The newsfeeds hiss and rumble with stories of a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine. We are all of us left waiting. Is this truly going to happen, a military conflict between Russia and NATO? Or is this a fevered concoction that aids the Kremlin, the US Administration, and the UK’s flailing Prime Minister? Will the…
Authored by James Marriott of Platform drawing on the collective experience of so many others in Platform and the multiple organisations we’ve collaborated with. Prompted by an invitation from the Climate Cultures Festival in Berlin to speak about Crude Britannia and The Oil Road, co-authored with Mika Minio-Paluello, I returned to the Baku-Tiblisi-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline…
In Italy, Azerbaijan and the UK people are fighting against the devastating impacts of import pipelines and wresting back control over their energy system. In this beautiful documentary we made with Global Motion, Re:common and Counter Balance we meet the people who live alongside the Euro-Caspian Mega Pipeline and are organising against this gargantuan piece…
Today the appeal trial of Leyla and Arif Yunus continues in Azerbaijan. As it does James Marriott reflects on 100 days in Azerbaijan. For over 100 days I have been away from the hum of collective life in Platform, away from the buzz of e-mails and twitter, away from the news feed darting this way…
Jamie Doward, Observer
Press release by Bankwatch, Counter Balance and Platform For immediate release: August 19 Azerbaijan political prisoners list published with report’s authors on it London — Human rights activists in Azerbaijan published yesterday a list of 98 people (1) who are currently political prisoners in the country run by the authoritarian regime of Ilham Aliyev. Ironically,…
Democracy activist and Platform ally, Rasul Jafarov, was arrested and detained in Baku over the weekend. Rasul has been charged with tax evasion, illegal entrepreneurship and power abuse. These are the same falsified charges that saw independent Azeri election monitor Anar Mammadli jailed for 5.5 years. Rasul’s arrest comes shortly after the prominent human rights…
The Euro Caspian Mega Pipeline is a massive infrastructure system designed to suck gas out of the Caspian into Western Europe. Construction of the pipeline involves politics and finance as much as it does concrete building materials, and the conference I’m about to go to is one in a series of events attempting to make…
This blog is also available in Italian. The future is alternative, sustainable sources of energy. We don’t want the oil companies! This can be an independent state, a Puglia free from the oil companies Alessandro Mancini slaps the wooden table square with his palm as he talks. I am sat in a warm kitchen discussing…






