Cor­po­rate Watch is a small inde­pen­dent research co-op, pub­lish­ing info on cor­po­ra­tions to help resis­tance to cor­po­rate pow­er. We pub­lish newslet­ters every two month and email­news updates every two weeks. To sub­scribe to either vis­it www.corporatewatch.org.uk

CORPORATE WATCH LATEST NEWSLETTER NOW OUT

URGENT — SUPPORT TESCO AGENCY WORKERS

Work­ers in Tesco’s Irish dis­trib­ut­ing cen­tres have been protest­ing against con­di­tions since Thurs­day 28th. Main­ly Pol­ish agency staff, they have been brought over by Tesco, pre­sum­ably in the hope that they will work for low­er pay and not know their rights. Two work­ers who com­plained at the a back-break­ing tar­gets were moved to anoth­er work­place. Now they are call­ing for sol­i­dar­i­ty pick­ets of all Tescos on Thurs­day the 6th of August, at 6pm. free­lance @mailworks.org

MORE NEWS…

CHINA: BACK ON THE SCENE

Dur­ing the last ten years Chi­na has become a full part of the glob­alised cor­po­rate econ­o­my. This is a return to nor­mal­i­ty for the coun­try that dom­i­nat­ed world trade for most of its his­to­ry. On the basis of Chi­na’s mas­sive labour force, most ana­lysts are pre­dict­ing a sim­i­lar role in the near future. Read more:  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1865

CHINA’S CORPORATE BABIES

The news that Nan­jing Auto­mo­tive had suc­ceed­ed in its bid to buy fail­ing car com­pa­ny MG Rover, 22nd July, was greet­ed as yet more evi­dence of Chi­nese eco­nom­ic strength. ‘There is a new kid on the world’s eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal block; every­thing is going to change’ — Will Hut­ton. As for­mer edi­tor of the Observ­er and Chief Exec­u­tive of the Work Foun­da­tion (a busi­ness think tank, for­mer­ly the Indus­tri­al Soci­ety), Hut­ton is a good indi­ca­tor of what the UK elite are think­ing — and it seems that they view Chi­na’s ris­ing econ­o­my with both excite­ment and a fris­son of fear. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1866

CORPORATE WATCH G8 MINI POSTER

See the lat­est A3 Poster from Cor­po­rate Watch. Lie 8 at the G8.
Down­load the image here:  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1868

BOOK REVIEW: THE CORPORATION

Joel Bakan’s sem­i­nal anti-cor­po­rate work, The Cor­po­ra­tion — prob­a­bly the most read book in our office since David Kor­te­n’s When Cor­po­ra­tions Rule the World — has been re-released in a new revised and expand­ed edi­tion (*now with added Chom­sky*). Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1881

CORRUPTION IN IRAQ: AKA ‘THE NORMAL’ WAY TO DO BUSINESS

The cor­po­rate invaders of Iraq have found them­selves mired in cor­rup­tion. Many report that sweet­en­er pay­ments for those who fix them with clients and sub- con­trac­tors have become part of the rou­tine. In typ­i­cal colo­nial fash­ion, the occu­piers blame Iraq’s endem­ic bribery and fraud, not on the way that the Amer­i­can firms like Hal­libur­ton con­duct them­selves. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1867

SEA SHELLS AND PIPE DREAMS

Shell are up to some more land­scape trash­ing, lead­ing a con­sor­tium propos­ing to build an over­land pipeline through the west of Ire­land. Wend­ing its way six­ty five kilo­me­tres off the North West coast, pass­ing through vil­lages and farm­ers’ land, the pipeline will got from the Cor­rib gas field in West­ern Ire­land to a refin­er then end at Gal­way. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1870

WEIR — REAPING THE BENEFITS OF WAR

Sup­port­ed by the British gov­ern­ment, Weir  ‘Scot­land’s 20th largest com­pa­ny’ is play­ing a key role in eco­nom­ic impe­ri­al­ism and feed­ing the west­’s oil addic­tion. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1871

WHO’S PULLING THE EU LOBBY STRINGS?

Cor­po­rate lob­by­ists first began migrat­ing to Brus­sels after the sign­ing of the Sin­gle Euro­pean Act in 1986, sens­ing the rich pick­ings to be had from Europe’s neolib­er­al slide. Near­ly two decades lat­er there are over 15,000 lob­by­ists, 70 per cent rep­re­sent­ing cor­po­rate inter­ests, oper­at­ing in hun­dreds of lob­by­ing con­sul­tan­cies, PR agen­cies and EU affairs offices in an indus­try which gen­er­ates an esti­mat­ed €90m every year. Yet unlike in the Unit­ed States, there are still no bind­ing require­ments for EU lob­by­ists to dis­close who they are lob­by­ing for, what they are lob­by­ing on, or how much they are being paid. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1872

YOUR DEBT DRIVES THE ECONOMY

Ever felt guilty about tak­ing out a loan to buy that car, fridge or presents at Christ­mas? Well don’t — with all the fac­to­ries clos­ing down and even the call cen­tres being sourced over­seas, con­sumer spend­ing is one of the only things dri­ving the UK econ­o­my. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1892

PANDA-ING TO THE SOYA BARONS?

‘In the past the big con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tions used to believe that nature reserves should not include peo­ple, so many were moved out, and indige­nous peo­ple lost their lands. Now it seems as though the WWF is mak­ing anoth­er big mis­take, with seri­ous impli­ca­tions for small farm­ers, rur­al com­mu­ni­ties and food sov­er­eign­ty.’ Hele­na Paul, EcoNexus. Read more:  http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1873

WWF REPLIES TO CORPORATE WATCH’S ARTICLE:

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1890

DIRECT ACTION FLOODS ICELAND

Direct action against the Karah­n­jukar hydro-elec­tric dam project in Ice­land has start­ed in earnest. The dam will dev­as­tate West­ern Europe’s last pris­tine wilder­ness, sole­ly to pow­er an Alcoa alu­mini­um smelter (see Cor­po­rate Watch num­ber 23, April May 2005, page 9). Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1889

DIARY:

http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1864

CORPORATIONS THROUGH HISTORY: HSBC

The ‘world’s local bank’ start­ed off as a British com­pa­ny that took over the lucra­tive trade with Chi­na, after the Opi­um wars of the mid-nine­teenth cen­tu­ry had opened up the econ­o­my to for­eign traders. Read more: http://www.corporatewatch.org/?lid=1874

–
Cor­po­rate Watch
Oxford, UK
www.corporatewatch.org.uk
01865 791 391

Cor­po­rate Watch is an inde­pen­dent research co-op. Please help us out by donat­ing mon­ey or sub­scrib­ing to the newslet­ter

Original press release:

Today a group of activists invad­ed the Alcoa con­struc­tion site at Reyðar­fjörður and climbed cranes on the site. The aim of this action was to stop the work on the site. Alcoa have been tar­get­ed because of their involve­ment in the Kárahnjúkar dam project and the oth­er pro­posed dam projects and alu­mini­um smelters in the Ice­landic high­lands as well as envi­ron­men­tal destruc­tion world­wide. The Ice­landic high court has judged that the build­ing of the Alcoa fac­to­ry in Reyðar­fjörður is ille­gal; we demand that the con­struc­tion of this fac­to­ry is imme­di­ate­ly halt­ed in obser­vance of this court rul­ing.

This action was only one of many that shall be tak­en against Alcoa and their like in Ice­land and across the world. The last clean wilder­ness in West­ern Europe, heavy indus­try must not be allowed to despoil Ice­landic nature. This is a call out to the peo­ple of Ice­land and all in peo­ples of the earth to stand up and fight against the destruc­tion of our envi­ron­ment and cul­ture.

As you will see in the video at the end. some strong Alcoa sup­port­ers were try­ing to bust one of the protest sup­port­ers car and got arrest­ed for it (dum fuck)

The crane shown in the pic­ture is from a com­pa­ny called Weldex, based in Inver­ness, Scot­land:

Tel: 01463 220333
Fax: 01463 241616
E‑mail: info@weldex.co.uk
Web: http://www.weldex.co.uk/

How about call­ing and e‑mailing them and demand­ing that they remove their equip­ment from the site?!

Short video of action -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/320344.mov

On the first of August 2005 a group of activists dropped a ban­ner at the Karah­n­jukar Dam Site in Protest abainst all planned Heavey Indus­try in Ice­land..

A paint­ed crack indi­cat­ed the dan­gers of such col­los­al con­struc­tion on a sub­struc­ture already weak­ened by geot­her­mal pres­suresIn 2003 Landsvirk­in­jun’s chief, fridrik Sophus­son, was asked what would hap­pen if there was an Earth­quake under the Dam. “It would burst. A cat­a­sproph­ic wall of water would anni­hi­late every­one in this .…and all the neigh­bour­ing farms wold be swept away.” Though he said “this won’t hap­pen”, sev­er­al days of con­ti­nous Earth­quakes in 2004 sug­gest oth­er­wise pro­test­ers com­ment­ed. The crack is also a sym­bol of sol­i­dar­i­ty with oth­er Dam Cam­paign­ers glob­al­ly. In 1980 the eco­log­i­cal resis­tance group ‘Earth first’ dropped a 100 metres  ban­ner from Glen Canyon Dam on Col­orado Riv­er (U.S.A.).

Twen­ty years lat­er a strong move­ment is suc­cess­ful­ly chal­leng­ing devel­op­ment and has achived rever­sal of some plans. It is hoped the same will hap­pen here.

In 2001 The nation­al plan­ning agency (NPA) reject­ed plans for Karah­n­jukar because of the“substantial, Irre­versible, neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impact” — yet it is still going ahead.If these projects con­tin­ue, ice­land will and itself destroyed, pol­lut­ed, enslaved to for­eign com­pa­nies and liv­ing with a time­bomb. This action is to high­light the dan­gers of heavy Indus­try, the suc­cess­es of resis­tance in oth­er coun­tries and to call out to the ice­landic peo­ple to join in and defend their coun­try and cul­ture.

The group of activists were detained for 9 hours in Egilsstadir with­out bee­ing for­mal­ly arrest­ed. The cas­es are bee­ing dealt with cur­rent­ly.

Video -http://www.indymedia.org.uk/media/2005/08/320242.mov

e‑mail: saveingiceland@riseupnet.is
Home­page: http://www.savingiceland.org

On Tues­day, the 29th June, 2005, in Dublin, Ire­land, 5 farm­ers from Ross­port, Co. Mayo,Ireland were sent to Moun­tjoy Prison in Dublin, for vio­lat­ing an order imposed by the High Court to stop block­ing Shell access to their lands to con­stuct the onshore sec­tion of the Cor­rib Gas Field pipeline.

The men have appeared in Court sev­er­al times since that date and have been asked whether or not they wish to purge their con­tempt and agree to obey­ing the injunction,a request the have flat­ly refused on each occa­sion.

A Nation­wide cam­paign of Boycotts,Blockades,Pickets,Fundraisers,Large ‑Scale Demos,Occupations and sit-ins, Sol­i­dar­i­ty gath­er­ings as well as a per­ma­nent activist camp and block­ade at the remote site of the pro­posed pipeline has explod­ed in Ire­land since the men’s jail­ing.

The Irish Gov­ern­ment has giv­en Shell carte blanche with Ire­land’s ener­gy resources. Shell and sta­toil plan to build the world’s first-ever onshore gas pro­cess­ing plant in Mayo, and can now have the courts imprison any­one who tries to get in their way.

The High Court has jailed five peo­ple at the request of Shell for attempt­ing to stop the multi­na­tion­al from lay­ing a con­tro­ver­sial, high-pres­sure, “off­shore” gas pipeline through their land in Ross­port, Co Mayo. The judge ordered that the five men — four small landown­ers and a local sup­port­er — be impris­oned “until they purge their con­tempt”, mean­ing they will not be released until they have promised to allow Shell to dig up their land.

The pipeline is pro­posed to run along­side the men’s homes as well as those of many oth­er local res­i­dents at sev­er­al times the nor­mal pres­sure of such oper­a­tions due to the dis­tance the­gas must trav­el form the sea-source to the onshore refinery.Shell have built 3km of the pipeline with­out plan­ning per­mis­sion and have told the Min­is­ter they are report­ing to-Mr Noel Dempsey,of the right wing Fian­na Fail party,that they will be “more careful@ in future”

The jail­ing comes 10 years after the exe­cu­tion of nine Ogo­ni activists for their oppo­si­tion to Shel­l’s oper­a­tion in Nige­ria.
The sup­ply pipeline will be car­ry­ing raw, unprocessed gas at high pres­sure, in close prox­im­i­ty to hous­es and through a pro­tect­ed estu­ary. The pro­cess­ing plant will burn waste oil on site and dis­charge it into the atmos­phere, and will dump tox­ic waste direct­ly into the estu­ary, which is a habi­tat for rare marine life. The Co. Mayo coastal area itself is a Whale and Dol­phin sanc­tu­ary.

This issue rais­es again the incred­i­ble sit­u­a­tion where­by the fab­u­lous gas wealth off the coast of Co. Mayo has been giv­en by the Gov­ern­ment to Shell and Sta­toil for not a pen­ny in roy­al­ties to the Irish peo­ple and with huge tax write offs against the cost of exploit­ing it. The alter­na­tive is that the gas would be treat­ed and puri­fied in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent way to the present pro­pos­als by Shell and Sta­toil. The fact is that the intense pres­sure of raw gas mixed with con­den­sate oil and water, which is pro­posed to be brought through the dis­put­ed pipeline, is unprece­dent­ed by world stan­dards and gives rise to poten­tial unprece­dent­ed risks for the local com­mu­ni­ty. To have res­i­dents exposed to this kind of pres­sure to facil­i­tate a multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tion is intol­er­a­ble.

The Irish peo­ple are ris­ing up against these cor­po­rate thiefs and the cor­rupt gov­ern­ment that gift­ed them our nat­ur­al resources!
Like so many oth­er issues we stug­gle on,this is and has become more so an Inter­na­tion­a­tion­al issue of cor­po­rate repres­sion with state assis­tance!
The cam­paign is esca­lat­ing and shall do so until the 5 men are released and receive jus­tice for them­selves and their fam­i­lies and until Shell have been stripped of the resources they have stolen from the Iirsh peo­ple!

BOYCOTT SHELL AND STATOIL!

More info,statistics,campaigns,how to get involved—
www.shelltosea.com
www.indymedia.ie
www.indymedia.ie/mayo

On Tues­day 19th July 2005.a group of approx­i­mate­ly 20 of us hiked to the main junc­tion approach­ing the site. Four of our group locked on to a pick up truck and a HUGE cater­pil­lar con­struc­tion vehi­cle. We man­aged to block 2 oth­er access roads and hault work on the site for three hours. This was a first in Ice­landic history:the police had to make up a word for lock-on. Thir­teen of us were detained, appar­ent­ly arrest­ed, and lat­er released with­out charge.…with the warn­ing that Impregi­lo were look­ing at this inci­dent with grave eyes and were like­ly to make a civ­il case. Impregi­lo have since changed their mind. For a change, the media did report that the pro­test­ers were friend­ly!

We have gath­ered to protest the con­tin­u­ing dev­as­ta­tion of glob­al ecol­o­gy in the inter­est of cor­po­rate prof­its. The strug­gle to save our plan­et, like the strug­gle against inhu­man­i­ty, is glob­al, so we have to be too. We are here to pre­vent the Karah­n­jukar Dam project from destroy­ing West­ern Europe’s last great wilder­ness.

Dodgy Ital­ian con­struc­tion con­glom­er­ate Impregi­lo, is in charge of build­ing most of the dam . One of Impregilo’s con­sul­tants has already been found guilty in 2003 of offer­ing bribes to a Lesotho hydro-elec­tric firm, and the com­pa­ny itself will face anoth­er hear­ing before the Lesotho courts in April 2005. Impregi­lo were also involved in build­ing the Argenti­na’s Yacyre­ta dam, which went almost $10 mil­lion over bud­get and was labeled by Pres­i­dent Car­los Men­em ‘a mon­u­ment to cor­rup­tion’ . Impregi­lo were also one of the firms plan­ning to build the infa­mous Ilisu dam in Turkey which, had it gone ahead, would have made 30,000 Kurds home­less and drowned the world his­toric site of Hasankeyf..

Alu­mini­um smelters emit enor­mous quan­ti­ties of green­house gas­es. In 2001, super-clean Ice­land was able to nego­ti­ate a 10% increase in per­mit­ted emis­sions under the Kyoto pro­to­col — the biggest increase in the world. In effect, Alcoa is buy­ing Ice­land’s licence to pol­lute, as well as cheap elec­tric­i­ty. The min­istry of envi­ron­ment also gave Alcoa a licence to emit 12 times the lev­el of sul­phur diox­ide the World Bank expects from mod­ern smelters. SO2; and flu­o­ride, the most dan­ger­ous pol­lu­tants in terms of pub­lic health and land dam­age, will be pumped direct­ly into the air via giant chim­neys.

Many geol­o­gists fear cat­a­stroph­ic results, espe­cial­ly as con­struc­tion is on a sub­struc­ture weak­ened by geot­her­mal fis­sures. Thorsteinn Siglaugs­son, a risk spe­cial­ist, pre­pared a recent inde­pen­dent eco­nom­ic report on Karah­n­jukar for the Ice­landic Nature Con­ser­va­tion Agency. It states that the project would nev­er have attract­ed pri­vate finance: “Karah­n­jukar will nev­er make a prof­it, and the Ice­landic tax­pay­er may well end up sub­si­dis­ing Alcoa.” A respect­ed fig­ure of the Ice­landic uni­ver­si­ty sent out an email declar­ing that it will take the Ice­landic gov­ern­ment 250 years sim­ply to recoup the finan­cial costs of the dam (which is unlike­ly to be oper­a­tional by that time). Nobody will be mak­ing a prof­it except for Alcoa. The only expla­na­tion for this project is one which con­firms the find­ings of the 2001 Gre­co (EU anti-cor­rup­tion group) report, that “the close links between the gov­ern­ment and the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty [in Ice­land] could gen­er­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for cor­rup­tion”. This project is cor­rupt to the core, and it is the first of many planned for the future. Ice­land’s unique beau­ty is-lit­er­al­ly- to be sac­ri­ficed to pow­er the cor­po­rate machine.

The parade start­ed at the Irish embassy, and moved along ear­ly in the streets of Edin­burgh. It was a col­or­ful and relaxed protest despite the police tak­ing pho­tographs.

The protest was part­ly against the Shell pipeline being built in Mayo, Ire­land, but also high­lights shell appaul­ing human rights and envi­ro­men­tal record.

More infor­ma­tion at:
http://www.indymedia.ie/index.php?region=mayo
http://www.shellfacts.com

Today at 07:30, 2 petrol sta­tions were shut down in Edin­burgh. The first was a BP sta­tion on Calder Road, and the sec­ond was a Shell sta­tion on Comis­ton Road. All pumps were put out of action with bike locks, and oil spills at the fore­court entrances meant no more busi­ness as usu­al for a while.

The oil indus­try, like the G8 is the epit­o­me of cap­i­tal­ism and it’s ills. It places wealth and pow­er in the hands of the few at mas­sive expense to this plan­et’s envi­ron­ment and peo­ples.

Oil explo­ration and pro­duc­tion destroys wilder­ness and maims ecosys­tems. 10,000’s of tonnes of oil are rou­tine­ly dumped in rivers and oceans, poi­son­ing aquat­ic life and water sup­plies.

In the U.K. alone, 24,000 peo­ple die pre­ma­ture­ly each year from emis­sions from vehi­cles and refiner­ies, and many more are killed or crip­pled on the roads.

Against this back­ground, the vest­ed inter­ests of the oil indus­try fund aca­d­e­mics to hide the causal link between green­house gas­es emis­sions from burn­ing fos­sil fuels and spi­ralling cli­mate change. Glob­al tem­per­a­tures are the high­est in 2,000 years — we are fac­ing an envi­ron­men­tal melt­down cri­sis.

No amount of cor­po­rate PR exer­cis­es can hide how the oil indus­try helps make the rich rich­er and the poor poor­er. Most of the top 20 petro­le­um cor­po­ra­tions are based in G8 coun­tries, with a revolv­ing door of top jobs between their gov­ern­ments and the indus­try. These cor­po­ra­tions set the glob­al agen­da, reap­ing mas­sive prof­its as the major­i­ty world are crushed by pover­ty char­ac­terised by a lack of clean water, food, health care and edu­ca­tion.

Work­ers in the oil indus­try suf­fer long ardu­ous hours in dan­ger­ous con­di­tion, for poor pay. Eas­i­ly pre­ventable acci­dents are com­mon. Attempts to unionise and organ­ise for bet­ter con­di­tions are met with intim­i­da­tion, sack­ings and vio­lence.
Oil multi­na­tion­als lit­er­al­ly call the shots, as they rou­tine­ly back ruth­less dic­ta­tor­ships across the world, from Sudan to Colum­bia, Ango­la to Indone­sia. The death squads do their dirty work. Hand in glove with the rul­ing elites, they make sure that noth­ing stands in the way of their pipelines and prof­its. Should oil pro­duc­ing regimes not toe the line or com­ply with cor­po­rate inter­ests, inva­sion is always an option, with the mil­i­tary might of the U.S. and U.K. as the enforcers.Tens of thou­sands were killed in Iraq to secure access to the world’s sec­ond largest oil reserves.

For all the G8’s talk of can­celling debt and pro­mot­ing “devel­op­ment” (ha ha ha!), the exis­tence of the oil indus­try and the cap­i­tal­ism which it dri­ves con­demns mil­lions to hell­ish lives and is push­ing life on earth to the brink of envi­ron­men­tal and social cat­a­stro­phe. Every­thing it touch­es dies. The G8, the oil indus­try and cap­i­tal­ism can­not be reformed. They must be dis­man­tled and destroyed if there is to be any hope of a bet­ter world. This is why we take direct action, to dent their prof­its and to oppose their world of pow­er and prof­it. The pow­er and the odds against us are enor­mous, but we can nev­er give up. Fight for a new world in any way you can.The oil indus­try is the epit­o­me of cap­i­tal­ism and it’s ills. It places wealth and pow­er in the hands of the few at mas­sive expense to this plan­et’s envi­ron­ment and peo­ples.

Oil explo­ration and pro­duc­tion destroys wilder­ness and maims ecosys­tems. 10,000’s of tonnes of oil are rou­tine­ly dumped in rivers and oceans, poi­son­ing aquat­ic life and water sup­plies.

In the U.K. alone, 24,000 peo­ple die pre­ma­ture­ly each year from emis­sions from vehi­cles and refiner­ies, and many more are killed or crip­pled on the roads.

Against this back­ground, the vest­ed inter­ests of the oil indus­try fund aca­d­e­mics to hide the causal link between green­house gas­es emis­sions from burn­ing fos­sil fuels and spi­ralling cli­mate change. Glob­al tem­per­a­tures are the high­est in 2,000 years — we are fac­ing an envi­ron­men­tal melt­down cri­sis.

No amount of cor­po­rate PR exer­cis­es can hide how the oil indus­try helps make the rich rich­er and the poor poor­er. Most of the top 20 petro­le­um cor­po­ra­tions are based in G8 coun­tries, with a revolv­ing door of top jobs between their gov­ern­ments and the indus­try. These cor­po­ra­tions set the glob­al agen­da, reap­ing mas­sive prof­its as the major­i­ty world are crushed by pover­ty char­ac­terised by a lack of clean water, food, health care and edu­ca­tion.

Work­ers in the oil indus­try suf­fer long ardu­ous hours in dan­ger­ous con­di­tion, for poor pay. Eas­i­ly pre­ventable acci­dents are com­mon. Attempts to unionise and organ­ise for bet­ter con­di­tions are met with intim­i­da­tion, sack­ings and vio­lence.
Oil multi­na­tion­als lit­er­al­ly call the shots, as they rou­tine­ly back ruth­less dic­ta­tor­ships across the world, from Sudan to Colum­bia, Ango­la to Indone­sia. The death squads do their dirty work. Hand in glove with the rul­ing elites, they make sure that noth­ing stands in the way of their pipelines and prof­its. Should oil pro­duc­ing regimes not toe the line or com­ply with cor­po­rate inter­ests, inva­sion is always an option, with the mil­i­tary might of the U.S. and U.K. as the enforcers.Tens of thou­sands were killed in Iraq to secure access to the world’s sec­ond largest oil reserves.

For all the G8’s talk of can­celling debt and pro­mot­ing “devel­op­ment” (ha ha ha!), the exis­tence of the oil indus­try and the cap­i­tal­ism which it dri­ves con­demns mil­lions to hell­ish lives and is push­ing life on earth to the brink of envi­ron­men­tal and social cat­a­stro­phe. Every­thing it touch­es dies. The G8, the oil indus­try and cap­i­tal­ism can­not be reformed. They must be dis­man­tled and destroyed if there is to be any hope of a bet­ter world. This is why we take direct action, to dent their prof­its and to oppose their world of pow­er and prof­it. The pow­er and the odds against us are enor­mous, but we can nev­er give up. Fight for a new world in any way you can. See you on the streets…