Category: London

Lon­don

Stop Nuclear Power gathering, 23–24 October 2010

Sat 23 — Sun 24 Oct 2010, Bris­tol

Meet, make plans, take action

Sat 23 — Sun 24 Oct 2010, Bris­tol

Meet, make plans, take action

Stop Nuclear Pow­er is a grass­roots net­work of groups and indi­vid­u­als tak­ing action against nuclear pow­er. If EdF get their way, Hink­ley C will become the first nuclear pow­er sta­tion built in Britain for 20 years and will sit next to two oth­er radioac­tive and dan­ger­ous sites. Stop Hink­ley is a long run­ning com­mu­ni­ty cam­paign to stop dead­ly nuclear reac­tors oper­at­ing near their homes.
Their strug­gle is our strug­gle. Let’s sit down togeth­er in Bris­tol and make some plans togeth­er.

Hink­ley is the bat­tle­ground, if they get one in there, it opens the door for at least nine oth­er nuclear pow­er sta­tions across the coun­try. This Autumn, the gov­ern­ment is tak­ing its pro-nuclear pro­pa­gan­da on tour around the UK. We’ll be there. Come to the gath­er­ing or send us an email to find out how you can get involved.

www.boycottedf.org.uk

Info for the week­end:

Meet­ing space dur­ing the day on Sat­ur­day and Sun­day tbc but will be in Bris­tol.
Crash space is avail­able on a dry, warm and qui­et floor space.
If you need a bed please get in con­tact with us as soon as pos­si­ble and will try and help you out.
Lunch and din­ner will be done com­mu­nal­ly on Sat­ur­day and lunch on Sun­day.

For a tele­phone num­ber to con­tact dur­ing the week­end send us an email.

Please help by let­ting us know you are com­ing so we can plan for space, food and logis­tics.

Email: nonewnuclear@aktivix.org

Grow Heathrow! Resisting the eviction

27th August 2010

Grow Heathrow! Almost half a year after launch­ing, a suc­cess­ful grass­roots cam­paign resist­ing the expan­sion of Heathrow air­port while demon­strat­ing sus­tain­able liv­ing on derelict land, is fac­ing an evic­tion threat. Read on to hear about the excit­ing cam­paign and how you can help keep the projects going…

27th August 2010

Grow Heathrow! Almost half a year after launch­ing, a suc­cess­ful grass­roots cam­paign resist­ing the expan­sion of Heathrow air­port while demon­strat­ing sus­tain­able liv­ing on derelict land, is fac­ing an evic­tion threat. Read on to hear about the excit­ing cam­paign and how you can help keep the projects going…

On the first day of March this year a group of 30 peo­ple gath­ered out­side a neglect­ed plot of land on the site of the pro­posed 3rd run­way in the Heathrow vil­lage of Sip­son.

For years res­i­dents and activists had cam­paigned togeth­er to stop the expan­sion of Heathrow air­port, and now they had come togeth­er to build grass­roots solu­tions to the threat of cli­mate change and peak oil, led by the peo­ple direct­ly impact­ed on the ground.

A hole in the fence allowed the first of the group onto the land and as they put up a squatter’s rights notice on the gates, the rest fol­lowed into the site of Sipson’s new com­mu­ni­ty gar­den; ‘Grow Heathrow’ was born.

Six months lat­er and the gar­den is unrec­og­niz­able from the site that caused a spec­trum of social prob­lems for the com­mu­ni­ty before it was reclaimed. In the ear­ly days of spring, teams of peo­ple cleared, car­ried and worked togeth­er to remove 30 tonnes of rub­bish, while two six­ty ft green­hous­es were reglazed and per­ma­cul­tur­ists sowed seeds to return the land to a thriv­ing mar­ket gar­den.

A host of events have been held in the gar­den includ­ing a ban­quet attend­ed by 80 peo­ple using fresh veg­eta­bles grown on the land. And in May a fly­ing crit­i­cal mass pick­et was launched from the raised beds, where 20 cyclists stormed ter­mi­nal 5 in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers on strike from BA. Shared meals with res­i­dents and activists are com­mon-place using cour­gettes, spinach, toma­toes, but­ter­nut squash, herbs, all pulled from Sip­son soil.

Now in August and as dis­cus­sions for win­ter struc­tures begin, a new notice has been hung next to the sec­tion 46 on the front gates; a court sum­mons has been served to the project.

At first rumours flew round the vil­lage and a troop of con­cerned locals fled to gar­den hear­ing that the land­lord and heav­ies had come to claim the land. They found instead Tran­si­tion Heathrow gar­den­ers pour­ing over court papers, plot­ting and plan­ning to pro­tect the space they had put so much love and time into.

Nego­ti­a­tions have start­ed to make the gar­den a long-term com­mu­ni­ty-owned space, as state­ments of sup­port come fly­ing in to the Sip­son green­hous­es.

Res­i­dent Lin­da McCutcheon said: “It’s been bril­liant to see the site on Viner­ies Close come back to life after all the social issues from before. I’ve had a lot of fun with the group at the gar­den- turn­ing it into a safe, pos­i­tive and thriv­ing place for Sip­son- you should see the yel­low cour­gettes! Tran­si­tion Heathrow has a lot of sup­port in this area and I’ll be with them over the next cou­ple of weeks to ensure this excit­ing project has a future”.

Com­mu­ni­ty gar­den­er Joe Rake said; “Grow Heathrow is part of a bud­ding land move­ment in the UK con­nect­ing strug­gles to take back con­trol of our food pro­duc­tion. In build­ing resilient com­mu­ni­ties to envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic crises we want to defend real alter­na­tives to the sys­tems of false democ­ra­cy and cor­po­rate greed.”

‘Grow Heathrow’ is call­ing for sup­port. To help you can; come to Uxbridge Coun­ty court at 10.40am on the 2nd of Sep­tem­ber, keep up to date for the out­come of the court case, sign the peti­tion on the web­site and send state­ments of sup­port to info@transitionheathrow.com.

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it www.transitionheathrow.com

Grow Heathrow- before

Grow Heathrow- after

Trashing, dashing, bashing, mashing: the new EF! Action Update

So what have you been up to the last few months? Just hang­ing around?
Maybe you’ve been part of human wheel-clamp­ing aero­planes, climb­ing up scaf­fold­ing tripods incon­ve­nient­ly placed in the road, smash­ing machines at open-cast mines, play­ing nuked-dead in the street, kayak­ing against bore­hole drill rigs in Ire­land, burn­ing mobile phone masts, resist­ing Tesco, camp­ing against trash­ing of wood­land, with some suc­cess at Tit­nore (& oth­er protest camp updates), or get­ting in on BP’s act, spilling oil in pub­lic places.

Or have you been on hol­i­day, tak­ing part in indige­nous block­ades against log­ging, dams and min­ing, spilunk­ing against high speed trains, slash­ing tuna cages, blockad­ing Mon­san­to HQ, trash­ing GM fields, and more?

So what have you been up to the last few months? Just hang­ing around?
Maybe you’ve been part of human wheel-clamp­ing aero­planes, climb­ing up scaf­fold­ing tripods incon­ve­nient­ly placed in the road, smash­ing machines at open-cast mines, play­ing nuked-dead in the street, kayak­ing against bore­hole drill rigs in Ire­land, burn­ing mobile phone masts, resist­ing Tesco, camp­ing against trash­ing of wood­land, with some suc­cess at Tit­nore (& oth­er protest camp updates), or get­ting in on BP’s act, spilling oil in pub­lic places.

Or have you been on hol­i­day, tak­ing part in indige­nous block­ades against log­ging, dams and min­ing, spilunk­ing against high speed trains, slash­ing tuna cages, blockad­ing Mon­san­to HQ, trash­ing GM fields, and more?

Maybe you’re in need of a break. But if you’re not, and are just champ­ing at the bit, the return of AUn­tie MIffy’s prob­lem page might help, address­ing what to do if there’s no local group near you. There’s an arti­cle about the begin­nings of EF! in this coun­try, look­ing for­wards to the next 20 years, to help inspire. If you need sup­port to get things going where you live, do get in touch. And if all that’s not enough, here’s a quo­ta­tion, from Paul Wat­son, the Sea Shep­herd cap­tain:

“Future gen­er­a­tions will not have the chance and those that came before us did not have the vision nor the knowl­edge. It is up to us — you and I.”

Print ver­sion
Oth­er issues and extra info

Earth First! Summer Gathering set-up plans announced

We can now announce that set-up will begin from around 2pm on Sat­ur­day, 31 July. Mar­quees, tools and con­struc­tion mate­ri­als will be arriv­ing on site from Sat­ur­day morn­ing so there will be plen­ty to do. You will be able to camp on the site from Sat­ur­day and there will be skele­ton facil­i­ties (water, basic kitchen) from that time.

We can now announce that set-up will begin from around 2pm on Sat­ur­day, 31 July. Mar­quees, tools and con­struc­tion mate­ri­als will be arriv­ing on site from Sat­ur­day morn­ing so there will be plen­ty to do. You will be able to camp on the site from Sat­ur­day and there will be skele­ton facil­i­ties (water, basic kitchen) from that time.

We also have a mobile num­ber for set­up which is 07766 947852. This will be on-site from Sat­ur­day lunchtime, and may well get answered in the few days before­hand but please don’t try ring­ing until then — e‑mail will remain the main con­tact point until near­er the time — sum­mer­gath­er­ing -{at}- earthfirst.org.uk

What we need to know:

*Please can you let us know when you are com­ing? — this helps us plan foods, facil­i­ties and what jobs to do when.

*It is also help­ful if you can let us know if you have any par­tic­u­lar skills or inter­ests with respect to set-up — we might need dri­vers, so if you are over 25, hold a clean licence, are con­fi­dent dri­ving a 3.5 tonne Luton AND can bring along both parts of your dri­ving licence please let us know.

*Sim­i­lar­ly if you are arriv­ing in a vehi­cle and could poten­tial­ly pro­vide lifts, trans­port equip­ment en route or run errands from site once you arrive please let us know. In this case it is very help­ful if you are able/willing to sup­ply us with a con­tact phone num­ber.

How to get there

As you maybe aware that we do not announce the exact site of the gath­er­ing until one week before the main event, this means direc­tions will be avail­able on the web­site http://www.earthfirstgathering.org.uk/ from Wednes­day, 27 July. We realise this will be short notice for peo­ple arriv­ing on the Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er to make things eas­i­er we will e‑mail direc­tions to set-up crew on that day (that still 4 days to check a map!).

The near­est train sta­tion is Der­by if you want to pre-book train tick­ets, you will also need to take a local bus ser­vice from Der­by (these are fre­quent). We are aim­ing to have a vehi­cle on site that can assist if peo­ple have dif­fi­cul­ties between Der­by and the site, so hope­ful­ly every­one will be able to get there okay.

There may be a very small num­ber of lifts avail­able from the Not­ting­ham area across the week­end of Sat­ur­day 31st July/Sunday first of August. There may also be lifts from the Leeds area first thing on 31 July. Let us know if this may be of inter­est to you.

What to bring

*Every­thing you need to the gath­er­ing, tent sleep­ing bags etc. and espe­cial­ly a torch

*It may be wise to come a bit more self-suf­fi­cient in food and snacks than you would need to for the main gath­er­ing — we will have a basic kitchen but Veg­gies and the tuck shop are not arriv­ing until Wednes­day

*If you are able to bring any tools, espe­cial­ly for basic car­pen­try, these are often use­ful

Big thanks for offer­ing to help out

Do get in touch if you have any ques­tions

Love & rage

The EF! Gath­er­ing crew

STOP VEDANTA’S AGM! 28th July

STOP VEDANTA’s KILLINGS, DISPLACEMENT AND DEVASTATION!
THROW THEM OUT OF INDIA AND the UK!

STOP VEDANTA’S AGM!

3pm, Wednes­day, 28 July 2010,
The Insti­tute of Civ­il Engi­neers, 1, Great George Street, Lon­don SW1P 3AA

Vedan­ta plc’s record in Oris­sa, India:

STOP VEDANTA’s KILLINGS, DISPLACEMENT AND DEVASTATION!
THROW THEM OUT OF INDIA AND the UK!

STOP VEDANTA’S AGM!

3pm, Wednes­day, 28 July 2010,
The Insti­tute of Civ­il Engi­neers, 1, Great George Street, Lon­don SW1P 3AA

Vedan­ta plc’s record in Oris­sa, India:
· More than 100 men, women and chil­dren have been killed in acci­dents, police fir­ings, forced dis­place­ment, injury and ill­ness
· More than 1000 peo­ple have been dis­placed and more than 8000 under threat
· More than100 square miles of land have been dev­as­tat­ed and an equal area of for­est under threat
· Rivers and streams which are the life­line for tens of thou­sands of peo­ple are dry­ing up
· Thou­sands of acres of fer­tile agri­cul­tur­al land have been destroyed in a region which has seen famines every year since 2007
· Drink­ing water sources are being con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by dump­ing of fly ash and tox­ic red mud into riv­er streams
· The Niyam­giri hills – known as the most beau­ti­ful moun­tains in India — are under threat. The ancient civ­i­liza­tion of the Don­gria Kondh adi­vasi com­mu­ni­ty, who regard the Niyam Don­gar moun­tain and forests of the area as their Gods, is being wiped out
· Vedan­ta is caus­ing mass unem­ploy­ment and des­ti­tu­tion as farm­ers, fish­ing com­mu­ni­ties and for­est dwellers are being dis­placed and aban­doned in shan­ty-towns

Why is this hap­pen­ing?

Mega-prof­its for bil­lion­aires with blood on their hands
Anil Agar­w­al, bil­lion­aire CEO of Vedan­ta is deter­mined to mine for baux­ite in Niyam­giri despite mas­sive oppo­si­tion of the local peo­ple, and a nation­al and inter­na­tion­al cam­paign against it, which recent­ly led
share­hold­ers includ­ing the Church of Eng­land and Rown­trees, to pull out.
Lon­don –based Anil Agar­w­al is worth 4.1billion pounds and is cur­rent­ly the tenth rich­est per­son in Britain, whose per­son­al wealth has grown even in the reces­sion by 583%. Agarwal’s empire – Vedan­ta Resources – now spans four con­ti­nents, with offices in Lon­don and oper­a­tions in Zam­bia, Aus­tralia and India. Vedan­ta and Agar­w­al have been accused of ‘cor­rup­tion, fraud, forgery, manip­u­la­tion of share prices, and insid­er trad­ing.’ as Norway’s Coun­cil of Ethics describes.

Who else is ben­e­fit­ting?
Anil Agar­w­al and Vedan­ta have close links with the Sangh Pari­var, the umbrel­la group of Hin­du right-wing orga­ni­za­tions in India. These orga­ni­za­tions have been held respon­si­ble for geno­ci­dal attacks on India’s
minor­i­ty Mus­lim and Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ties, in Oris­sa, Gujarat and else­where.
Vedan­ta has con­nec­tions with many pow­er­ful fig­ures. Its Board mem­bers have includ­ed P.Chidambaram, India’s Home Min­is­ter, Naresh Chan­dra, for­mer Indi­an Ambas­sador to the US, and David Gore-Booth, for­mer British
Ambas­sador to Sau­di Ara­bia and High Com­mis­sion­er of India.

What is the role of the British Gov­ern­ment?
Vedan­ta was launched on the Lon­don Stock Exchange in Decem­ber 2003 with the help of Britain’s Depart­ment of Trade and Indus­try and the Depart­ment for Inter­na­tion­al Devel­op­ment (DfID). More recent­ly, mas­sive pub­lic­i­ty of Vedanta’s crimes forced the British gov­ern­ment to crit­i­cize it for not hav­ing a human rights pol­i­cy.

BUT the British Gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued to active­ly sup­port Vedan­ta. For exam­ple, DfID has set up and con­tin­ues to fund Busi­ness Part­ners for Devel­op­ment (Now renamed as Build­ing Part­ner­ships for Devel­op­ment) whose aim is to counter the effect of the pow­er­ful people’s move­ment against the com­pa­ny. And in 2005 DfID com­mis­sioned “Oris­sa Dri­vers for Change” a research project which urges min­er­al inten­sive indus­tri­al­iza­tion of the region and sup­ports Vedan­ta and oth­er com­pa­nies.

Organ­ised by FOIL VEDANTA

Sup­port­ed by: South Asia Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group, South Asian Alliance, All India Cen­tral Coun­cil of Trade Unions (AICCTU), Ravi Dass Human Rights Organ­i­sa­tion (UK), Hilling­don Wom­ens Cen­tre, Cam­paign Against
Crim­i­nal­is­ing Com­mu­ni­ties (CAMPACC), Peo­ples Glob­al Action, Com­mu­ni­ties Empow­er­ing Net­work, Glob­alise Resis­tance

Details: sasg@southasiasolidarity.org

‘Die-in’ against nuclear transport at Olympic Park

What if… “Dozens died and thou­sands more were exposed to dan­ger­ous lev­els of can­cer-caus­ing radi­a­tion after a train car­ry­ing high lev­el nuclear waste explod­ed as it passed through the Olympic Park in Strat­ford, east Lon­don this after­noon.

Nuke train die-inWhat if… “Dozens died and thou­sands more were exposed to dan­ger­ous lev­els of can­cer-caus­ing radi­a­tion after a train car­ry­ing high lev­el nuclear waste explod­ed as it passed through the Olympic Park in Strat­ford, east Lon­don this after­noon. The pub­lic is being warned to steer well clear of the area as the radioac­tive plume makes its way across the cap­i­tal and the south­ern half of Eng­land.”

The risk of just such a sce­nario, whether caused by an acci­dent or ter­ror­ist attack, prompt­ed the Nuclear Trains Action Group to organ­ise a die-in in front of Strat­ford sta­tion in east Lon­don as part of a demon­stra­tion on Sat­ur­day, 10 July 2010 against nuclear waste being trans­port­ed by rail through the Olympic Park and dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas of north Lon­don.

The protest start­ed with a ral­ly in Vic­to­ria Park, led by Kate Hud­son, chair of the Cam­paign for Nuclear Dis­ar­ma­ment (CND). Oth­er speak­ers includ­ed Lon­don Green Par­ty MEP Jean Lam­bert, and Dan Vies­nik and Mell Har­ri­son from the Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work (SNPN).

Around 70 pro­test­ers then marched for around three miles around the perime­ter of the site for the Lon­don 2012 Olympics, along a canal, accom­pa­nied by a sig­nif­i­cant police pres­ence. Car­ry­ing plac­ards, and ban­ners from the Nuclear Trains Action Group, local CND groups, the Green Par­ty, SNPN and Action East End.

Upon arrival at Strat­ford sta­tion, the marchers pro­ceed­ed to “die” in front of the entrance (although it was dif­fi­cult to tell whether they had not in fact faint­ed from the exhaus­tion of walk­ing in the swel­ter­ing heat). Some of those who remained on their feet, seem­ing­ly imper­vi­ous to the per­va­sive radi­a­tion, hand­ed out hun­dreds of leaflets to curi­ous passers by, whilst oth­ers chalked around the out­lines of the corpses.

After around half an hour of this car­nage, the corpses trans­formed into zom­bies, ris­ing to their feet and prompt­ly mov­ing off to quench their ter­ri­ble thirst.

More images from the demo:

http://tinyurl.com/nuketrainsdemopics10July2010

Relat­ed arti­cles:

Olympics nuclear waste trains are poten­tial ter­ror­ist tar­get, warns Lon­don MEP
http://www.hackneycitizen.co.uk/2010/07/16/olympics-nuclear-waste-trains-are-potential-terrorist-target-warns-london-mep/

Tran­script of Jean Lam­bert MEP’s speech
http://www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk/news_detail.php?id=576

Tonnes of radioac­tive waste casts doubt over Lon­don’s Olympic sta­di­um lega­cy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/20/radioactive-waste-olympic-site

‘Radioac­tive waste threat’ to future of Strat­ford site
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23847172-radioactive-waste-threat-to-future-of-stratford-site.do

‘Ter­ror risk’ over nuclear car­go
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5202024.stm

Links:

Nuclear Trains Action Group
http://www.nonucleartrains.org.uk

Stop Nuclear Pow­er Net­work
http://stopnuclearpoweruk.net

Action East End
http://actioneastend.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/on-the-wrong-track

Oil Spill at the British Museum

13.07.2010
This morn­ing three mem­bers of the art activist group Cul­ture Beyond Oil poured non-tox­ic black oil around the British Museum’s world famous East­er Island sculp­ture, in protest at BP’s spon­sor­ship of the muse­um. Emi­ly James, Direc­tor of Just Do It, hap­pened to be there and cap­tured the action.

BP British Museum 1BP British Museum 2BP British Museum 313.07.2010
This morn­ing three mem­bers of the art activist group Cul­ture Beyond Oil poured non-tox­ic black oil around the British Museum’s world famous East­er Island sculp­ture, in protest at BP’s spon­sor­ship of the muse­um. Emi­ly James, Direc­tor of Just Do It, hap­pened to be there and cap­tured the action.

Fol­low­ing sim­i­lar actions at the Tate Mod­ern, Tate Britain and Nation­al Por­trait Gallery in recent weeks, the activists tar­get­ed the British Muse­um because of the annu­al spon­sor­ship it receives from the infa­mous oil com­pa­ny.

A recent report called ‘Licence to Spill’ from the cam­paign group Plat­form has point­ed to the ben­e­fits of cul­tur­al spon­sor­ship for oil com­pa­nies, stat­ing that “the finan­cial sup­port that the com­pa­nies [like Shell and BP] pro­vide [to cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions] strength­ens their posi­tion as a part of Britain’s cul­tur­al and social elite, and cre­ates a per­cep­tion of mak­ing a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to our soci­ety”, thus giv­ing them a “social license to oper­ate”.

The stat­ue around which the oil was poured* is known as Hoa Hakananai’a, a 2000 year old rel­ic tak­en from East­er Island by Euro­pean explor­ers. The sto­ry of the East­er Island stat­ues is often cit­ed as an exam­ple of the speed with which once strong civ­i­liza­tions have sud­den­ly col­lapsed.

Ben Coop­er, who is also part of Lib­er­ate Tate, said: “Oil spon­sor­ship of pub­lic insti­tu­tions is a prob­lem that stretch­es way beyond BP and the cat­a­stro­phe in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. The oil indus­try has a long his­to­ry of envi­ron­men­tal and human rights abus­es, and is cur­rent­ly pulling us clos­er and clos­er to a poten­tial cat­a­stro­phe on a glob­al scale.

“Just like the forests on East­er Island, oil rep­re­sents a resource being over-exploit­ed despite mas­sive­ly increas­ing risks. With our relent­less search for oil we are risk­ing the col­lapse of the ecosys­tems on which we depend — just as the inhab­i­tants of East­er Island did 2000 years ago”.

VIDEO AND PICTURES HERE: http://just-do-it.org.uk/oil-spill-at-the-british-museum

just.do.it.film@googlemail.com
http://just-do-it.org.uk/

Licence to Spill — Liberate Tate create an oil spill at the Tate — inside & out

On the evening of the 28th of June at approx 7:15pm, Lib­er­ate Tate In protest over BP’s spon­sor­ship of the arts per­formed a “Solemn” oil like spill at the Tate’s Sum­mer par­ty.

Liberate Tate 1Liberate Tate 2On the evening of the 28th of June at approx 7:15pm, Lib­er­ate Tate In protest over BP’s spon­sor­ship of the arts per­formed a “Solemn” oil like spill at the Tate’s Sum­mer par­ty.

Dressed in black and veiled the per­form­ers car­ry­ing black buck­ets with BP logos spewed molasses over the entrance way as onlook­ers watched in amaze­ment as the Port­land stone floor was con­sumed by the black oil like mess.

Feath­ers were scat­tered and filled the air and in the same man­ner of approach the artists grace­ful­ly paced their escape.

Licence to Spill

“Apart from cat­a­stroph­ic spills like the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon, there are a whole host of adverse impacts that are asso­ci­at­ed with the pro­duc­tion of oil. On the local lev­el, it often involves extreme forms of pol­lu­tion for local com­mu­ni­ties, while region­al­ly oil is fre­quent­ly asso­ci­at­ed with greater mil­i­ta­riza­tion and conflict. Glob­al­ly, car­bon emis­sions, oil com­pa­nies, and our col­lec­tive depen­dence on the prod­uct they push, are tak­ing us ever clos­er to the edge of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe. ”

To down­load Licence to Spill, a new release from Plat­form, vis­it http://www.carbonweb.org/showitem.asp?article=381&parent=39

Info : http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/

Watch the video of the action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-_2KLt1W0

—–

Anoth­er report, includ­ing what hap­pened inside the ex-gar­den sum­mer par­ty:
Flowery-dressed oil spills
BP-smocked
Sip­ping Pimms and gob­bling canapés many of the guests expressed con­fu­sion at whether these strik­ing actions were ‘art’ or not. Despite inac­cu­rate report­ing in var­i­ous media out­lets, Lib­er­ate Tate would like to claim full respon­si­bil­i­ty for these acts of cre­ative dis­obe­di­ence as art – art that refus­es to pre­tend to do pol­i­tics but is pol­i­tics, art that makes trans­form­ing the world a beau­ti­ful adven­ture.

The Tate Sum­mer Par­ty had been planned to be in the muse­um gar­dens and involve speech­es from BP exec­u­tives. How­ev­er, due to the rumours of dis­rup­tion, Tate was forced to hold the entire event inside the muse­um and no speech­es were made.

As the evening sun baked down on the stone court­yard of Tate Britain and mem­bers of the cul­tur­al and cor­po­rate elite made their way into the par­ty, 13 fig­ures dressed in black, their faces veiled, appeared from around the cor­ner. In a mourn­ful pro­ces­sion the art-activists approached the entrance car­ry­ing large bar­rels brand­ed with the BP logo. Dozens of pho­tog­ra­phers and TV cam­eras swarmed and a moment of tense silence enveloped the area. Some­thing was going to hap­pen.

Then in a per­fect­ly chore­o­graphed moment, the front pha­lanx poured hun­dreds of litres of the black liq­uid all over the entrance, whilst oth­ers threw feath­ers into the air which gen­tly drift­ed down into the huge sticky black pools. The som­bre fig­ures walked calm­ly away, dis­ap­pear­ing into the city, as the secu­ri­ty redi­rect­ed the guests to anoth­er entrance as the cleanup oper­a­tion began.

Mean­while, despite the heavy secu­ri­ty at the door, two Lib­er­ate Tate art-activists man­aged to infil­trate the par­ty wear­ing large flo­ral bouf­fant dress­es under­neath which were con­cealed large sacks filled with the oily molasses. Call­ing them­selves Toni Hay­ward and Bob­bi Dud­ley, they began their per­for­mance in the crowd­ed cen­tral gallery. At first drips began to fall from their hand­bags. “Oh, I seem to have a leak” whis­pered one of them to the lined up wait­ers dressed in bril­liant white, who kind­ly pro­vid­ed nap­kins to stem the spill.

Soon the sacks under their dress­es burst releas­ing tens of litres of ‘oil’ across the shiny par­quet floor. As a crowd formed around them, the two donned BP brand­ed pon­chos and scram­bled on all fours try­ing to clean up the mess using their high heel shoes to pour the slick back into their hand­bags, but to no avail. “Com­pared to the size of the gallery this is a tiny spill, a drop in the ocean,” they apol­o­gised to the view­ers, “we’ll def­i­nite­ly have it cleaned up by, say, August”.

The polite crowd that had formed con­tin­ued to watch appre­cia­tive­ly for anoth­er 20 min­utes, amidst a sea of cam­era-phones. Many began debat­ing among them­selves whether this was art or not (“I think it is. I like it”), whether Tate had organ­ised it, and what their per­son­al aes­thet­ic reac­tions to it were (“If I had seen this out­side, I think I would have felt as I do see­ing it… inside”). More than one invit­ed artist open­ly described this to their fel­low drinkers as the most sophis­ti­cat­ed work in the room.

LIBERATE TATE

Lib­er­ate Tate, is a net­work ded­i­cat­ed to tak­ing cre­ative dis­obe­di­ence against the Tate until it drops its oil com­pa­ny fund­ing. The 28 June art activist per­for­mances fol­low on from last month’s dis­rup­tion of Tate Modern’s 10th Birth­day cel­e­bra­tions by hang­ing dead fish and birds from dozens of giant black heli­um bal­loons.

The net­work was found­ed dur­ing a work­shop in Jan­u­ary 2010 on art and activism, com­mis­sioned by Tate. When Tate cura­tors tried to cen­sor the work­shop from mak­ing inter­ven­tions against Tate spon­sors, the incensed par­tic­i­pants decid­ed to con­tin­ue their work togeth­er beyond the work­shop and set up Lib­er­ate Tate.

www.twitter.com/liberatetate

Images: www.immoklink.com/BP-Tate/index.html

www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/license-to-spill/

See also LIBERATE TATE COMMUNIQUE 1 http://bit.ly/9RFfxJ (MAY 2010)

Full Video Report http://www.youandifilms.com/2010/06/licence-to-spill-full-report/

Greenwash spill at the BP-sponsored National Portrait Gallery

On Tues­day night (22 June 2010) at 6.07 PM the Lon­don brigade of the Green­wash Guer­ril­las got a call from a pan­icked pedes­tri­an out­side the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery.

BP Portrait Gallery greenwash guerrillasOn Tues­day night (22 June 2010) at 6.07 PM the Lon­don brigade of the Green­wash Guer­ril­las got a call from a pan­icked pedes­tri­an out­side the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery. It seemed that the prize­giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny for BP Por­trait Award was about to start, and tox­ic green­wash had begun to gush uncon­trol­lably from the gallery’s front doors.

Arriv­ing on the scene, armed with the lat­est in green­wash detect­ing equip­ment and wear­ing pro­tec­tive bio­haz­ard suits, the Guer­ril­las
imme­di­ate­ly iden­ti­fied sev­er­al sources of the leak. Green­wash lev­els appeared to be the strongest any­where a bright green BP logo was to be
found: from the mas­sive ban­ners fronting either side of the grand entrance, to the micro­scop­ic embroi­dery on a secu­ri­ty guard’s lapel. The
Guer­ril­las were giv­en the run-around by gallery secu­ri­ty and the Met­ro­pol­i­tan police, who escort­ed Britain’s cul­tur­al estab­lish­ment into
the awards cer­e­mo­ny first at the front, then around the side, then back at the front entrance again. By 7 PM, every­one had con­vened at the front entrance, and the Guer­ril­las set to work to con­tain the leak, quar­an­tine the area, and warn atten­dees against enter­ing the build­ing.

Many clean-up efforts were tried, from throw­ing golf balls and old tires at the leak to try­ing to plug it with mud, but for some rea­son the spill just kept gush­ing. Mean­while, some Guer­ril­las attempt­ed to arm the atten­dees – most of whom, inex­plic­a­bly, were deter­mined to enter the
con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed build­ing – with infor­ma­tion about BP, oil indus­try spon­sor­ship of the arts, and the best way to pro­tect them­selves from
green­wash.

Despite the best efforts of the Guer­ril­las, green­wash unfor­tu­nate­ly con­tin­ues to spew forth from the BP-spon­sored Nation­al Por­trait Gallery
and count­less oth­er oil-spon­sored arts insti­tu­tions across Lon­don. But resis­tance is grow­ing, and this sum­mer might just be remem­bered as the
tip­ping point in the cam­paign to free art from oil.

More info:
http://www.risingtide.org.uk
http://www.artnotoil.org.uk

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM?
BP’s spon­sor­ship of the Nation­al Por­trait Award is green­wash – a way of clean­ing up BP’s tat­tered pub­lic image and cov­er­ing up its shock­ing
envi­ron­men­tal and human rights record.

Green­wash is as tox­ic as oil. With it, BP buys our approval, and hopes we’ll for­get about the gush­er in the Gulf, the 300 000 lives already lost each year due to cli­mate change, and the fact that the com­pa­ny is poised to enter the Cana­di­an tar sands – the most destruc­tive project on earth.

Every pound the Nation­al Por­trait Gallery accepts from BP is taint­ed. In response to chang­ing pub­lic opin­ion, cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions even­tu­al­ly
decid­ed that it was no longer in their best inter­ests to take mon­ey from the tobac­co indus­try. It’s high time we kicked Big Oil out of our
gal­leries too.

Check out a bril­liant video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-adx5mS2klA

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

Protest against BP — This Saturday 26/06 1pm at Tottenham Hale BP Garage, London

Against cli­mate crimes in the name of prof­it and in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers exploit­ed by giant cor­po­ra­tion BP, come and protest this Sat­ur­day 26 June, 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP garage.

Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group have organ­ised a protest against giant cor­po­ra­tion BP this Sat­ur­day 26 June, from 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP Garage (map here: http://tiny.cc/28p38)

Against cli­mate crimes in the name of prof­it and in sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers exploit­ed by giant cor­po­ra­tion BP, come and protest this Sat­ur­day 26 June, 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP garage.

Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group have organ­ised a protest against giant cor­po­ra­tion BP this Sat­ur­day 26 June, from 1pm at Tot­ten­ham Hale BP Garage (map here: http://tiny.cc/28p38)

We aim to draw atten­tion to the many cli­mate crimes BP is respon­si­ble for, all in the name of prof­it, show sol­i­dar­i­ty with work­ers exploit­ed by the cor­po­ra­tion and encour­age peo­ple to build col­lec­tive and local alter­na­tives to the cli­mate cri­sis.

See the text of the leaflet below.
An on-line ver­sion is avail­able here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/4403399/BP_Protest.pdf

Please cir­cu­late wide­ly, come along, bring ban­ners, plac­ards, etc…

—–

BP – Guilty of Cli­mate Crimes!

Called by Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group as part of Haringey Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Month

The dan­ger­ous greed of BP has seen them trash­ing the plan­et in pur­suit of prof­it – across the world, BP is guilty of cli­mate crimes that should all be front page news.

The Gulf of Mex­i­co: BP’s faulty drilling results in one of the worst oil spills in his­to­ry, killing work­ers, endan­ger­ing wildlife across the region and leav­ing a mas­sive clean-up oper­a­tion.

Cana­da: Extrac­tion of mil­lions of bar­rels of tar sands oil, pro­duc­ing 3–5 times the green­house gas­es of con­ven­tion­al oil, caus­ing mass defor­esta­tion and pol­lut­ing indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties.

Colom­bia In Jan­u­ary, indus­tri­al action organ­ised by trade union­ists in the region of Casanare was severe­ly repressed by BP, with the help of a spe­cial police force known for anti-work­er vio­lence.

Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline: This crude oil pipeline, run­ning through Turkey, Geor­gia and Azer­bai­jan, was financed by BP, vis­i­bly scar­ring the land­scape and wreck­ing areas of great nat­ur­al beau­ty, includ­ing nat­ur­al spring water reserves.

Not to men­tion com­mu­ni­ties across the world! While adding to the wealth of a few, BP is destroy­ing the com­mon wealthe of the many. We need to act local­ly to resist com­pa­nies like BP dic­tat­ing the way our economies are struc­tured – for prof­it and against the envi­ron­ment.

See over for how we can take action col­lec­tive­ly in our com­mu­ni­ties to fight cli­mate change and cre­ate a future sus­tain­able soci­ety.

——————————

Build­ing Alter­na­tives to the Cli­mate Cri­sis

Oppres­sive and destruc­tive cor­po­ra­tions like BP do not serve the gen­er­al inter­est. We need to end our depen­den­cy on oil and fos­sil fuels, which grad­u­al­ly destroys the plan­et and our lives, and aim for the devel­op­ment of renew­able ener­gy man­aged by the com­mu­ni­ty.

We can organ­ise local­ly and take back con­trol of our lives and envi­ron­ment by build­ing sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties for the ben­e­fit of all. Peo­ple in Haringey are get­ting togeth­er to form col­lec­tive, grass­roots alter­na­tives and solu­tions to the cli­mate cri­sis.

See below for how to get involved!

Haringey Sol­i­dar­i­ty Group

We are a group of local peo­ple who want to get rid of the cur­rent sys­tem which places prof­it and pow­er before people’s real needs. To do this, we believe we all need to get organ­ised, fight back and take over the deci­sion-mak­ing in com­mu­ni­ties and work­places. We sup­port and par­tic­i­pate in local cam­paigns, spread ideas and help cre­ate effec­tive oppo­si­tion to the pow­ers that be.

www.haringey.org.uk, email info@haringey.org.uk, write to PO Box 2474, Lon­don N8 or call 0845 223 5270

Sus­tain­able Haringey

An inde­pen­dent infor­mal net­work for every­body want­i­ng to make Haringey more sus­tain­able. It brings togeth­er groups and indi­vid­u­als already mak­ing pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions and wel­comes those who would like to find out how to do more. In June there are events hap­pen­ing across the bor­ough as part of Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Month.

See www.sustainableharingey.org.uk for fur­ther details