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Iraq, BP and the British Museum – look upon these works and hang our heads in shame
Blog post -
Mar 14, 2019
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...
The Invisible Machine – a gas pipeline in the Caucasus and a handshake in No10
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May 1, 2018
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...
Aliyev re-elected as President for another 7 years – the chain of oil autocracy that binds Azerbaijan
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Apr 18, 2018
On 18th April Ilham Aliyev will be inaugurated for the fourth time as President of Azerbaijan. His re-election comes as no surprise. It is so predictable that it barely counted as ‘news’ and consequently got next to no coverage in the international media. Originally the election was scheduled for 17th October, but at nine weeks...
Communal Memory – the power of community to resist Shell in Nigeria
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Feb 22, 2018
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...
Bribes, bulldozers and BP: what makes a gas mega pipeline?
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Sep 7, 2017
Earlier this week, the Guardian’s Azerbaijani Laundromat investigation uncovered thousands of covert payments totaling £2.2bn from Azerbaijan’s ruling elite to prominent Europeans through a network of opaque British companies. Today, Platform and other organisations had a letter published in the Guardian, filling in the blanks in the story. Azerbaijan is particularly keen to present a...
EU urged to honour Paris Agreement, withdraw support for gas mega-pipeline
Press release -
Jul 3, 2017
Brussels, Belgium — In an open letter released today, climate scientists, indigenous leaders, environmental and social justice groups, actors and artists call on the European Union to immediately withdraw its support for a gas mega-pipeline that would ‘destroy Europe’s climate targets’. While European leaders criticised the United States for pulling out of the Paris Agreement,...
BP’s solution to the climate crisis: switch to gas
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May 17, 2017
Gas will solve the climate crisis. This was the main message that BP’s CEO Bob Dudley wanted to get across at today’s annual general shareholder meeting. And it’s dangerous… Bob Dudley, BP chief, says if you closed all coal fired power plants tomorrow and replaced them with gas you would reach 2C warming scenario — Emily...
Paradigm shift in the House of the North – reflecting on ‘The Sky’s Limit’
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Nov 15, 2016
I’m trudging towards the top of Am Faochagach following my dear friend Greg Muttitt, who was for a long time central to Platform and is now part of the wider family. The smooth crest of this mountain rises like a whale’s back. Its lack of crags must have led to its name – Am...
“Unprecedented Change”? What does a corporation in transition look like? – notes from the Shell AGM 2016
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Jun 9, 2016
“Innovation and care are in our DNA”, says the soft female voice-over that accompanies the new promotional video by Shell. We, the attendees at the corporation’s 2016 Annual General Meeting in the Circus Theater, Scheveningen, sit comfortably in our red velvet seats watching the massive screen above the heads of the Shell directors on the...
Walking the Line. New Interactive Documentary
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Mar 8, 2016
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...
Darkness Falling – 100 days in Azerbaijan
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Oct 20, 2015
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...
Smuggled letters in the museum
Blog post -
Sep 18, 2015
On Sunday 13 September, sixteen different groups took over BP-sponsored British Museum for a whole day of performances in resistance to oil sponsorship. This is a partial transcript of our performance that took place in the Museum’s room 56 (Mesopotamia collection). This is a performance by Platform London in solidarity with Azerbaijan’s political prisoners....
