry to trav­el. Some bio­fu­els will be used, but at a frac­tion of our cur­rent oil use. We need to end the search for tech­no­log­i­cal solu­tions to eco­nom­ic prob­lems. We need to localise our econ­o­my, pro­duce our own food, make our own tools and use less.

We need an end to eco­nom­ic growth.

foodnotfuel1@yahoo.co.uk

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D1 Oils blockade banner
D1 Oils blockade
Block­ade of D1 Oils — anti-agro­fu­el demo

Pro­tes­tors from No Agro­fu­els UK block­ad­ed DI oils refin­ery and offices this morn­ing to raise aware­ness of the detri­men­tal impact of agro­fu­els. The protest was timed to coin­cide with the nation­al Bio­fu­els Con­fer­ence in Newark.

18 Pro­tes­tors chained the 3 gates to the refin­ery shut and 2 pro­tes­tors were D‑locked to the main gates. No vehi­cles were able to enter or leave the site and all work appeared to have been stopped.

Sev­er­al ban­ners were tied over the gates includ­ing “No Agro­fu­els, Land 4 Peo­ple, Food, Bio­di­ver­si­ty” and “Cli­mate Change Prof­i­teers”

Agro­fu­els (fuels pro­duced from pur­pose­ly and inten­sive­ly grown crops) are not the green solu­tion. They result in defor­esta­tion of trop­i­cal rain­forests and burn­ing of peat­lands which increase car­bon in the atmos­phere. Stud­ies have shown that when you include ener­gy used to grow and pro­duce the fuels includ­ing chem­i­cal pro­duc­tion and trans­porta­tion they use more ener­gy then oil based fuels.

Agro­fu­els also cause food inse­cu­ri­ty by reduc­ing land avail­bale to grow food and increas­ing food prices. They result in land dis­pos­ses­sion as peo­ple in Africa, Asia and South Amer­i­ca are forced off their land to enable crops to be grown for the fuel of Europe and the USA. In Colom­bia there have been human rights abus­es to gain con­trol of the land.

D1 is one of the biggest traders world­wide of palm oil and oil seed rape. They have inter­ests in India, Indone­sia, Chi­na, South Africa, Zam­bia, Swazi­land, El Sal­vador and are soon plan­ning to get into Brazil and sev­er­al otehr African coun­tries. They are direct­ly respon­si­ble for land dis­pos­ses­sion, food inse­cu­ri­ty and increas­ing pover­ty, they are not the pro­vid­ing the solu­tion to our cli­mate cri­sis, the only solu­tion to cli­mate change is a reduc­tion in ener­gy rather then exploit­ing the bio­di­ver­si­ty, peo­ple and land of the Glob­al South.

For more info see: www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

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Biofuel banner 2
Biofuel banner 1
Ban­ner Protest out­side Biodiesel Expo in Newark

About 40 pro­test­ers held a ban­ner protest out­side the Biodiesel Expo in Newark, Europe’s largest bio­fu­el con­fer­ence this year. Par­tic­i­pants of the con­fer­ence include BP, Vir­gin and D1 Oils, a bio­fu­el com­pa­ny head­ed by for­mer Shell CEO Lord Oxburgh which is acquir­ing rights over large areas of land in India and south­ern Africa. Pro­test­ers high­light­ed the dev­as­tat­ing impact which the indus­try is hav­ing on glob­al warm­ing, rain­forests, local com­mu­ni­ties in the glob­al South and food secu­ri­ty.

——

PRESS RELEASE

Newark : 40 Pro­tes­tors call for food for peo­ple, not cars

Over 40 envi­ron­men­tal­ists protest­ed out­side the ‘Biodiesel Expo’ today, Wednes­day 17th Octo­ber, at Newark Show­ground. The protest was to raise aware­ness of the dam­age that mas­sive and rapid bio­fu­els devel­op­ment is hav­ing on the cli­mate, peo­ple, food secu­ri­ty and forests.

The protest comes just the day after World Food Day Octo­ber 16th when the UN Food and Agro­cul­ture orga­ni­za­tion (FAO) high­light­ed the impacts of bio­fu­els of food secu­ri­ty around the world.

The Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Right to Food, Jean Ziegler, is so con­cerned that he has warned that rapid bio­fu­el devel­op­ment is a total dis­as­ter for those who are starv­ing. He will call for an inter­na­tion­al five-year ban on pro­duc­ing bio­fu­els to com­bat soar­ing food prices in the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly on Octo­ber 25th. (see below).

Deep­ak Rughani from bio­fu­el­watch says “The UN FAO is very con­cerned about bio­fu­els. They have said that they ‘are grave­ly con­cerned that bio­fu­els will bring hunger in their wake’. A bat­tle is being cre­at­ed between food and fuel that will leave the poor and hun­gry in devel­op­ing coun­tries at the mer­cy of rapid­ly ris­ing prices for food, land and water. The EU and the UK urgent­ly need a mora­to­ri­um of bio­fu­els to make sure that we don’t push mil­lions into star­va­tion. We have protest­ed today to sup­port the call in the UN and demand the UK gov­ern­ment stops the mad rush to bio­fu­els”.

bio­fu­el­watch, who are cam­paign­ing for EU mora­to­ri­um on large-scale bio­fu­el pro­duc­tion and imports into the EU, say that from April 2008 UK con­sumers will have no choice about hav­ing to buy bio­fu­els at the pump. The bio­fu­els avail­able will be blend­ed from many dif­fer­ence sources across the globe depend­ing on com­mod­i­ty mar­ket prices.

From April, con­sumers will not be able to avoid buy­ing bio­fu­el that may be accel­er­at­ing destruc­tion of trop­i­cal forests, increas­ing their car­bon emis­sions, caus­ing human rights abus­es, and tak­ing land from vital food pro­duc­tion.

Infor­ma­tion:

The Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Right to Food is to demand an inter­na­tion­al five-year ban on pro­duc­ing bio­fu­els to com­bat soar­ing food prices at the Unit­ed Nations Gen­er­al Assem­bly on 25th Octo­ber. http://tinyurl.com/2ltgwd
The entire text of a report to the UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly from Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on the Right to Food, Jean Zei­gler, high­light­ing the risks to mil­lions from bio­fu­els is attached to this Press release.

Links to World Food Day press from around the world
Jamaica — Food prices set to rise – Tufton:

http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20071016/business/business1.html

Bio­fu­els high­light­ed in Colom­bia :

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/1157

New Zealand: Food Prices Dri­ven by Bio­fu­els

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/1149

World­wide Women’s Ener­gy issue :: Feed Peo­ple, Not Cars

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/1146

Bio­fu­els and world hunger

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/biofuelwatch/message/1145

Con­tacts:

Andrew Boswell, Bio­fu­el­watch , UK : T: +44–1603-613798 M: +44–7787127881 (at the protest)

E: andrew.boswell[at]yahoo.co.uk

Deep­ak Rughani, Bio­fu­el­watch , UK : +44–7931–636337 (at the protest)

info@biofuelwatch.org.uk
http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk

Burma activists ‘lock on’ to Total

16.10.2007
Three direct activists have today shut down a busy Total fill­ing sta­tion in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Bur­ma’s non­vi­o­lent strug­gle for democ­ra­cy.

London Total 116.10.2007
Three direct activists have today shut down a busy Total fill­ing sta­tion in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Bur­ma’s non­vi­o­lent strug­gle for democ­ra­cy.

Under a ban­ner say­ing “May all beings be hap­py – Free Bur­ma ” the activists have locked them­selves togeth­er and begun to med­i­tate, lock­ing togeth­er the hoses, turn­ing off the pow­er and block­ing the entrance to the premis­es in Lon­don’s Maryle­bone Road.

The group have tar­get­ed Total to high­light the com­pa­ny’s role in prop­ping up one of the world’s most bru­tal dic­ta­tor­ships. The Burmese mil­i­tary rulers rou­tine­ly tor­ture pris­on­ers, use rape as a weapon of war, and have forcibly dis­placed almost one mil­lion peo­ple from their land – includ­ing to make way for a 63 kilo­me­tre gas pipeline built by Total.

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democ­ra­cy leader, has said that “Total has become the main sup­port­er of the Burmese mil­i­tary regime.” She told the French week­ly Le Nou­v­el Obser­va­teur that “Total knew what it was doing when it invest­ed mas­sive­ly in Bur­ma while oth­ers with­drew from the mar­ket for eth­i­cal rea­sons”. She added, “the com­pa­ny must accept the con­se­quences. The coun­try will not always be gov­erned by dic­ta­tors.”

Matthew Her­bert, one of the activists, said: “All the peo­ples of Bur­ma will be free. There is no force as pow­er­ful as the non­vi­o­lent resis­tance of a unit­ed peo­ple, espe­cial­ly when the cause is as just and urgent as this. As Aung San Suu Kyi says, Total will be held account­able. Today’s action plays just one small part in that reck­on­ing.”

A fel­low activist, added: “The author­i­ty to rule comes from the peo­ple them­selves, the peo­ple of Bur­ma have had enough, they are with­draw­ing their con­sent to be con­trolled. This action is in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the peo­ple of Bur­ma strug­gle for free­dom and a mes­sage to Total to with­draw from Bur­ma now.”

For more infor­ma­tion con­tact 07796 430141

Activist Film Festival is seeking submissions

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Beyond TV 8 flierUnder­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Sub­ject: Polit­i­cal Activist videos want­ed
From: under­cur­rents

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS OF FILMS

FOR BEYONDTV FESTIVAL NOVEMBER 2007

What is BEYONDTV?
From Novem­ber 28 to Decem­ber 2, 2007, Rad­i­cal media char­i­ty, Under­cur­rents will host the 8th annu­al BEYONDTV fes­ti­val of polit­i­cal doc­u­men­taries, ani­ma­tions and music videos from inspir­ing media direc­tors.

Under­cur­rents is call­ing for sub­mis­sions of short videos and ani­ma­tions on the theme of the fes­ti­val: social jus­tice and envi­ron­men­tal action.

Impor­tant Note: We do not screen dra­mas using actors

BEYONDTV will be host­ed at the Dylan Thomas Cen­tre and Tal­iesin Cin­e­ma Swansea from Novem­ber 28 — Decem­ber 2, 2007

More details at http://www.beyondtvfestival.info
beyondtv@undercurrents.org

Under­cur­rents
Old Exchange
Pier st
Swansea
SA1 1RY
UK

Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) Day of Action — protests throughout England, Scotland & Wales — from cake to locked-on polar bears

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)

Protests in Bris­tol, Lon­don, Manc, Nor­wich, Cam­bridge, Sheffield, Oxford, Edin­burgh, Truro, Birm­ing­ham, Glas­gow, Aberys­t­wyth, Cardiff, Bath, Brad­ford, St Andrews, Ply­mouth, Read­ing, Leam­ing­ton Spa, Leices­ter & Altrin­cham (‘read more’ for details, pho­tos, audio & video clips)



Bristol RBS 3
Bristol RBS 4
Bristol RBS 5
A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ blocked the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scotland’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank. Four peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and pre­vent­ed all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch for six and a half hours.

Today’s block­ade last­ed six and a half hours with the last ‘cli­mate refugee’ being final­ly chis­eled out at 2.30pm. Four peo­ple are cur­rent­ly being held at Trin­i­ty police sta­tion.
The police used a dubi­ous method of deal­ing with it — they lift­ed peo­ple and suit­cas­es on to trol­leys and then wheeled them away. This caused severe dis­com­fort and pan­ic for the peo­ple on the ground and at least one of them has bruis­ing as a result.
RBS lost many hours today due to rock­ing up late cos of park­ing issues and the many employ­ees that spent the day star­ing out of the win­dows watch­ing the dra­ma unfold­ing and tak­ing pho­tos on their phones (check out you tube for clips!).

———-

PRESS RELEASE: ‘Cli­mate refugees’ locked up at the Oil Bank of Scot­land, Bris­tol

A group of ‘cli­mate refugees’ are block­ing the vehi­cle entrance to the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land’s Cor­po­rate Offices at Tem­ple Quay to shine the spot­light on cli­mate crim­i­nals RBS, the self-pro­claimed ‘Oil and Gas’ Bank.

Six peo­ple from Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide for Cli­mate Action dressed as home­less polar bears have locked them­selves togeth­er and are cur­rent­ly pre­vent­ing all vehi­cles enter­ing the RBS branch. This is part of a Nation­al Day of Local Action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land called by those huge­ly con­cerned with the dev­as­ta­tion to the cli­mate, plan­et and people.[1]

RBS-NatWest pub­licly pro­motes itself as “The Oil & Gas Bank”. They pro­vide the finan­cial fuel that is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change. With­out these loans to oil and gas cor­po­ra­tions the projects would not hap­pen. [2]It is esti­mate that *in 2006, the bank pro­vid­ed over $10 bil­lion to fos­sil fuels – more than five times that pro­vid­ed to renew­able energy.[3]*

RBS pro­vide oil cor­po­ra­tions with loans to build new mas­sive­ly eco­log­i­cal­ly detri­men­tal drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. [4] And as RBS’s prof­its rise so does the car­bon in the atmos­phere.

Glob­al cli­mate change already forces more peo­ple from their homes each year than war. And as the effects wors­en, one in sev­en peo­ple on Earth today could be forced to leave their homes over the next 50 years. [5]

A polar bear said, “I am here to let RBS know that their fun­nelling of cash into fos­sil fuel projects is mak­ing myself and mil­lions of oth­er ani­mals, includ­ing humans home­less.”

Anoth­er polar bear said “If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell!”

Con­tact:

Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide 07951789187
———
Notes for Edi­tors

[1] The day of action was called by the UK Ris­ing Tide Net­work at this years Camp for Cli­mate Action which took place next to Heathrow Air­port. www.risingtide.org.uk

[2] In 2005 emis­sions from RBS financed oil and gas projects was about a quar­ter of the amount pro­duced by all UK homes.

[3] tak­en from: *The Oil and Gas Bank; RBS and the financ­ing of cli­mate change * http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf

[4] RBS is help­ing force open the car­bon fron­tier, financ­ing con­tro­ver­sial projects in Nige­ria, the Cau­ca­sus and Wales. Its involve­ment in Angolan and Niger­ian oil fields encour­ages cor­rup­tion and con­flict, while gas projects from the Ara­bi­an Gulf to the Gulf of Mex­i­co threat­en envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion.

[5] Fig­ures from “Human Tide: The Real Migra­tion Cri­sis,” by Chris­t­ian Aid. The report calls for “urgent action by the world com­mu­ni­ty” if the worst effects of this cri­sis are to be avert­ed.

=========================


one arrest at Roy­al Bank of Scot­land ban­ner drop this morn­ing in Lon­don

around a dozen activists from ‘ris­ing tide’ high­light­ed roy­al bank of scot­land’s shod­dy record of invest­ment in cli­mate change. one clam­bered on the glass canopy of their city hq to unfurl a ban­ner while oth­ers hand­ed out more than 900 leaflets

short­ly before 9am this morn­ing police sealed off the pave­ment under the glass canopy in front of 280 bish­ops­gate, the lon­don hq of the roy­al bank of scot­land. an activist had clam­bered up with a ban­ner pro­claim­ing ‘the oil bank of scot­land’, while a dozen oth­ers leaflet­ted passers-by and bank work­ers out­side the front doors.

the activists also had var­i­ous ban­ners, and one was fetch­ing­ly dressed as a polar bear.

the action last­ed about an hour and a half, while police pho­tog­ra­ph­er steve dis­combe used up the bat­tery of his long lens cam­era tak­ing shots of every­one involved. luck­i­ly, police back-up arrived with anoth­er bat­tery just as the ban­ner man came down.

police tried to seize the ban­ner from activists “as evi­dence” and after a short but com­ic game of ‘pig­gy in the mid­dle’, they suc­ceed­ed. in past cas­es around par­lia­ment square, it has been shown in court that if police have clear pho­tos of the ban­ner, under PACE they have no fur­ther right to seize the actu­al ban­ner, so in effect they stole it this morn­ing (as they often do!).

the ban­ner man was arrest­ed for ‘caus­ing a pub­lic nui­sance’ and it is believed he was tak­en to beth­nal green police sta­tion.

activists were high­light­ing the fact that RBS-NatWest have in the last five years fund­ed 655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions) which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. the bank has launched ‘avi­a­tion cap­i­tal’ to help put more planes in the sky, and it has pumped over $10billion into the oil and gas indus­try, fund­ing rigs, tankers and pipelines.

there is a fur­ther protest planned out­side the bank at 5pm today

20071015_RBS_WMV — video/x‑ms-wmv 15M

20071015_RBS_QT — video/quicktime 13M
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Lon­don pranks: ‘This Com­pa­ny is Out of Order’ signs left on 15 RBS and Natwest cash machines in cen­tral Lon­don. Pranksters do invis­i­ble the­atre in branch­es, try­ing to open accounts, hav­ing argu­ments about RBS’ uneth­i­cal poli­cies in the queues, and leav­ing piles of anti-RBS leaflets amongst their cor­po­rate pro­pa­gan­da. They then go under­ground for some ‘Tube Edu­ca­tion’, leaflet­ing and talk­ing to Tube pas­sen­gers.

————-

Nation­al cli­mate protests against Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’

15 Octo­ber 2007
For imme­di­ate release, for pho­tographs con­tact Mike J Wells 07799152888

POLAR BEAR PINS BLAME ON RBS DOOR

Cli­mate Change direct action group Lon­don Ris­ing Tide and friends, this morn­ing occu­pied the head­quar­ters of the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land to expose their role in Cli­mate Chaos. This was one of many actions hap­pen­ing across the UK today as part of a UK Ris­ing Tide call out for a Nation­al day of action against RBS.

Activists dropped a ban­ner read­ing “RBS prof­its, cli­mate cops it” from the bal­cony, while oth­ers held plac­ards on the street in front of the build­ing on Bish­ops­gate.

A polar bear, cur­rent­ly sleep­ing rough since the artic ice became his­to­ry, also attend­ed to ask “why are RBS still invest­ing in fos­sil fuel projects like ‘gas pipelines’ in Wales and ‘Tar sands strip min­ing’ in what was Cana­di­an Arbo­re­al For­est?”

The Bear said “Banks like RBS are the hid­den dri­vers of cli­mate change by offer­ing loans to fos­sil fuel projects that oth­er­wise the World Bank would not sup­port”.

RBS calls itself the ‘Oil and Gas Bank’, and is the pri­ma­ry UK fun­der of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion. RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cap­i­tal to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers in some of the most sen­si­tive and unsta­ble places in the world. Through Avi­a­tion Cap­i­tal, RBS financ­ing allows air­lines to expand their fleets and put more planes into the skies.

The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 will cre­ate 655 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon emis­sions over the next 15 years, which is more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions. (2)

‘Banks like RBS who prof­it hand­some­ly from cli­mate-destroy­ing projects have stood in the shad­ows for too long, but they are as guilty as the oil com­pa­nies. If car­bon diox­ide mol­e­cules had cor­po­rate tags of respon­si­bil­i­ty, the atmos­phere would be full of RBS logos min­gling with those of BP, Exxon and Shell’, said Mar­tin Red­fern, from Lon­don.

For inter­views from the protest call 075 1311 9047

For more details vis­it
. www.risingtide.org.uk
. http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=268&parent=267
(www.platform.org.uk)
. www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
=========================

ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND.…THE ‘OIL AND GAS BANK’

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action tar­get­ed the RBS head­quar­ters on Deans­gate, Man­ches­ter, as part of a nation­al day of action called by the Ris­ing Tide net­work.

Local groups which formed to mobilise for this year’s Camp for Cli­mate Action, have this morn­ing tak­en action against RBS, a major backer of the avi­a­tion indus­try and the world’s self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’.

Ban­ners were dis­played read­ing: ‘Cli­mate Change: RBS Makes It Hap­pen’ and ‘No Pipeline! Green Ener­gy Not Gas’. Pro­test­ers were greet­ed by 3 Tac­ti­cal Aid Unit Vans and secu­ri­ty guards, but despite police attempts to stop noise under the pub­lic order act, the sam­ba band played and fly­ers were giv­en out to work­ers, cus­tomers and passers by.

RBS employs some 5,000 staff in the Greater Man­ches­ter area and is the 2nd largest pri­vate employ­er in the area.

RBS pro­vides oil com­pa­nies with the cash to build and oper­ate drilling rigs, pipelines and oil tankers. RBS also prof­its through the avi­a­tion indus­try. From the Niger Delta to the Arc­tic, RBS loans play a key role in
forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier, which con­tributes to envi­ron­men­tal destruction,disruption of indige­nous peo­ples and increased con­flict across the plan­et.

RBS is the sec­ond-largest bank in Europe and has glob­al assets of over $1120 bil­lion, includ­ing UK brands NatWest, Direct Line and Churchill Insur­ance. Despite cre­at­ing a heav­i­ly green washed pub­lic image through
spon­sor­ship of sports and the arts, RBS activ­i­ties have major destruc­tive impacts on the envi­ron­ment and soci­ety. The thir­ty oil and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into 655 mil­lion
tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years, more than the UK’s entire annu­al emis­sions.

Man­ches­ter Cli­mate Action meet reg­u­lar­ly, for more infor­ma­tion email:
manchester@climatecamp.org.uk. Next meet­ing is Tues­day 16th, 6pm, Eighth Day café, Oxford Rd (near Man­ches­ter Met­ro­pol­i­tan Uni­ver­si­ty, oppo­site All Saints Park.)

radio report of rbs protest — mp3 2.2M
=========================

Triple wham­my for RBS in Nor­wich

Last night, the doors of the RBS-Natwest Group Tech­nol­o­gy office on Exchange Street and the main RBS branch on Queen Street were locked shut. When staff showed up for work this morn­ing at the Queen Street branch they found them­selves locked out, and gath­ered oppo­site the branch to see what would hap­pen. Soon after, 6 activists from Nor­wich Ris­ing Tide turned up with leaflets and ban­ners read­ing ‘RBS: Financ­ing Cli­mate Change’ and ‘Closed for a Total Re-think’. The d‑lock proved to be a good one, and the bank was delayed from open­ing for busi­ness for over an hour. Ris­ing Tiders hand­ed out leaflets and chat­ted to the wait­ing staff and cus­tomers, with the usu­al mixed response. Passers-by were gen­er­al­ly sup­port­ive, and the police showed up only at the very end, once the bank had re-opened and we were run­ning low on leaflets. After our 500-strong leaflet stash had been exhaust­ed, we decid­ed to call it a morn­ing.

norwich@risingtide.org.uk
http://www.risingtide.org.uk

=========================

Cam­bridge RBS action

At lunchtime on Mon­day 15 Octo­ber, around ten activists assem­bled out­side the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land branch on Trin­i­ty Street, Cam­bridge, as part of the nation­al day of action against the UK’s main bankroller of car­bon emit­ters. The pro­test­ers put up plac­ards next to the ATM, hand­ed out leaflets, and engaged passers-by and cus­tomers in dis­cus­sion.

Four police offi­cers were also in atten­dance, one tak­ing pic­tures of all the leaflet­ters. A num­ber of peo­ple who hap­pened to be pass­ing by want­ed to know the rea­son for this. Among these were an Amer­i­can woman who got quite strop­py with the offi­cers, and a young guy who want­ed to have pic­ture tak­en with one of the pro­test­ers (the police duti­ful­ly oblig­ed). Although the police came across all friend­ly, they did play their usu­al intim­i­da­tion tac­tics of drop­ping details of pro­test­ers into the con­ver­sa­tion that they could only have lift­ed from FIT files. On the flip­side, they asked for the plac­ards to be moved away from the ATM, as “cus­tomers might feel intim­i­dat­ed.”

=========================

Roy­al Bank of Scot­land Tar­get­ed for Invest­ing in Cli­mate Change

A group of activists leaflet­ted the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land in Broomhill, Sheffield as part of a Nation­al Day of Action. Over 20 actions have tak­en place all around the coun­try includ­ing banks being locked up in Nor­wich and polar bears blockad­ing in Bris­tol. This is all part of a cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land which invests heav­i­ly in oil and gas, which is accel­er­at­ing cli­mate change.

=========================
Oxford RBS
Quick Update on Today’s Oxford RBS Actions

Oxford cli­mate activists tar­get­ed a branch­es of both the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land and NatWest as part of the today’s Nation­al Day of Action. With ban­ners and oil-spat­tered T‑Shirts declar­ing “RBS Group — Fund­ing Cli­mate Change”, “Dirty Bankers — Shaft­ing The Plan­et”, and “The Oil Bank Of Scot­land”, they caused a stir in Oxford’s busiest shop­ping precinct and dis­trib­uted hun­dreds of leaflets to inter­est­ed cus­tomers and passers-by.

Activists also entered both branch­es with a large oil pipeline, explain­ing to cus­tomers and staff that they were deliv­er­ing it to the branch, but could­n’t leave until they’d spo­ken to Head Office to con­firm that it had arrived safe­ly. They stayed in each branch cheer­ful­ly (and loud­ly) rem­i­nisc­ing with staff and cus­tomers about all the oth­er pipelines and fos­sil fuel projects the bank was fund­ing, and how much cli­mate change they were caus­ing, until removed by the police. In the NatWest branch, they also man­aged to get a call put through to Head Office and asked them why RBS were fund­ing so many cli­mate-trash­ing projects (they did­n’t get any decent answers though).

No-one was arrest­ed, although one pro­test­er had to give their name and address under Sec­tion 50 of the Police Reform Act for “anti-social behav­iour” (they were appar­ent­ly caus­ing “alarm and dis­tress” by stand­ing in a bank, talk­ing about cli­mate change and hold­ing a card­board oil pipe).

Oxford Cli­mate Action meet on Mon­days at the Oxford Action Resource Cen­tre (OARC — www.theoarc.org.uk). To get involved, con­tact oxford@climatecamp.org.uk — new mem­bers always wel­come!

Link to video of Action

=========================

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty protest­ed out­side RBS’s Cen­tral Branch in Edin­burgh as part of Ris­ing Tide’s nation­al day of action against RBS’s fund­ing of oil and gas extrac­tion.

Stu­dents from Edin­burgh Uni­ver­si­ty Peo­ple & Plan­et group stepped up their cam­paign against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land (RBS) this morn­ing. Along­side oth­er Peo­ple & Plan­et groups in Scot­land, and cam­paign­ers from Ris­ing Tide, they took part in a nation­al ‘day of action’ tar­get­ing the Edin­burgh-based bank.

The protests aim to high­light RBS’s role as one of the world’s largest fun­ders of cli­mate-wreck­ing oil and gas extrac­tion. Emis­sions result­ing from RBS-sup­port­ed projects around the globe are greater than those of the whole of Scot­land.

Cam­paign­ers gave out infor­ma­tion to cus­tomers, held ban­ners, and waved oil cov­ered hands out­side RBS’s cen­tral branch in St. Andrew’s Square.

Peo­ple & Plan­et recent­ly worked with cli­mate change experts PLATFORM to write a report into RBS (2). The report draws atten­tion to the bank’s cru­cial role in sup­port­ing the glob­al oil and gas extrac­tion indus­try, where it pub­licly mar­kets itself as ‘the oil and gas bank’.

Sarah Hol­l­i­day, a mem­ber of Edin­burgh Peo­ple & Plan­et said:

“RBS call them­selves ‘the oil and gas bank’. They pro­vide huge amounts of advice and fund­ing for new oil extrac­tion. Their fos­sil fuels projects world­wide will lock us in to emis­sions for decades to come – mak­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my impos­si­ble. They are the UK’s main finan­cial dri­vers of cli­mate change.”

The cam­paign is a part of the Peo­ple & Plan­et nation­al cam­paign, “Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment”, which is also call­ing on the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment to stop using aid mon­ey to fund fos­sil fuel projects (3).

More pho­tos can be found here.

1) Peo­ple & Plan­et is the UK’s largest stu­dent cam­paign­ing net­work. It cam­paigns on world pover­ty, human rights and the envi­ron­ment: www.peopleandplanet.org http://pandp.eusa.ed.ac.uk

2) The report, enti­tled ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’, can be found here

3)“Ditch Dirty Devel­op­ment” cam­paign web­site
“Oil Bank of Scot­land” cam­paign web­site

————-

Also in Edin­burgh: The locks of the main entrances to at least six Edin­burgh RBS branch­es were glued shut last night, and all of them had to have the locks replaced today.

————-

2 branch­es in edin­burgh were giv­en ‘pol­lu­tion awards’ — along with var­i­ous oth­er posters about RBS pol­i­cy. unfor­tu­natly the police drove by while one branch was just being fin­ished off, and took the still wet posters off. 🙁 — next time…

=========================
Truro RBS
Truro demo at RBS branch: Twelve activists from across Corn­wall gath­ered at the RBS branch in Truro for a two-hour demo with a friend­ly atmos­phere and good response from passers-by. They hand­ed out leaflets and slices of cake from a clock-shaped ‘11th hour’ cake, and made new con­nec­tions that built the foun­da­tions of a cli­mate action group for Corn­wall.

=========================

Birm­ing­ham Uni flood cam­pus NatWest: Over thir­ty stu­dents from Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et descend­ed upon the Natwest branch on cam­pus. Some were dressed in boil­er suits and car­ried oil pipelines. Oth­ers, dressed as bankers and imper­son­at­ing mem­bers of the RBS Oil and Gas Team gave a high­ly sar­cas­tic pre­sen­ta­tion extolling the virtues of RBS’ oil and gas invest­ments. Oil pipes and boil­er suits. Dressed as bankers. Went in and gave mock pre­sen­ta­tion, imper­son­at­ed oil and gas team. Extolled virtues of RBS. 20 min­utes. Did pre­sen­ta­tion again a few more times on cam­pus. 30 peo­ple. Couldn’t all fit in. Birm­ing­ham Peo­ple and Plan­et.

=========================
Glas­gow Trea­cle Tart Cabaret: After a half hour dis­cus­sion with the cen­tral Glas­gow RBS branch man­ag­er in which they expressed their anger about RBS’ invest­ment in oil and gas, two intre­pid activists left the branch, only to make a quick cos­tume change and return as the hosts of the Trea­cle Tart Cabaret. They sang, danced, waved ban­ners and plac­ards, got up on the cashiers’ desks and strut­ted their stuff, and even per­formed an Oil Rap. At this point the bank decid­ed to lock its doors, lock­ing the Tarts in and cus­tomers out, and effec­tive­ly shut­ting the bank down for an hour. Inside the atmos­phere was pos­i­tive, with the locked-in staff and cus­tomers get­ting into the swing of things. One of the Tarts capped off the per­for­mance by cut­ting up her RBS deb­it card as a mag­ic trick.

=========================



Around a dozen cli­mate change refugees queued out­side Nat West Bank in Aberys­t­wyth today, Mon­day 15th Octo­ber, to beg a ‘bank offi­cial’ for a home loan because cli­mate change was destroy­ing their cur­rent home. The refugees ranged from an Aussie through a Green­lan­der to an Artic Cod. As the refugees were inter­viewed, vol­un­teers hand­ed out fliers on Roy­al Bank of Scot­land , Nat West and their invest­ment in projects linked to cli­mate change. Mean­while, RBS and Nat West ATMs all mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­played signs read­ing ‘OUT OF ORDER’ in large let­ters. On close inspec­tion with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, the very small print read ‘RBS and Nat West invest­ment pol­i­cy’. The pos­si­ble effects of cli­mate change on a num­ber of coun­tries were mapped on the pave­ment with chalk – dis­turb­ing before and after snap­shots. As the refugees were all turned down for home loans, they car­ried a protest ban­ner into the bank. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, being weak­ened by loos­ing their homes, the refugees dropped the ban­ner and, being weight­ed down with heli­um bal­loons, it drift­ed up and dis­played itself from the ceil­ing for a good half an hour before staff man­aged to get it down.

=========================

The main cardiff branch RBS on st Mary’s Street was closed 3 hours after 20 activists entered the build­ing caus­ing dis­trup­tion. Hun­dreds of leaflets were hand­ed out and ban­ners dis­played out­side. The process was repeat­ed at Natwest after­wards.

Lots of Police were in atten­dance includ­ing intel­li­gence gath­er­ers. Pho­tos to fol­low.

cardiffanarchists@riseup.net
http://southwalesanarchists.org

=========================

Don’t Bank On Oil In Bath

As part of today’s nation­al day of action against the Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, 7 activists from Bath Activist Net­work pick­et­ed the RBS branch on Qui­et Street in Bath, for two hours over lunch time. Ban­ner on dis­play, cus­tomers and passers-by were leaflet­ed with mock-up imi­ta­tion RBS lit­er­a­ture and invi­ta­tions to ‘Open an oil rig today!’, inform­ing the pub­lic about the Terms and Con­se­quences of bank­ing with RBS, their dodgy invest­ment record in fos­sil fuel extrac­tion and avi­a­tion indus­tries, and the 160,000 esti­mat­ed glob­al deaths a year due to the effects of cli­mate change. Whilst staff and police com­plained about the seem­ing­ly out-of-order ATM out­side their door, we lis­tened to sto­ries of cus­tomers’ poor treat­ment by their bank, and also helped at least the one stu­dent find more eth­i­cal options for his new account. Also bemus­ing were the mem­bers of pub­lic who mis­took the busi­ness-suit­ed activists for bank employ­ees, and chat­ted about the ser­vice.

bathactivistnet@yahoo.co.uk
http://myspace.com/bathactivistnetwork

To read PLAT­FOR­M’s report on Roy­al bank of Scot­land, go here: http://peopleandplanet.org/dl/ddd/rbs_report.pdf
=========================

Brad­ford stu­dents leaflet cam­pus Natwest

Stu­dents from the uni­ver­si­ty of Brad­ford Peo­ple & Plan­et group leaflet­ed at the Natwest branch on cam­pus. That’s all the details I know, hope­ful­ly more details to fol­low.

=========================

St Andrews Uni P&P also did some protest per­for­mance art — ‘attempt­ing’ to open accounts in the town, etc.

=========================

Ply­mouth — after a pro­ces­sion along North Hill Street, a group of peo­ple held a four-hour demo at the RBS branch near Drake Cir­cus, com­plete with music and drum­ming. A good response from passers-by, with lots of cus­tomers ask­ing direct­ly for leaflets.

=========================

Read­ing Ris­ing Tide held a demo at the Read­ing RBS branch.

=========================

A group of 5 held a demo in Leam­ing­ton.

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Cash-points were stick­ered with anti-RBS stick­ers in Leices­ter.

=========================

Leaflets were stuck on lamp-posts in Altrin­cham.

15th October — National Day of Local Action against Royal Bank of Scotland Update

It’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

Oily RBS logoIt’s only a week away! There are plans afoot all over the coun­try, and there’s still time for you to organ­ise some­thing in your local area. A few things that might help:

*There are leaflets avail­able to hand out on the day if you don’t fan­cy mak­ing your own. (Front — click here. Back — click here. And if you want editable ver­sions email us and we’ll email them to you).

*Stick­ers are also avail­able for what­ev­er sil­ly, seri­ous or sub­ver­sive pur­pose you can think of! Email us with a postal address to get a stash sent to you (these aren’t linked to the day of action so they’ll be use­ful into the future)
*There will be a nation­al press release about the day of action, so if you’re plan­ning some­thing pub­lic and want to let the nation­al press know about it, please send us the details. We’ll also do a press release on the day, so email us or bet­ter yet phone 07961 917535 to be includ­ed in the nation­al action round-up (and put it on Indy­media and here too of course!)

Orig­i­nal call out here

CLIMATE ACTION NEWS SHEET 72, OCTOBER 2007

Com­piled and sent out by Ris­ing Tide UK: info at risingtide.org.uk
To receive this News Sheet month­ly, email news-sub­scribe at risingtide.org.uk
with the sub­ject line ‘sub­scribe’ (with­out the quotes).

CONTENTS:
———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION VS. ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART — OCT ’07, EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-
1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
4) GAGGED! SOUTH WALES ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER — SEPTEMBER 2007
5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
7) “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

———————————————-
UPCOMING ACTIONS AND EVENTS:
———————————————-
1) NATIONAL DAY OF LOCAL ACTION AGAINST ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND — 15.10.07
RBS, the self-described ‘Oil and Gas Bank’ and sec­ond-largest bank in
Europe is the lead­ing financier of cli­mate change. From West Africa to the
Ecuado­ri­an rain­for­est, from the North Sea to the Mid­dle East, RBS loans
play a key role in forc­ing open the new car­bon fron­tier. The thir­ty oil
and gas finance deals RBS signed between 2001 and 2006 locked us all into
655 mil­lion tonnes of emis­sions over the next 15 years — more than the
UK’s cur­rent annu­al emis­sions total!
On 15th Octo­ber, get togeth­er with your local group, build on con­nec­tions
made at the Camp, reach out to oth­ers in your area and con­front RBS with
your own cho­sen style of cre­ative direct action.

To find your near­est RBS branch or office:
www.rbs.co.uk/microsites/general/branch_locator/step1.asp
Down­load Plat­for­m’s report ‘The Oil and Gas Bank’:
www.carbonweb.org/documents/Oil_&_Gas_Bank.pdf
For help with plan­ning effec­tive actions: www.networkforclimateaction.org.uk

One such action is being planned in con­junc­tion with West Corn­wall Friends
of the Earth; Out­side Roy­al Bank of Scot­land, Green St (off Lemon Quay),
Truro,
12 noon, Mon 15th Oct. Con­tact RTUK for oth­ers.

2) SAVE SWALLOWS WOOD — OCTOBER 2007 UPDATE
A lot has been hap­pen­ing in the last few weeks, includ­ing the inau­gur­al
Glos­sop Crit­i­cal Mass. Also, there are two URGENT let­ter actions that they
need your help with. They should only take a few min­utes of your time.
www.saveswallowswood.org.uk

3) NATIONAL CLIMATE CAMP ACTION PLANNING MEETING — 3–4.11.07 OXFORD
The Cli­mate Camp did­n’t stop cli­mate change — but it’s part of a grow­ing
social move­ment that can! Come and take the next steps for­ward at the
upcom­ing UK-wide meet­ing on Nov 3–4 in Oxford. Every­one is wel­come,
whether you came to the camp, or were sim­ply inspired by it.
www.climatecamp.org.uk

4) CLIMATE CAMPS — 2008 GERMANY AND WORLDWIDE!
Fol­low­ing the mod­el estab­lished by the Camp for Cli­mate Action in the UK,
plans are afoot for a Cli­mate-Action Camp in Ger­many in 2008. This will
include knowl­edge exchange (in work­shops), self-organ­ised liv­ing that
min­imis­es the eco­log­i­cal foot­print, net­work­ing and direct action. There
are plans for sim­i­lar camps to be set up next year in sev­er­al coun­tries.
watch this space…
www.climatecamp.org.uk

http://www.klimacamp.org/

5) TARA UPDATE — 22.9.07 IRELAND
They are des­per­ate for more peo­ple and sup­plies on site. There are
cur­rent­ly just 20 peo­ple try­ing to stop work all over the Tara Skryne
val­ley.
www.tarapixie.net
www.savetara.com
www.circlecommunity.org
For recent videos & pho­tos of protests see;
http://livevideo.com/tarapixie

6) CRITICAL MASS UPDATES — NATIONWIDE
For info. and updates check;
http://www.urban75.com/Action/critical.html

7) PLYMOUTH ENVIRONMENT CENTRE FILM NIGHTS — AUTUMN 2007
Includ­ing “Reclaim Pow­er” 19.10.07 at 7pm fol­lowed by dis­cus­sion with
Ris­ing Tide rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

http://plymouthenvironmentcentre.org.uk/events.php#film-nights

8) TEMPORARY AUTONOMOUS ART SHOWS — OCTOBER 2007 EDINBURGH & MANCHESTER
Edin­burgh 10th-14th Octo­ber
Man­ches­ter 24th-28th Octo­ber
For fur­ther info. check;
http://www.randomartists.org/

9) WRITE IN DEFENCE OF ISOLATED PERUVIAN TRIBES — 17.9.07
Two com­pa­nies plan­ning to explore for oil in Peru­vian rain­for­est have
revealed their sen­si­tive plans to ‘com­mu­ni­cate’ with the pre­vi­ous­ly
uncon­tact­ed inhab­i­tants using mega­phones! In the past, oil com­pa­ny work­ers
in the Ama­zon region have been killed by iso­lat­ed Indi­ans. Despite this
risk to their own work­ers, and the equal dan­ger of spread­ing fatal
dis­eases to the Indi­ans, the com­pa­nies — Bar­rett Resources of the US and
Rep­sol YPF of Spain — have refused to sus­pend their plans.
http://www.survival-international.org/news/2502
You can help by writ­ing a let­ter;
http://www.survival-international.org/actnow/letters/isolatedindians

10) STUDENT CLIMATE PROJECT LAUNCH GATHERING – OXFORD, 30.11–2.12.07

‘The Stu­dent Cli­mate Project came out of dis­cus­sions at the 2007 Cli­mate
Camp, and
seeks bring togeth­er stu­dents to take col­lec­tive action against the root
caus­es of
Cli­mate Change. It will also devel­op ways to build the stu­dent move­ment
and deal
with Cli­mate Change issues in the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. The project is
non-hier­ar­chi­cal
and based on con­sen­sus deci­sion mak­ing, and the Launch Gath­er­ing is the
per­fect
oppor­tu­ni­ty to get involved, share your ideas and plan for action. See
www.studentclimateproject.org.uk’

———————————————-
RECENT HAPPENINGS:
———————————————-

1) ROSSPORT SOLIDARITY DEMOS — 14.9.07 LEEDS, LONDON, BRISTOL, READING,
MADRID & IRELAND
There were a series of demon­stra­tions held in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the day of
action against Shel­l’s plans for a gas pipeline & refin­ery in Mayo,
Ire­land.
In Ross­port itself over 150 peo­ple occu­pied the refin­ery site.
Bris­tol Ris­ing Tide held a sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at a Shell Garage in East­ville,
Bris­tol with leaflets and ban­ners.
For more details about the var­i­ous actions check;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5090
http://www.corribsos.com/index.php?id=1&type=page

2) DIRECT ACTION IN BRISTOL — AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2007
Activists in Bris­tol have been busy. Parts of three golf cours­es have been
dug up and the mes­sage “deca­dent waste of water” sprayed near a club
house. A mobile phone mast has been sab­o­taged. A non-pas­sen­ger line which
trans­ports cars and fos­sil fuel to the Mid­lands was cut three quar­ters of
the way through in two places and marked with high vis­i­bil­i­ty paint. A
warn­ing ban­ner read­ing: “Stop: Trees on line” was fixed across the line
sev­er­al hun­dred yards in front of this.
Also, with­in the last 6 months, the front tyres of forty 4x4s have been
punc­tured in and around Bris­tol.
Final­ly, a “cor­po­rate enter­tain­ment” com­pa­ny called 4‑Play, which pro­vides
off road dri­ving for 4x4s in the south west, has had vehi­cles spray
paint­ed with

“4‑play — blow-job the plan­et”.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5050

3) WHY CARBON TRADING ISN’T WORKING — ARTICLES 2006/7
An excel­lent series of arti­cles on why the neolib­er­al approach to cli­mate
change isn’t work­ing can be found at;
http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk/subject/climate/

4) GAGGED! ANARCHIST NEWSLETTER – SOUTH WALES, SEPT 2007
Down­load the PDF here;
https://lists.riseup.net/www/d_read/gagged/gagged19.pdf
Alter­na­tive­ly you can read it here;
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5052

5) FEDERAL COURT BLOCKS SHELLS ARCTIC DRILLING — 14.9.07
A fed­er­al court has denied Shel­l’s lat­est request to lift an order
block­ing the com­pa­ny’s Arc­tic Ocean drilling. This rul­ing like­ly dooms the
Dutch oil giant’s drilling plans, at least for this year.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

6) BANK PULLS SAKHALIN‑2 FUNDING — 15.8.07
The Euro­pean Bank of Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment has decid­ed to pull
its fund­ing for the $20-plus bil­lion Sakhalin‑2 liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas
project, locat­ed in Rus­si­a’s Far East.
Since Jan­u­ary, EBRD and the Sakhalin Ener­gy share­hold­ers (Gazprom, Roy­al
Dutch Shell, Mit­sui and Mit­subishi) have held talks over the pro­jec­t’s
finance. EBRD cut off dis­cus­sions in favour of financ­ing oth­er projects,
such as those that pro­mote sus­tain­able ener­gy.
http://www.pacificenvironment.org/

7) PROTEST AS RDA HOLDS “FLOOD SUMMIT” AT AIRPORT — 3.9.07 DONCASTER, YORKS.
York­shire For­ward (Region­al Devel­op­ment Agency) held an out­ra­geous “Flood
Sum­mit” at Finning­ley air­port. Local peo­ple vis­it­ed with pop-up tents and
ban­ners to leaflet the con­fer­ence’s par­tic­i­pants and hold alter­na­tive
work­shops high­light­ing the link between avi­a­tion growth and wors­en­ing
cli­mate change.
The con­fer­ence was intend­ed to con­grat­u­late the RDA on their response to
the recent floods. The choice of venue shows just how out of touch with
real­i­ty these half-wits are.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5021

8) COAL ACTIONS IN AUSTRALIA — 2/3.9.07
On the 2nd Sep­tem­ber, twelve Green­peace activists were arrest­ed at the
world’s biggest coal port at New­cas­tle, 160km north of Syd­ney, after
paint­ing the mes­sage “Aus­tralia Push­ing Export Coal” on the side of a coal
ship and unfurl­ing a large ban­ner in Chi­nese call­ing on Chi­na to be
cau­tious of John Howard and George Bush’s attempts to sab­o­tage Kyoto. The
protest comes at the start of the 2007 APEC (Asia Pacif­ic Eco­nom­ic
Coop­er­a­tion) forum meet­ing being host­ed by Aus­tralia.
http://www.greenpeace.org/australia/news-and-events/media/releases/climate-change/apec-coal-protest
The fol­low­ing day activists locked them­selves on to a coal con­vey­or belt,
forc­ing the shut-down of a gen­er­a­tor and halv­ing pro­duc­tion from
Vic­to­ri­a’s biggest coal fired pow­er sta­tion.
http://www.realactiononclimatechange.blogspot.com/

9) GLOBAL ACTIONS AGAINST HEAVY INDUSTRY — 12.9.07
Peo­ple in South Africa, Ice­land, Trinidad, Den­mark and Amer­i­ca held a
series of coor­di­nat­ed protests against heavy indus­tri­al­i­sa­tion. This is
the first event of a new and grow­ing glob­al move­ment that began at the
2007 Sav­ing Ice­land protest camp in Ölfus, Ice­land.
http://earthfirst.org.uk/actionreports/node/5067

10) GREEK DIRECT ACTION — SEPTEMBER 2007
For direct action news from Greece, check;
http://directactiongr.blogspot.com/

11) CRITICAL MASS AND CARFREE DAY IN BRUSSELS — 24.9.07
For details and some great pics see;
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/381930.html

12) ART NOT OIL 2007 GALLERY HITS 50

and over 1500 hits. Take a look and send in your own work:
www.artnotoil.org.uk

2nd wave of Burma solidarity — target Total (London, Cardiff, Oxford)

Lon­don Total Oil’s offices tar­get­ed again this morn­ing
5.10.2007

Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ was tar­get­ed again this morn­ing as work­ers made their way into the build­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary jun­ta.

London Total HQ
Lon­don Total Oil’s offices tar­get­ed again this morn­ing
5.10.2007

Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ was tar­get­ed again this morn­ing as work­ers made their way into the build­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in finan­cial­ly sup­port­ing the Burmese mil­i­tary jun­ta.

After a mass call out, activists showed up again this morn­ing to speak to office work­ers at Total Oil’s Lon­don HQ about the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment in Bur­ma. Police forces were already present at the site, actu­al­ly out­num­ber­ing pro­test­ers at 8:30, guard­ing the entrance and check­ing every­one enter­ing the build­ing, which caused sig­nif­i­cant nui­sance and slowed things down a bit. A FIT team was also present, hap­pi­ly snap­ping pic­tures of peo­ple. After stag­ing a die-in out­side the entrance and hand­ing out leaflets, it was decid­ed to end the action and re-group for break­fast.

We shall be back.

//////////////////////////////

Cardiff Total demoCardiff Total closed in Bur­ma protest

7.10.2007
A Total garage in Cardiff was closed for three hours in a sol­i­dar­i­ty action for the peo­ple of Bur­ma

Around 30 peo­ple marched from the cen­tre of Cardiff to the Total garage, where more pro­test­ers had already gath­ered.

Despite the nor­mal threats of arrest from the police, activists blocked the entrance and exit routes to the garage, shut­ting it down. The garage remained closed by the action for three hours. There were no arrests.

The lev­el of pub­lic sup­port for the action was amaz­ing, and car horns were beep­ing their sup­port almost con­stant­ly. Even the motorists that turned up to use the garage were (on the whole) sup­port­ive, and hap­pi­ly drove off to find some­where else to fill up.

This was an effec­tive and suc­cess­ful action — it would be nice to see more of these in the weeks and months to come.

——–

Text of leaflet that was giv­en out:

Total Oil — the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma

French Oil Com­pa­ny Total is the biggest cor­po­rate investor for the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship of Bur­ma. For the last 45 years a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship has ruled Bur­ma with an iron fist. Total oil has pro­vides the dic­ta­tor­ship with 30% of there export rev­enue, which is esti­mat­ed at $450 mil­lion.

This is the largest for­eign invest­ment sup­port­ing the bru­tal regime, and Total is ful­ly aware of this. It has been fund­ing the regime since 1992, which has per­mit­ted them to exe­cute some atro­cious human right vio­la­tions includ­ing:

70,000 child sol­diers.
One of the largest armies in South East Asia, despite no exter­nal ene­mies.
Rape of women and chil­dren as a weapon of war.
Mass oppres­sion of free­dom of speech and opin­ion, which has lead to 1,350 polit­i­cal pris­on­ers.
Almost half of the bud­get is spent on the mil­i­tary while only 19p is spent on health care per per­son, per year.
Total fund­ed the cre­ation of a 63-kilo­me­ter pipeline, secured by the army, which has lead to:

Between 600,000 and 1 mil­lion peo­ple forced from their homes and inter­nal­ly dis­placed.

Some of the worse forced labour abus­es on thou­sands of Burmese peo­ple.

Forced trans­port­ing of weapons, beat­ings and tor­ture.

And the use of civil­ians as human minesweep­ers.

Total Oil is fund­ing and pro­tect­ing this vio­lent regime, to defend its assets and prof­its made form Burmese oil and gas.

In 1988 mass demon­stra­tions occurred across Bur­ma due to the bru­tal­i­ty of the Mil­i­tary regime, and a 500% increase in oil and nat­ur­al gas prices. This result­ed in over 5000 peo­ple indis­crim­i­nate­ly being slaugh­ter by the army, and thou­sands more impris­oned, 1, 350 of which are still there.

2007 UPRISE — A REPEAT OF HISTORY – On the 15th of August, petrol prices rose by 500%, spark­ing mass protests for the next 2 months. The protests were lead by tens of thou­sands of social activist, monks and civil­ians. The mil­i­tary fought back with tear gas, beat­ings, arrests, shoot­ings and pre dawn raids on monas­ter­ies.

It’s esti­mat­ed that up to 3000 peo­ple, includ­ing elder­ly monks, chil­dren between 5 and 10 years old, nuns and women have been arrest­ed, endur­ing atro­cious con­di­tions in prison. It has been inter­nal­ly esti­mat­ed that 130 peo­ple have been killed.

Even though the media cov­er­age is dis­ap­pear­ing today, the oppres­sion and vio­lence direct­ed towards the Burmese’s peo­ple con­tin­ues to esca­late.

Stop the mil­i­tary regime. Act now before anoth­er 5000 die.

Action

www.burmacampaign.org.uk To sign peti­tions pres­sur­ing Total and oth­er cor­po­ra­tions to with­draw invest­ment in Bur­ma.
www.burmanet.org/news/ For up to date reli­able news in Bur­ma.
www.southwalesanarchists.org A group of like-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als into civ­il dis­obe­di­ence.
www.avaaz.org To sign a peti­tion tar­get­ing and pres­sur­ing Chi­na, the main sup­port­er of the regime.

//////////////////////////////

Oxford 2nd Total demoTotal Total­ly Block­ad­ed in Oxford

6.10.2007
Pro­test­ers peace­ful­ly block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Oxford today, in sup­port of the democ­ra­cy move­ment in Bur­ma (Myan­mar); activists were there for two hours and seri­ous­ly dis­rupt­ed Total’s busi­ness for the day.

This protest took place in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro-democ­ra­cy move­ment in Bur­ma, who have asked for inter­na­tion­al sup­port now that the regime is crack­ing down on them. Total Oil is the fourth largest oil com­pa­ny in the world and one of the biggest for­eign investors in Bur­ma. Its joint ven­ture with Bur­ma’s dic­ta­tor­ship earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year.

Peo­ple began to gath­er out­side the petrol sta­tion in East Oxford at 2.30 pm, and at 2.45 moved into the entrance­way, hold­ing a ban­ner which read ” Fuelling Oppres­sion In Bur­ma”. We blocked the entrance for a while until the police arrived and threat­ened to arrest peo­ple. How­ev­er, even after we shuf­fled to either side of the main dri­ve­way, just the pres­ence of the pro­test­ers, the ban­ner and the police was enough to put most cus­tomers off — we saw numer­ous peo­ple eye­ing up the entrance and then choos­ing to dri­ve by.

Those few who did plunge past the crowd of pro­test­ers onto the fore­court were quick­ly pounced upon by friend­ly leaflet-wield­ing activists who man­aged to per­suade the major­i­ty to take their busi­ness else­where.

The Total staff were less than over­joyed, but we gave them all leaflets too and explained why we were there. The police, too, were less than delight­ed by our pres­ence but seemed will­ing to tol­er­ate us, even though we’d pret­ty much closed the petrol sta­tion down for the after­noon. We got lots of waves and horn-toots of sup­port from passers-by.

Total has been a long­stand­ing sup­port­er of Bur­ma’s bru­tal regime. Wide­spread human rights abus­es have been asso­ci­at­ed with the Total pipeline in Bur­ma, includ­ing forced labour, tor­ture and rape. In addi­tion, tougher Euro­pean sanc­tions against Bur­ma have been blocked by the French gov­ern­ment in its effort to pro­tect Total’s inter­ests in the coun­try.

Today’s action was part of a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al move­ment against Total. Forc­ing the com­pa­ny to pull out of Bur­ma would be a major blow to the legit­i­ma­cy of the regime, jeop­ar­dise a vital source of income for the jun­ta and would make it even more dif­fi­cult for oth­er com­pa­nies to do busi­ness in the region.

For more infor­ma­tion see www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total_briefing.html. To get involved in action in Oxford email oarc@riseup.net.

—-

2nd Report from the Oxford Total demo

A brief expla­na­tion of some of the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma and a report on the demon­stra­tion in Oxford which took place on the 6th of Octo­ber, 2007.

Glob­al Day of Action for Bur­ma

The 6th of Octo­ber was the glob­al day of action for Bur­ma (also known as Myan­mar), and activists and sup­port­ers demon­strat­ed around the world for an end to the appalling actions of the repres­sive and vicious mil­i­tary jun­ta (group of army gen­er­als) that rules the coun­try. If you watched the news recent­ly you might remem­ber images of thou­sands of monks march­ing on the streets, before the bru­tal mil­i­tary crack­down. There is lit­tle or no news get­ting out of Bur­ma now because the gov­ern­ment shut off the inter­net and has start­ed to seize mobile phones and cam­eras so that images of vio­lent repres­sion can­not escape. The jun­ta has banned protest­ing and the expres­sion of any oth­er view apart from their own, which is that they are cre­at­ing a “dis­ci­pline-flour­ish­ing democ­ra­cy” and unusu­al­ly for a democ­ra­cy, all oppo­si­tion must be crushed. Con­tra­dic­to­ry? It sure is, but it is no laugh­ing mat­ter for fifty mil­lion Burmese.

Demon­stra­tors marched in coun­tries as var­ied as Thai­land, France, Aus­tralia, Cana­da and the Unit­ed King­dom, as well as many more. One of the biggest protests in this coun­try was in Lon­don, but they took place in every major city in the coun­try. One of the less pub­li­cised, but nonethe­less very well attend­ed protests was in Oxford, where pro­test­ers man­aged to suc­cess­ful­ly stop almost every­one fill­ing up at a Total garage from doing so for over two and a half hours.

On the face of it this action might seem to have lit­tle to do with Bur­ma, since Total is a joint­ly owned French and Amer­i­can com­pa­ny. How­ev­er, Total has a con­tract with the Burmese gov­ern­ment, signed in 1992, and is the sole com­pa­ny oper­at­ing in the coun­try. Two oil pipelines have already been built, one to Thai­land and one across Bur­ma, and a third one is on its way, despite the fact that new invest­ments from French com­pa­nies in Bur­ma were banned in 2004. The pipelines have been asso­ci­at­ed with seri­ous human rights abus­es for those work­ing on them, such as forced labour, the use of civil­ians as human minesweep­ers, the use of chil­dren, and sys­tem­at­ic rape of women. Total has been said to be the sin­gle biggest com­pa­ny prop­ping up the junta’s regime.

Total is one of the five biggest oil com­pa­nies in the UK and there­fore wields an enor­mous influ­ence both here and abroad. The French gov­ern­ment has blocked mea­sures such as sanc­tions against the jun­ta due to the fact that Total has such heavy involve­ment there.

With all this in mind I went to a demon­stra­tion close by to Read­ing, by a Total garage in Oxford. A huge ban­ner read­ing “Fuelling Oppres­sion in Bur­ma” left peo­ple in no doubt as to what the protest was about. Vol­un­teers hand­ed out leaflets show­ing a brief sum­ma­ry of the injus­tice of the military’s rule, and Total’s role in it, as well as peti­tions that con­cerned cit­i­zens could sign. The turnout was excel­lent, con­sid­er­ing that the demon­stra­tion had not been as well pub­li­cised as oth­er, larg­er ones in cities such as Birm­ing­ham and Man­ches­ter. In two hours we man­aged to stop the major­i­ty of peo­ple fill­ing up at Total. The work­ers at the garage were under­stand­ably not very pleased but we gave them leaflets too and let them know that we have noth­ing against them since they are only doing their job. Many peo­ple did not have any idea of the things which this com­pa­ny is involved in and once they were informed most of them chose to fill up at one of two near­by petrol sta­tions fur­ther along the road.

The atmos­phere was very jol­ly and every­one was eager to meet new peo­ple and help each oth­er out. The good weath­er helped with this as did the fact that most peo­ple were very friend­ly. We had sup­port both from the local police who were assigned to watch the demon­stra­tion, and from passers-by, many of whom honked their horns at us as they drove past. Many peo­ple who had filled up promised not to do so again. The protest began at 2:30, and although most peo­ple had gone by half past four, three of us chose to stay until five, hand­ing out leaflets to dri­vers.

We do accept that some peo­ple have no choice but to fill up there and we have noth­ing against peo­ple who do so, but I feel it is impor­tant that peo­ple have an informed choice about what it is that they are sup­port­ing when they fill up at a Total garage. At a time when many oil com­pa­nies are regard­ed as uneth­i­cal the idea that a com­pa­ny would open­ly fund one of the world’s most despi­ca­ble regimes pro­duces bad pub­lic­i­ty and a lack of trust, so it is in Total’s best inter­est to pull out of Bur­ma and in so doing, increase their prof­its due to win­ning back respect from peo­ple who have lost it for them. They should see that in the long term, due to the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma (with some states hav­ing had a civ­il war for over 20 years) stay­ing in the coun­try is unsus­tain­able and bad for their busi­ness as well as for human rights.

Should you wish to find out more about Total and their involve­ment in Bur­ma, please vis­it www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total_report.html. Please also sign the peti­tion to help the Burmese pro­test­ers, which will be pre­sent­ed to the pres­i­dent of Chi­na after it receives a mil­lion sig­na­tures, at www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma .

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London Burma demoAside from these direct actions, var­i­ous demon­stra­tions have hap­pened around the coun­try over the last few weeks — for full details, search at indymedia.org.uk

Shell to Sea Two and half years later and still going strong! October 12th day of action

In 2005 small west of Ire­land com­mu­ni­ty became the focus of atten­tion of the peo­ple in Ire­land. Five small farm­ers in Ross­port Co Mayo (one the most remote and iso­lat­ed places in North­west Europe) had stood up to a multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­a­tion of Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon in fear they would die if Shell built their unprece­dent­ed on shore refin­ery.

In 2005 small west of Ire­land com­mu­ni­ty became the focus of atten­tion of the peo­ple in Ire­land. Five small farm­ers in Ross­port Co Mayo (one the most remote and iso­lat­ed places in North­west Europe) had stood up to a multi­na­tion­al con­glom­er­a­tion of Shell, Sta­toil and Marathon in fear they would die if Shell built their unprece­dent­ed on shore refin­ery.

The Irish State’s reac­tion to this was to inde­fi­nate­ly imprison them. This tran­spired to be 94 days at which point Shell decid­ed it was doing more harm than good by impris­on­ing as there was a series of direct actions and mass demon­stra­tion in their defence http://www.indymedia.ie/article/71388. In the weeks run­ning up to this some activists made con­tact with com­mu­ni­ty activists and start­ed a nation­al Shell to sea cam­paign. The unbe­liev­able sto­ry of what was going on in the west of Ire­land was spread through Europe through the meet­ing of activists at the G8 in Ster­ling in July 2008.

The sto­ry is quite unbe­liev­able. Shell and their part­ners are attempt­ing to destroy an unspoilt part of the west Ire­land, by run­ning a dan­ger­ous pipeline through the vil­lage of Ross­port to an inland refin­ery that will spew hun­dreds of thou­sands of tonnes of methane each year in the local envi­ron­ment. On top of this they are effec­tive­ly rob­bing the peo­ple in Ire­land of €51 bil­lion of Irish gas through a dodgy deal cut with cor­rupt politi­cians that at the time was called “eco­nom­ic trea­son”.

But lots of things are wrong and why should peo­ple all across the world we focus on this? Well its sim­ple- we can win and if we do the effects will be immense as a prece­dent will have been set that will not only effect Ire­land but Europe and beyond.

So what hap­pened since 2005 and where are we now?

Tra­di­tion­al sec­tar­i­an­ism was put aside and activists of dif­fer­ent back­grounds worked togeth­er form­ing what the media would lat­er bill “the looney alliance of anar­chists and repub­li­cans”. Through­out the sum­mer of 2005 and until the late sum­mer of 2006 things worked very well as con­stant pick­ets shut down Shel­l’s oper­a­tion in Mayo and pres­sure mount­ed on Shell and the Irish State.

Then at the end of Sep­tem­ber 2006 the State and Shell made their move. Over 200 gar­dai (Irish police) were bil­let­ed to Mayo. The top cop said he would have the protests fin­ished in 48hours. The com­mu­ni­ty and nation­al cam­paigns response was immense. Pick­et­ing went on through the night incase the Gar­dai tried
to cor­don activists away from the site. On the night of the sec­ond of Octo­ber the cops even­tu­al­ly turned out in force. In an effort to main­tain the year and half long pick­et cars were parked block­ing the refin­ery and behind them the com­mu­ni­ty sat in front of the gates. In area with low­est crime rate in Ire­land 200 Gar­dai pulled and dragged com­mu­ni­ty res­i­dents from the gates hos­pi­tal­is­ing two.

This lead to a surge in activ­i­ty with much cam­paign activ­i­ty around the coun­try and inter­na­tion­al­ly, focused on days of action in Ross­port. The Gar­da reac­tion to these days of Action was vio­lent cul­mi­nat­ing in a baton charge on Novem­ber the tenth. The cam­paign then in the face of what seemed like more vio­lence can­celled a pro­posed day of action on the 24th of Novem­ber 2006. Many saw this as deci­sive moment for the cam­paign as momen­tum passed out of our hands. Every­one realised the fol­ly of
it, but as with a lot of things in Shell to Sea it is a learn­ing process. Now it seems it was not as deci­sive as it seemed as things build again.

This sum­mer the cam­paign burst back to life by vic­to­ri­ous­ly oppos­ing shel­l’s attempt to install cab­ins for works in the bay — read more. This was fol­lowed with a very intense week which saw three fish­er­men includ­ing Pat “the chief” O Don­nell and his son and a friend impris­oned, the site was shut down for a day. On the fish­er­men’s release
an inva­sion of the con­struc­tion site took place. Over Sep­tem­ber there have been three site inva­sions and two days with numer­ous peo­ple blockad­ing traf­fic attempt­ing to access the site — read more.

All this occurred in the run up to the day of action on Sep­tem­ber 14th unique in that it had a pre-announced plan. The plan was sim­ple — go there and sit on the road and no vehi­cles get on site. The run-up to the day was ner­vous. The big ques­tion was- could Shell to Sea with its nation­al sup­port in town (or coun­try­side rather) reassert the right of ordi­nary peo­ple over multi­na­tion­als in Erris and real­ly push for­ward the already build­ing momen­tum behind the cam­paign. The con­di­tions were cer­tain­ly right- Shell were and still are run­ning into enor­mous prob­lems as build­ing has vir­tu­al­ly come to a stand­still due to poor qual­i­ty con­crete, con­stant protest and the lack of a pipeline route. On Fri­day the 14th about 150 — 200 peo­ple turned from around the coun­try and this was matched by a size­able mayo turnout.

The total pro­tes­tor turnout was matched by a size­able Gar­da pres­ence. As the pro­tes­tors shut down the main entrance to the site with the sit down the Gar­dai thought they would be clever and direct traf­fic around the sit down and bore us to tears. After this long you would imag­ine the cops would realise Shell to Sea is a lit­tle more on the ball than this. In the lack of the any trucks to meet pro­tes­tors we decid­ed to go and take a look and shut the site down. So it was up, over, under and through the gate as the protest made lit­tle a sec­ondary gate as well (espe­cial­ly con­struct­ed for the day) — read more. The Gar­dai respond­ed with their usu­al heavy hand­ed tac­tics. Regard­less of Shel­l’s rub­bish spin, RTE’s (Ire­lands state broad­cast­er) des­per­ate attempts to pla­cate Shell and and the gar­dai’s offi­cial line it was plain to see who had won the day and that the train is firm­ly back on the tracks.

It’s undoubt­ed that Shell to Sea is not yet at the dizzy­ing heights it was at 12 or 24 months ago. How­ev­er things are mov­ing in a sim­i­lar direc­tion at the moment. We have learned the mis­takes of plac­ing too much faith in politi­cians to pull a deal out the hat. With this knowl­edge it could just be third time lucky for Shell to Sea.

Through­out this peri­od the impact on sol­i­dar­i­ty from the Eng­land Scot­land and Wales has had an enor­mous effect. It has been instru­men­tal in keep­ing the sol­i­dar­i­ty camp con­tin­u­ing through peo­ple com­ing stay­ing a week or a year, fundrais­ing and dona­tions have also allowed the camp to expand. Hos­pi­tal­i­ty to cam­paign speak­ers was always sec­ond to none. Above all the impact that peo­ple com­ing has had a pro­found impact on the moral of peo­ple in Ross­port. They launched their oppo­si­tion in 1999 and it took six years to get Nation­al atten­tion and then imme­di­ate­ly peo­ple in the UK, once they heard, took up the chal­lenge. There is still more peo­ple from the UK have to offer this strug­gle.

Anoth­er day of Action has been called for Octo­ber the 12th as the sit­u­a­tion is heat­ing up as the pres­sure mounts up on Shell and polit­i­cal pres­sure on the greens. These days of Action will not work
on there own — if you cant trav­el we all need to be active in our com­mu­ni­ties organ­is­ing meet­ings, pos­ter­ing and rais­ing the issue where pos­si­ble. These days are how­ev­er cru­cial to pile on the pres­sure -
show­ing in a vis­i­ble robust way the lev­el of oppo­si­tion to this project and high­light­ing the bru­tal­i­ty of what is an every­day occur­rence in Ross­port.

At this stage many of us are scratch­ing our heads as to why mayo peo­ple can’t do this at the height of sum­mer but then again what else would you be doing on windy Fri­day morn­ing in Octo­ber? Ok fair enough we all do but it will cer­tain­ly be worth it to force this to its log­i­cal con­clu­sion after 8 years. For us it’s a few days of a trip to Ross­port for oth­ers it’s the high­light and morale boost­er in a 8 year strug­gle that must and will end soon When peo­ple arrive its intense­ly appre­ci­at­ed as it shows they are not strug­gling on their won and peo­ple care. What are you doing on Octo­ber the 12th? Organ­ise a pick­et at the Irish embassy or a Shell fill­ing Sta­tion or their head­quar­ters. Or if pos­si­ble trav­el to Ross­port. Trav­el to Dublin for Thurs­day at six and book a tick­et on the Dublin bus­es. Book ear­ly though. Come you need a hol­i­day!
(for tick­ets phone or text 0851609850 in Dublin) Cork — corkshelltosea@gmail.com or call 0851141170 for gen­er­al info.

www.rossportsolidaritycamp.com, www.shelltosea.com www.indymedia.ie/mayo