Category: London

Lon­don

Critical Mass reports (October) — Sheffield, London

A pleas­ant ride across Sheffield with a num­ber of cycling enthu­si­asts on Fri­day 26 Octo­ber. Also accom­pa­nied by 2 police bike offi­cers and a patrol car.

Come along on the next one.. last Fri­day of the month, 5:30pm at the Uni­ver­si­ty Con­course

A pleas­ant ride across Sheffield with a num­ber of cycling enthu­si­asts on Fri­day 26 Octo­ber. Also accom­pa­nied by 2 police bike offi­cers and a patrol car.

Come along on the next one.. last Fri­day of the month, 5:30pm at the Uni­ver­si­ty Con­course

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FIT on bikes at Lon­don Crit­i­cal Mass

At least one offi­cer from the FIT (For­wards Intel­li­gence Team) were spot­ted on the crit­i­cal mass with­out their usu­al blue-shoul­der uni­forms on and on bikes!

Sergeant CW 36 seen here at Cli­mate Camp was seen on a bike with the reg­u­lar bike cops on the Crit­i­cal Mass. Have they decid­ed to give up their cli­mate killing cars and use ped­dle pow­er to con­tin­ue their agen­da of intim­i­da­tion? Have recent FIT­watch actions made them think twice about being so open? Is this just one cop decid­ing to be a bike cop for a change?

Either way peo­ple should be aware that just because they can’t see FIT it does­n’t mean that the cops they see about them aren’t also gath­er­ing intel­li­gence.

—–

A fair­ly smooth Hal­loween style ride with few if any police has­sles.

There were a good num­bers com­pared to the pre­vi­ous month. Sev­er­al sound sys­tems. No block­ing junc­tions this time. Some Lon­don land­marks are high­light­ed in the video.

Video: http://www.archive.org/details/cm26-10–07

http://criticalmasslondon.org.uk

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/

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!).

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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
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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.

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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.

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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
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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
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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

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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.”

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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.

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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

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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.

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

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

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

Leaflets were stuck on lamp-posts in Altrin­cham.

Worldwide Day of Action Against McDonalds 16th October

14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

Dying for a burger (London McD demo)
14th Octo­ber 2007 ear­ly demo report: near­ly 30 peo­ple took part in the Lon­don leg of the world­wide anti-McDon­ald’s day. It start­ed at noon at the Leices­ter Square McDon­ald’s. There was a Ronald McDon­ald attack­ing a per­son dressed as a cow. The cow went down well with the kids and even some adults! Lots of leaflets were hand­ed out and the pub­lic seemed to be recep­tive on the whole. Also, the police were notice­able by their absence. The demo moved onto the Shaftes­bury Avenue McDon­ald’s and fin­ished at about 3.30.

—

Adopt-YOUR-Store — leaflets from Veg­gies or Do It Your­self. Details here

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.

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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.

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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

Bradford Total Garage Blockade/London HQ in solidarity with Burmese protesters/Oxford demo/callout: London 5th & Cardiff 6th Oct

27th Octo­ber 2007
Around 30 activists block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Brad­ford to protest against the com­pa­ny’s heavy involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma which is respon­si­ble for the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers in just the last few days.

Bradford Total Burma 1
Bradford Total Burma 2
Bradford Total Burma 3
27th Octo­ber 2007
Around 30 activists block­ad­ed a Total petrol sta­tion in Brad­ford to protest against the com­pa­ny’s heavy involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma which is respon­si­ble for the deaths of sev­er­al pro­test­ers in just the last few days.

Total is in a joint ven­ture with the Burmese dic­ta­tor­ship in the Yadana gas project, which earns the regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. Aung Sun Suu Kyi, the demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elect­ed leader of the Burmese gov­ern­ment under house arrest, says: “Total has become the main sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime”.

A mix of stu­dents and locals stood, sat or drummed across both entrances to the fore­court for an hour and a half. Hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing “Total­i­tar­i­an Oil-Fuelling Oppres­sion in Bur­ma” they leaflet­ed and spoke to passers-by and motorists.

Staff at the petrol sta­tion threat­ened pro­test­ers with sticks, car and lor­ry dri­vers attempt­ed to run over pro­test­ers, but despite this things remained peace­ful. The sta­tion was closed almost com­plete­ly for over an hour whilst pro­test­ers played drums, gave out fliers, held plac­ards and ban­ners, and sat in the entrances to the fore­court.

A few dri­vers were not so sup­port­ive, includ­ing one truck dri­ver who car­ried on dri­ving into the pro­test­ers in the entrance way even as they banged fran­ti­cal­ly on the wind­screen. Even a local cop (who had pre­vi­ous­ly tried to shove pro­test­ers off the road) decid­ed to tell the dri­ver to back off. Most dri­vers how­ev­er were sup­port­ive and chose not to try and cross the block­ade. Although many peo­ple were aware of the sit­u­a­tion on Bur­ma they had not heard of Total’s involve­ment.

Video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSrPVltBMkA

http://www.bradfordcampaigners.co.nr

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Also sol­i­dar­i­ty demo at embassies in Lon­don

———————————————
Total HQ Burma protest 1Total HQ Burma protest 2Total Oil’s Lon­don offices tar­get­ed this morn­ing, 2nd Octo­ber

Total Oil’s Lon­don offices were tar­get­ed this morn­ing in order to high­light the com­pa­ny’s involve­ment with Bur­ma’s regime. Total’s invest­ments have been earn­ing the regime mil­lions of dol­lars and have been marked by human rights abus­es such as the use of forced labour. Activists staged a die-in and hand­ed out leaflets from the Bur­ma Cam­paign UK to inform office work­ers going into the build­ing on what Total, Europe’s great­est finan­cial backer of the Burmese jun­ta, is real­ly up to.

As the streets of Burmese cities are patrolled by sol­diers and thou­sands of monks and pro­test­ers are still miss­ing after hav­ing been killed, beat­en up or arrest­ed dur­ing last week’s demon­stra­tions, sup­port for the Burmese people’s strug­gle is vital. With thou­sands tak­ing to the streets on Sun­day, it is also impor­tant to expose those who make the mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship pos­si­ble – cor­po­ra­tions such as Total Oil. Aung San Suu Kyi, the most respect­ed fig­ure of Burma’s democ­ra­cy move­ment, has iden­ti­fied Total as “the biggest sup­port­er of the mil­i­tary regime in Bur­ma”, earn­ing the jun­ta hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars each year. Total’s joint ven­ture with Burma’s rulers in the Yadan gas project in the south of the coun­try pro­vides cru­cial rev­enues to the regime and has had its own hor­rif­ic record of human rights abus­es such as the use of forced labour and wide­spread tor­ture and rape against those who oppose the project.

On top of all this, Total Oil has been suc­cess­ful­ly lob­by­ing the French gov­ern­ment to veto Euro­pean Union sanc­tions against Bur­ma in order to pro­tect its invest­ments, yet anoth­er exam­ple of cor­po­ra­tions show­ing where the real pow­er real­ly lies in world affairs.

Activists decid­ed to take this mat­ter to Total’s Lon­don offices, show­ing up ear­ly this morn­ing to talk to office work­ers as they made their way into work, and to inform oth­ers work­ing in the build­ing what their neigh­bours are real­ly up to. A ban­ner read­ing ‘TOTAL­i­tar­i­anOil Out of Bur­ma Now’ was unfurled, leaflets from the Bur­ma Cam­paign hand­ed out, while three activists staged a die-in in the lob­by of the build­ing. Police forces showed up with­in 20 min­utes, demand­ing to speak to the ‘lead­ers of the demon­stra­tion’, and even­tu­al­ly force­ful­ly remov­ing those inside the build­ing. The pro­test­ers were not deterred, con­tin­u­ing the die-in out­side the doors. It was decid­ed by all to end the demon­stra­tion at 11am, after all leaflets were hand­ed out and traf­fic into the build­ing slowed down.

As the Burmese mil­i­tary con­tin­ues its repres­sion of dis­sent, we must keep up the strug­gle and con­tin­ue to tar­get those who finan­cial­ly back the regime, expos­ing them for what they real­ly are: cap­i­tal­ists who care about noth­ing but prof­it.

Press release:

Hold­ing a ban­ner read­ing ‘TOTALITARIAN OIL: OUT OF BURMA NOW’, they are demand­ing that the com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly halts its oper­a­tions in Bur­ma, includ­ing the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Yadana gas project [1], and announces a full divest­ment from the coun­try until human rights abus­es end and a demo­c­ra­t­ic regime is in place.

Tom Shapiro, one of those at the protest, said:

“As reports fil­ter out that thou­sands of peo­ple may have lost their lives in Bur­ma this week stand­ing up for their demo­c­ra­t­ic rights, we are here to say that TOTAL, which funds the regime, has blood on its hands — and these work­ers have blood on their desks. TOTAL’s finan­cial part­ner­ship with the Burmese jun­ta enables the oppres­sion of 48 mil­lion peo­ple. They claim this is an ‘eth­i­cal’ approach that oth­er investors would not repli­cate — rather, it’s an affront to human­i­ty. We urge every­one who sup­ports the monks in their protest to tar­get TOTAL in every way pos­si­ble until they leave Bur­ma.”

The demon­stra­tion lends strength to the grow­ing calls for con­sumer action against TOTAL over its role in Bur­ma, after calls by Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, Angli­can church groups and French trade unions this week for the com­pa­ny to be tar­get­ed [2]. It is also indi­cates the increas­ing­ly grass­roots nature of the sol­i­dar­i­ty protests that have spread across the world, with ordi­nary peo­ple tar­get­ing the com­pa­nies and embassies with most lever­age dur­ing the cur­rent cri­sis, rather than rely­ing on more con­ven­tion­al chan­nels.

Michelle Doyle, anoth­er of those at the protest, said:

“The For­eign Sec­re­tary, David Mil­liband, has been on tele­vi­sion promis­ing tough EU sanc­tions, but while bureau­crats talk, peo­ple are being killed in the streets. We could­n’t bear just to watch it hap­pen­ing on TV and trust the gov­ern­ment to make a dif­fer­ence. We are here to use peo­ple pow­er to tar­get the cor­po­ra­tions which are keep­ing the Burmese jun­ta in busi­ness — British tim­ber com­pa­nies, tourism providers, and above all TOTAL, the fourth biggest oil com­pa­ny in the world. It is these com­pa­nies that are pay­ing the wages of the sol­diers who are shoot­ing monks. We must make sure that not one more dol­lar of our mon­ey goes towards keep­ing the regime in pow­er.”

The demon­stra­tors describe them­selves as sup­port­ers of but not act­ing for Bur­ma Cam­paign UK. They met on Sun­day’s demon­stra­tion in cen­tral Lon­don and via social net­work­ing site Face­book, and intend to take part in the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Action on Sat­ur­day [3].

NOTES FOR EDITORS:

1. TOTAL Oil has had a joint busi­ness ven­ture with the Burmese gov­ern­ment since 1992. Its major project is the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma, which earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year. See http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

2. Four Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the Dutch Labour Par­ty, part of the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, last week called for a boy­cott of Total: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Myanmar.php.

The French CGT union called for Total to halt all gas extrac­tion and freeze all trans­fers: http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3010197.ece

Mean­while, there have been demon­stra­tions and calls to boy­cott in Brad­ford, Bris­tol, and Not­ting­ham in the UK in the last week:
Brad­ford: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382211.html
Angli­cans call for boy­cott:
http://www.energypublisher.com/article.asp?id=11254
Not­ting­ham: http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/09/382268.html
Bris­tol: http://www.bristol.indymedia.org/newswire.php?story_id=26882

3. This Sat­ur­day, 6 Octo­ber, will be A Day of Inter­na­tion­al Action for a Free Bur­ma — Free Aung San Suu Kyi & Sup­port the Monks in Bur­ma. Over 1,000 peo­ple have already con­firmed via Face­book that they will be attend­ing. See: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=4973307490

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

Activists staged a protest at Total petrol sta­tion on Oxford Road in Oxford on Sat­ur­day 29th. They tried to block the access to the sta­tion but were low on num­bers and unfor­tu­nate­ly the imme­di­ate police pres­ence meant that they were moved to one side. Still, the large ban­ner sent out a clear mes­sage about Total Oil’s sup­port of the Burmese jun­ta to lots of motorists on the busy Sat­ur­day after­noon. Many indi­cat­ed to turn in before chang­ing their minds. Those who chose to refill their tanks were hand­ed leaflets and giv­en a lec­ture on the sit­u­a­tion in Bur­ma and Total’s deci­sion to exploit it.

I’ve also noticed some anti-Total graf­fi­ti about.

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Protest Total Oil this Fri­day in Lon­don

CALL TO ACTION: ‘Die-in’ and demo at Lon­don TOTAL Oil HQ over Bur­ma links
FRIDAY 5 OCTOBER
8:30 — 10:30 am
33 Cavendish Square, Lon­don, WC1

Show your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the pro­tes­tors in Bur­ma — join the action!

A mass action has been called to take place at the head­quar­ters of TOTAL OIL in Lon­don on Fri­day Octo­ber 5th from 8:30 — 10:30 am. A demon­stra­tion and a mass die-in will take place out­side of the cen­tral Lon­don office to express our out­rage at Total’s involve­ment with the mil­i­tary jun­ta in Bur­ma.

All are wel­come to attend — bring plac­ards, instru­ments, noise and props if you can. A sym­bol­ic ‘die-in’ will be hap­pen­ing. A sim­i­lar action hap­pened on Tues­day, Octo­ber 2nd at the same loca­tion with 20 activists (see above).

Across France and in oth­er parts of the UK pres­sure has been mount­ing against Total in a num­ber of sol­i­dar­i­ty actions.
It is impor­tant to con­tin­ue pres­sure on this com­pa­ny to demand Total’s with­draw­al from Bur­ma.

TOTAL Oil’s busi­ness part­ner­ship with the Burmese gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing vital fund­ing that enables the bru­tal mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship in to oppress 48 mil­lion peo­ple.

An upris­ing against the jun­ta in Bur­ma, led by monks, has been met with vio­lent repres­sion. Secu­ri­ty forces and armed mil­i­tary troops have launched a vio­lent crack­down on demon­stra­tors, most of which is not being report­ed due to a state-imposed media freeze. Some esti­mates sug­gest that thou­sands could be dead and many more impris­oned.

We demand that the com­pa­ny imme­di­ate­ly halts its oper­a­tions in Bur­ma and announces a full divest­ment from the coun­try until human rights abus­es end and a demo­c­ra­t­ic regime is in place.

This action is called by peo­ple who met at a Bur­ma sol­i­dar­i­ty march and decid­ed that we need­ed to do more by tar­get­ting the com­pa­nies that have blood on their hands.

Near­est tube: Oxford Cir­cus
Map:
http://tinyurl.com/2oardl
For more infor­ma­tion see:
http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/total.html

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on actions against Total Oil:

TOTAL Oil has had a joint busi­ness ven­ture with the Burmese gov­ern­ment since 1992. Its major project is the Yadana gas project in south­ern Bur­ma, which earns the mil­i­tary regime hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars every year.

Four Dutch polit­i­cal par­ties, includ­ing the Dutch Labour Par­ty, part of the gov­ern­ing coali­tion, last week called for a boy­cott of Total:
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/09/28/europe/EU-GEN-Netherlands-Myanmar.php.

The French CGT union called for Total to halt all gas extrac­tion and
freeze all trans­fers:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3010197.ece

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Cardiff Burma/Total Protest Sat­ur­day 6th Octo­ber

DO SOMETHING ABOUT BURMA IN CARDIFF — SPREAD THE WORD!

French oil com­pa­ny Total is one of the biggest for­eign investors in Bur­ma. It has been prop­ping up the vio­lent and oppres­sive regime there for years. It has even used army-imposed forced labour to con­struct a gas pipeline accross the coun­try.

Peo­ple in Britain have been protest­ing out­side Total garages and offices all week with demos in places like Brad­ford, Oxford, and Lon­don — now it’s our turn!

Protest at the Total Garage, Cathe­dral Road, Cardiff, 11am Sat­ur­day 6th Octo­ber.
Assem­ble: 10.30am out­side Glam­or­gan Staff Club, West­gate Street to march on the garage.

As the medi­a’s atten­tion span wanes, and a spec­ta­cle-weary pub­lic grows tired of see­ing South East Asians get­ting bat­tered and shot on prime­time TV, a full-scale state and mil­i­tary back­lash against Bur­ma’s peo­ple is under­way. Demon­stra­tors are being rou­tine­ly round­ed up, put in prison, and quite prob­a­bly tor­tured, and more monks are being mur­dered and beat­en every day.

Let’s tar­get the com­pa­nies that prop up Bur­ma’s mur­der­ous mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship and let them know that they can’t get away with sup­port­ing despots with impuni­ty.

Bring ban­ners, plac­ards, and what­ev­er else you expect to find — wear saf­fron or dark red if you want to.

This demon­stra­tion is called by the South Wales Anar­chists — all are wel­come, and please spread the word to your net­works!

Get good and reli­able news about Bur­ma at:
http://www.burmanet.org/news/