Holding Shell to account at the AGM
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May 23, 2012
Just returning from the Shell AGM in Den Haag, Holland feeling inspired and energised by the passion and courage of all those that worked to hold the board of the company to account – both in the Dutch meeting and in the parallel event (linked by video) in the Barbican in London. Outside the conference...
Live With It! a new iPhone app from Shell-apps.com
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May 14, 2012
With Arctic drilling imminent, significant expansion into the tar sands and over 50 years of damage in Nigeria, the case for targeting the oil giant Shell has rarely been greater. A new campaign launched this month by Friends of the Earth Netherlands is challenging Shell to clean up its oil spills in Nigeria’s oil rich...
RBS outed for pro-tar sands lobbying
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May 10, 2012
Despite vehemently protesting our calculations of £2.5 billion in Canadian tar sands finance 2008-2010, the Royal Bank of Scotland is today reported by Reuters to be closely involved in the pro-Canadian tar sands lobby in Europe.
Get The Shell Out! Friday 18 May @ 7.30pm
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May 8, 2012
UK Tar Sands Network, Indigenous Environmental Network, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN), Platform, Rising Tide UK, FairPensions, Greenpeace, Shell to Sea and Art Not Oil present: Get The Shell Out! 18th May 2012, Toynbee Hall, 7.30pm Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street, Greater London E1 6LS You are warmly invited to a public meeting in advance of...
Listening in with Tate à Tate
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Mar 29, 2012
Dr Andrew Filmer, Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at Aberystwyth University reports back on his experience with the Tate à Tate audio tour. What I love about audio tours – such as Lavinia Greenlaw’s recent Audio Obscura, or Platform’s And While London Burns – is the way they help me sidestep the sensory overload...
Social Licence: Complicity in the Age of Extraction
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Mar 14, 2012
At first glance, there might not seem to be an obvious common ground between indigenous activists in Canada, performance artists in the UK and climate activists in both countries. However, the international controversy over Canada’s tar sands industry in northern Alberta has galvanised individuals from all these communities into new cooperative relationships opposing the developments....
Care about the climate? Move Your Money out of RBS/Natwest
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Mar 1, 2012
Pinch and a punch, first day of the Move Your Money month! All over the country, people are cutting up their cash cards from the main big banks and shifting their cash to ethical banks, credit unions and building societies, as part of Move Your Money’s sustained campaign to get people to stop providing banks...
Legal Oil, Ethical Oil and Profiteering in the Niger Delta and the Canadian North
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Jan 30, 2012
In this guest blog post, Professor Anna Zalik of York University Canada explores how governments and multinationals criminalise protest and gloss over the environmental injustices of oil extraction. Q: What does the Canadian Government’s fury at opponents of the Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline have to do with the Nigerian ‘legaloil’ campaign? A: Both positions are...
Oil, art & human rights links
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Jan 25, 2012
EU oil companies including Shell and Total will be banned from importing and purchasing Iranian oil by new sanctions, reported Reuters. As Iran threatens to retaliate by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a major artery of global oil shipments, the UK foreign minister William Hague downplayed the likelihood of war.
How John Browne, BP and the Old Boys Network keep the arts well-oiled
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Jan 13, 2012
It’s 10.30am on a spectacularly sunny winter’s day and I’m in the Members’ Room at Tate Modern. The room overlooks the Square Mile – London’s financial district – and the view symbolises the growing pressures on artists and arts organisations to seek funding from the private sector, specifically from business. Looking once again at the panel...
Getting to Market – new report by Platform, Oil Change Int. and Greenpeace UK highlights investor risks in the tar sands
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Dec 14, 2011
The global oil price wavers around $100 a barrel as traders are split over whether Brent Crude is about to plummet due to the Eurozone disaster getting worse, or about the spike due to a renewed Middle East crisis. It is snowing in Fort McKay, in Nothern Alberta, and the temperature of -6 feels like...
Canada’s Dirty and Dangerous Tar Sands
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Oct 21, 2011
When the pro-tar sands lobby group pounced on Platform’s new research on Nigeria to justify Canada’s “blood oil”, we were disgusted. Here is my blog response in The Huffington Post Canada. (Note they changed the title from ‘tar sands’ to the more innocuous ‘oil sands’). Canada’s Dirty and Dangerous Oil Sands EthicalOil.org has a reputation...
