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UKEF: don't frack Patagonia, don't fund fossil fuels

UKEF: don’t frack Patagonia, don’t fund fossil fuels

The UK government pledges billions of pounds every year in finance for UK businesses abroad through UK Export Finance (UKEF). In 2017 UKEF announced a new £1 billion credit line for UK businesses working in Argentina, with then minister Greg Hands stressing that “the UK’s expertise in areas like infrastructure, green energy and healthcare” were...
To Bruce Mackenzie – For these and future memories

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...
Victory at Leith Hill! Divest Fracking!  Resisting sites of speculation

Victory at Leith Hill! Divest Fracking! Resisting sites of speculation

This piece was written before the news of the draconian jail sentences passed on those opposing fracking in Preston, Lancashire … but that bitter ruling does not destroy the reality that shortly before that decision we celebrated a Victory! The News of an Amazing Victory! We wrote of it as follows … The permission to...
#FromNopeToHope - Salon des Réfuseurs for our time

#FromNopeToHope – Salon des Réfuseurs for our time

Heads up everybody interested in powerful political art and graphics. The exhibition From Nope To Hope – Art vs Arms, Oil and Injustice is running for an extra week, in Brixton Rec, London. Come and get inspired by the artwork of political artists, designers and activists who demanded their works were withdrawn from the Design...
Decades of neglect, years of waiting: it’s time to clean up Ogoniland’s oil pollution

Decades of neglect, years of waiting: it’s time to clean up Ogoniland’s oil pollution

Two years ago, the Nigerian Government officially launched a clean-up programme of Shell’s oil pollution in Ogoniland. But today communities are still waiting for emergency measures on drinking water and health protection and the clean-up to begin. Here’s what Godwin Uyi Ojo, Executive Director, Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria had to say about it:...
Update: The Bus, its seizure and our story

Update: The Bus, its seizure and our story

Here is the latest on the campaign to pressurise Nigeria Customs release the Living Memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 9 known as the Bus. Customs seized the Bus in 2015 and has refused to release it despite the huge efforts and directives described below. The guest blog is written by Celestine AkpoBari, National Coordinator for Ogoni Solidarity...
The Invisible Machine – a gas pipeline in the Caucasus and a handshake in No10

The Invisible Machine – a gas pipeline in the Caucasus and a handshake in No10

On the evening of Thursday 26th April 2018, it was warm and sunny in London. President Ilham Aliyev strode down Downing Street and was met by Prime Minister Theresa May with smile and a handshake. They posed for the cameras on the red carpet outside No 10 and then retired inside. A short formal chat...
Vive La Zad ! – in the midst of the tear gas, La Zad exists in our hearts

Vive La Zad ! – in the midst of the tear gas, La Zad exists in our hearts

The police arrived at 03.00 am on the morning of Monday 9th April. The exact number is, of course, unclear but it is said that 2,500 officers in riot equipment, with crash helmets and visors, Perspex shields and plastic body armour were deployed. Two and a half thousand highly trained men appeared out of the...
La Zad puts down roots – sensing the future

La Zad puts down roots – sensing the future

We’re in the middle of the crowd. Standing some way back from the stage, watching transfixed and elated at the performance of Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp. Two trombones, two drummers, two marimbas, two electric guitars, two cellos and five other musicians blast out such a blissful riot of sound that our souls sail above...
Communal Memory - the power of community to resist Shell in Nigeria

Communal Memory – the power of community to resist Shell in Nigeria

I’m holding in my hands a report published by Amnesty International in November last year – ‘A Criminal Enterprise? Shell’s involvement in human rights violations in Nigeria in the 1990s’. It analyses in forensic detail exactly how much Shell staff knew about, and were involved in supporting, the actions by the Nigerian military taken against...
In memoriam Ed Ross – in honour of one who honoured others

In memoriam Ed Ross – in honour of one who honoured others

  A Robin sings among the bare branches of the Ash trees. A small crowd is gathered in a corner of Highgate Cemetery to commit the ashes of Ed Ross to the earth. A few hundred yards away, obscured by the gravestones and tree trunks, is the imposing bust of Karl Marx. Ed died suddenly...
BP's Fracking Secrets: Pan-American Energy and Argentina’s shale mega-project

BP’s Fracking Secrets: Pan-American Energy and Argentina’s shale mega-project

BP plays a leading role in advancing one of the world’s biggest carbon bombs, the Vaca Muerta shale mega-project in Patagonia. BP does not carry out fracking in the UK because the practice would “attract the wrong kind of attention”. This report by Platform with Observatorio Petrolero Sur reveals BP’s role in pushing forward fracking in...