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Shell frack Egypt, threatening scarce water resources; Egyptians demand moratorium
Shell is bringing fracking to Egypt, threatening the North African country’s already limited water resources. The company is using hydraulic fracturing technology to drill three wells in Egypt’s Western Desert, in the Alam El Shawish West concession. Concerned that scarce water resources will be poisoned, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has condemned the…
19 Sep 2012 admin -
Tate’s (near) deafening silence on #AskACurator day
Wednesday 19th September was Ask a Curator day, with museums and galleries all over the world taking part, including Tate. The overwhelming majority of questions put to Tate curators were about it’s controversial sponsorship with relationship with BP, but Tate curators made only a single response. To be fair, it’s not the curators that are…
19 Sep 2012 admin -
Shell’s 2012 Arctic drilling shelved
Last week, I wrote about Shell’s dubious ‘historic’ achievement in commencing the first drill hole off the coast of Alaska in the past two decades. Later the same day, Shell announced that it had to stop drilling due to ice approaching the drillship. Now, they’ve had to cancel this year’s drilling altogether. A company update…
17 Sep 2012 anna -
Thatcher in Baku: How BP broke into Azerbaijan
The blog is based on an excerpt from The Oil Road – published with Verso on Sept 20. ‘Lady Thatcher clearly remains a formidable foreign policy weapon for UK Ltd!’ (Foreign Office internal memo 24 September 1992) Internal Foreign Office documents obtained by Platform while researching The Oil Road reveal just how BP utilised…
13 Sep 2012 admin -
Shell commences Arctic drilling, US regulator releases ‘skimpy’ permit report
“It’s the first time a drill bit has touched the sea floor in the U.S. Chukchi Sea in more than two decades,” – a Shell spokesperson said as the company announced its “historic” first test well in offshore Alaska. And now is not a good time. Shell’s permit to drill was conditional on the company’s…
10 Sep 2012 anna -
Talking memes
How can we use images to tell the stories we want to tell – and avoid repeating the ones we don’t? Photo memes are fast becoming a viral hit. Quicker than 30 second videos, the combination of an image and a short piece of text is being used across social media to convey jokes or…
7 Sep 2012 admin -
Putting the Oil Road on the map – 5 star review kicks off campaign
‘The Oil Road’ opens the lid on the often-shady energy economy, weaving absorbing travel reportage into powerful investigative journalism…If you want to know why oil matters read this book. (Time Out – 5th September 2012) Platform’s campaign to put the Oil Road on the map has been given a fine start with our new travel…
6 Sep 2012 james -
“Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution” comes to London
A guest blog post by Mara Ranville. “Beautiful Trouble: A Toolbox for Revolution” (OR Books 2012) is a book and web toolbox that puts the accumulated wisdom of decades of creative protest into the hands of the next generation of change-makers. Part manifesto, part reference guide, Beautiful Trouble is the anti-textbook—not another how-to manual, but…
5 Sep 2012 admin -
Strong Laws Needed To Curb Corporate Abuse
This is a guest post by Katie Redford, Director of EarthRights International. For many in the international human rights community, the new data about Shell’s security spending in Nigeria – including outlays of over $380,000,000 for just the period from 2007 to 2009 – released last week by Platform, is not surprising. The multinational oil giant has had…
29 Aug 2012 admin
