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1 May 2023 jamesOf Oil & Water
The Oil Machine in Torrington, North Devon Cathy Slaughter is explaining a little about XR North Devon as people slowly drift into the foyer of The Plough Arts Centre in Torrington, North Devon. “There’s a good group of really active members and of course many more who are signed up on the Facebook page. We…
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1 May 2023 jamesStrength in collective action
The Oil Machine in Dumfries A sudden burst of clapping from a couple at the back of the café and a ripple of laughter through the audience. This is the first response of the evening and the humour is ironic. It is in response to comments from the panel about the challenge of getting to…
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16 Nov 2022 jamesThe Lie of the Land
The Oil Machine in Inverness The words of Sir David King, head of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group, haunt me. Speaking at the launch of The Oil Machine film, he explained his view on what has been taking place since 2019. “What we have experienced in the last three years is a series of extreme…
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“Yes Shell bribed me.” 24 years after the execution of the Ogoni 9, key witness tells court.
Today is 10th November 2019, 24th anniversary of the judicial murders of the Ogoni 9. Due to unstoppable widows of the Ogoni 9, new evidence has come to light on Shell’s complicity in their arrest and corruption of their trial. The nine men were elders and community leaders from the Niger Delta who had been…
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Of Turmeric and Truth
‘Fuel for Thought’ and the struggle in Ogoni Lazarus Tamana, Europe Coordinator of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), holds up a small round plastic container, an inch deep, two inches across. It is filled with a rich yellow-ochre coloured powder. “This was grown on the fields at my farm in…
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Of Plastics and Brexit – the struggle against the new lords of oil & gas
On 16th January 2019 news was leaked through the German paper Handelsblatt of The Alliance to End Plastic Waste. A new industrial coalition that will invest $1billion over the next five years in a campaign to reduce the amount of plastic waste in the world. Here was a powerful body of major corporations determining to…
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Iraq, BP and the British Museum – look upon these works and hang our heads in shame
I had read in advance the briefing that Culture Unstained had put out to accompany the planned action. The protest at the British Museum was to be against BP’s sponsorship of the exhibition ‘I am Ashurbanipal: king of the world, king of Assyria’, a display of treasures from the land of Iraq. I read lines…
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‘The Knowledge Quarter’ – resistance to capture and divestment from capital
In the Autumn I attended an utterly inspiring Shake! & Stuart Hall Foundation event – the launch of the Black Cultural Activism Map. It was held at the Platform theatre space in the Central Saint Martin’s art school – CSM – part of University of the Arts London. This new premises is a vast warehouse of…
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To Bruce Mackenzie – For these and future memories
In the flurry of a Tuesday afternoon, I receive an unexpected e-mail from Vicki Carroll. The header has your name in it Bruce, and I know instinctively within an instant what the message holds. I hover a while and then open the text to read the inevitable. You have stepped over, passed through the…
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A Love of the Surface of the Earth – beyond the petroleum world
Quite suddenly the light has gone. We are left to complete our voyage in the growing dark. The sea charts cease to become legible, the OS map strains the eyes. The words of that fount of all Thames Estuary sailing advice, Charlie Stock, are ringing in our ears ‘When night sailing, do not use…
