The FrackOff team dropped two banners off Blackpool Tower early this morning – 500 foot high banner drop off Blackpool Tower!
Fracking not far from Blackpool Tower is believed to have caused two earthquakes.
Cuadrilla Resources have been forced to temporarily suspend their exploratory test site at Preese Hall test well, near Blackpool following the outcry over two earthquakes in the vicinity
Fracking is the hydraulic fracture of rocks to extract small amounts of gas using high pressure water laced with a cocktail of toxic and carcinogenic chemicals. The process leaches arsenic out of the rocks and leads to contamination of groundwater. It has also caused methane to escape into groundwater.
France, the states of New York and New Jersey, the Canadian province of Quebec and the Swiss canton of Fribourg have all recently banned fracking. Fracking needs to be stopped in the UK.
Greenpeace has been campaigning to stop drilling for oil in the Arctic by Cairn Energy.
To cover up the truth about its Arctic drilling, Cairn Energy has obtained an extraordinary, wide-ranging legal interdict (injunction) against Greenpeace, gagging them from posting Tweets and Facebook updates including even pictures of their actions.
But as Cairn are learning, you cannot gag users on the net.
Human Cost, Tate Britain Performance (87 minutes), charcoal and sunflower oil 20 May 2011 — First anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
Artists from art activist group Liberate Tate staged a performance by pouring an oil like substance over a naked man at the Tate Britain museum on the anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.
On the same day, 166 people who work in the arts published a letter in the Guardian calling on Tate to end its sponsorship relationship with BP. “In the year since its catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP has massively ramped up its investment in controversial tar sands extraction in Canada, has been shown to have been a key backer of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and has attempted to commence drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean. While BP continues to jeopardise ecosystems communities and the climate by the reckless pursuit of “frontier” oil, cultural institutions like Tate damage their reputation by continuing to be associated with such a destructive corporation.
The massive cuts to public arts funding in the UK have left hundreds of culturally important arts organisations in a position of great financial vulnerability, which means that the debate about the appropriateness of particular potential corporate sponsors like BP and Shell is more relevant than ever. As people working in the arts, we believe that corporate sponsorship does not exist in an ethical vacuum. In light of the negative social and ecological impacts of BP around the world, we urge Tate to demonstrate its commitment to a sustainable future by ending its sponsorship relationship with BP.”
Climate Rush activists protest Tate Britain over BP sponsorship
Climate Rush Tate Britain
Today (20 April 2011) Climate Rush activists demonstrated outside the Tate Britain, which is sponsored by BP, to mourn those that lost lives, as well as environmental damage resulting from the Deepwater Horizon disaster which began on this day last year.
New Orleans, LA. – Attendees of the “Gulf Coast Leadership Summit” received a pleasant surprise this morning upon hearing a representative from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announce a ban on toxic dispersants — as well as a new free health care plan for spill and cleanup victims. Even more surprising: a BP co-presenter expressed regret for his company’s past actions, and said the oil giant would foot the bill for the new health care plan.
But the news was too good to be true. Surprise turned to confusion when an irate BP representative entered the room and interrupted the press conference. Comedy ensued as the two reps pointed fingers at each other, each claiming to be the real BP employee. Members of the press, confused, attempted to discover who was real and who wasn’t.
The answer was: except for the audience, everyone was a fake. The impostors Dr. Dean Winkeldom and Steve Wistwil, both Gulf Coast residents, collaborated with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an organization whose goal is to create sustainable communities free from industrial pollution. The organization decided to create a hoax to publicize what should be happening in response to the emerging health crisis. It was a last resort, since straightforward approaches were not working.
The Louisiana Bucket Brigade action was supported by the Yes Lab, a project of The Yes Men that helps activist groups carry out media-getting creative actions on their own. Four years ago in New Orleans, The Yes Men impersonated an official from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to announce, among other things, that HUD would re-open public housing and make oil companies pay up for wetlands destruction.
Protesters angry at BP’s failures over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill descend on Tate Modern on Sunday in protest at the gallery’s links with the beleaguered oil giant.
Next Wednesday will see the anniversary of the Gulf spill, and direct action groups London Rising Tide and Art Not Oil are planning a flashmob at Tate Modern to commemorate the disaster.
The group is using Facebook and Twitter to mobilise followers to attend the highly visual protest. Hundreds of people took part in a ‘BP-sponsored sleep-in’ among the art works and visitors of the gallery.
At 2:15PM exactly the participants spontaneously broke from the crowds to don BP branding and fall asleep on the gallery floor.
The protest was to remind Tate members and visitors that the gallery is sponsored by BP, and express a wider concern that sponsorship of the arts helps to distract public attention from the environmental damage the oil
company causes, including the Gulf spill.
The event was aimed at damaging BP’s brand, and comes as the company has mounted a major PR campaign in an effort to deflect criticism around the anniversary of the oil spill. At its annual general meeting, the
company faced an angry coalition of shareholders, campaigners and residents from the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian tar sands.
Tony Cottee of Rising Tide said: “Sponsorship of galleries such as Tate is one of the most important ways BP tries to buy the public’s acceptance and make people forget about disasters such as the Gulf of Mexico spill. We are here to make sure they don’t get away with it, and to warn Tate that their own reputation is at risk through their association with such a damaged and damaging company.”
He continued: “It’s clear that BP has learnt nothing over the last year. The time has now come for Tate to say, ‘enough is enough’, and break off their relationship with BP once and for all.”
The protest is part of a week of direct action against BP-sponsored cultural institutions, coordinated by groups including London Rising Tide, Art Not Oil, London Climate Camp, Climate Rush and Liberate Tate.
The only way we can have accountability is if shareholders hold the company in which they own shares to account. If they are locked out because they have an opposing view, there can be no accountability.
That the security thugs knew who these people were on entry and then had them carefully watched, suggests to me the group has been heavily infiltrated.
I recall several years ago attending a BAA AGM. I was literally talking to the media from dawn to dusk. We even managed to have a reasonable sized demonstration outside which we organised by word of mouth (and that was before the days of social media) and had politicians on the platform.
I even managed to speak at the AGM. The response I got from the Chairman was: Sir, you appear to be challenging the board. Actually I think the word phrase was threatening the board. Well yes, that was exactly what I was doing. I then had the microphone snatched out of my hand. I was not though ejected.
Surprisingly, after the AGM, I was able to have a very open and frank discussion with the chief executive.
On the Morning of January the 14th a group of protestors invaded the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and are demanding a meeting with Stephen Green, the new Minister for Trade. Calling themselves the “Big Society Trade Negotiators”, they are concerned that trade negotiations between the EU and Canada, due to start in Brussels on Monday, will dramatically boost Europe’s involvement in the Canadian Tar Sands — the most destructive project on earth.
Unbeknownst to most citizens, the EU and Canada are in the midst of negotiating an ambitious free trade deal (the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, or CETA) that could open up the European market to imports of carbon-intensive Tar Sands oil for the first time [1]. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the talks is the plan to allow multinational companies like BP and Shell to sue national governments over social and environmental regulations [2]. This is happening despite the increasingly urgent need for governments to crack down on the destructive and dangerous activities of such companies.
British shareholders, NGOs and campaigners have expressed increasing concern over the involvement of UK banks and oil companies in the highly polluting extraction of “dirty oil” from the Tar Sands [3]. Emitting three to five times as much CO2 as conventional oil drilling, the Tar Sands industry is destroying the livelihoods and health of local Indigenous communities and decimating ancient forests and wildlife across an area of Alberta larger than England [4]. The proposed trade deal would increase Europe’s involvement in the project and significantly expand the market for this dirty oil.
There will be another protest in Brussels on Monday 17th January outside the negotiations themselves, involving UK, European and Canadian groups, and Indigenous activists [5].
Jess Worth from the UK Tar Sands Network said: “Stephen Green has been parachuted in by the coalition government as Trade Minister. Completely unelected, this former Chair of HSBC was rapidly handed a seat in the Lords and then began his new job on the 1st of January. Given that HSBC is the world’s 13th largest investor in the Tar Sands, we are concerned that he will put the interests of oil companies and the Tar Sands industry ahead of environmental and social concerns in these, his first major trade negotiations. So the Big Society Trade Negotiators have come to help him make the right decisions.”
Emily Coats, also from the UK Tar Sands Network, added “The CETA trade negotiations between Canada and the EU are in full swing, yet most citizens have never heard of them. Climate scientists have warned that further Tar Sands extraction could lock us into disastrous and unstoppable climate change, but Europe is sleepwalking into major involvement with the project. We’re calling for the talks to be put on hold until there can be proper public scrutiny, and the many social, environmental and Indigenous rights problems can be addressed.”
FULL BRIEFING AVAILABLE HERE Stop Tar Sands Trade Talks!
ENDS
Notes for editors
[1] The CETA negotiations are about halfway through and due to be completed towards the end of 2011. The next round of talks will take place in Brussels next week.
[2] For a full explanation of the problems with CETA, please see “Keep Europe out of the Tar Sands!”, a briefing by Council of Canadians, Indigenous Environmental Network and UK Tar Sands Network, available at http://www.no-tar-sands.org/?page_id=58
[3] The last 18 months have seen a growing number of organisations taking action against British banks and companies with links to the Tar Sands. Both BP and Shell have faced shareholder resolutions over their Tar Sands investments, as well as protests at their offices and petrol stations. The Royal Bank of Scotland has also come under fire for being the 7th largest global investor in the industry, using British taxpayers’ money, and were targeted by the Camp for Climate Action, who camped for a week in the grounds of their global headquarters in Edinburgh last summer. For more information see:
