Tag Archives: platform

Get The Shell Out! Friday 18 May @ 7.30pm

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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 Shell’s AGM, that will bring together a diverse coalition of individuals and organisations calling Shell to account for the social and environmental impacts of its activities around the world.

Millions are being affected by Shell’s past, present and future operations. The world’s largest oil company has been violating indigenous rights for 55 years in the Alberta tar sands, committing grave human rights abuses in Nigeria, pumping dangerous levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, destroying communities in Ireland, lobbying against effective climate action in Europe and is now set to exploit the Arctic – which could devastate the world’s most fragile ecosystem.

Come and hear stories from community members on the frontline in Alberta, Alaska, Ireland and Nigeria, share ideas and information, and meet activists, academics, lawyers and investors united in their resolve to curb the oil giant’s destructive activities.

Free drinks will be provided. Donations towards the cost of the event welcome! We look forward to seeing you there.

Hold Shell accountable for human rights abuses in Nigeria

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A global coalition of NGOs, human rights monitors, academics and analysts have joined Platform in sending a letter to the Board members of Royal Dutch Shell and Shell Nigeria which holds Shell to account for its role in recent human rights abuses in Nigeria. Below is a short extract from the letter:

Today the US Supreme Court hears Kiobel v Shell, a case that alleges Shell aided and abetted human rights violations and crimes against humanity committed by the Nigerian military against the Ogoni people from 1992 onwards. Twenty years later, Shell’s operations in the Niger Delta continue to be linked to human rights violations committed by government forces and other armed groups, as well as result in extensive environmental devastation. Continue reading →

Art & Oil: guest review of ‘The Oil Show’ in Dortmund

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The Oil Show art exhibition at the Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany, is a group show about oil and its deeply rooted influence in economy and society.

This major exhibition, on til 18th March 2012, states

“We have reached Peak Oil – the maximum capacity of global crude oil extraction and production. After Peak Oil, the total global oil production cannot be increased. In the future, demand will always exceed supply. The global struggle for resources will intensify. Despite this our dependency on oil is growing further. We cannot, or do not seem to want to do without oil. We are seriously dependent. The works in the exhibition deal with our dependency on oil and the economic, political, and social entanglements and consequences of this growing dependency.” 

We invited former Platform ‘Research Associate’ Malte Beisenherz for his review.  Continue reading →

Platform is hiring – Energy Policy Campaigner

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Energy Policy Campaigner: Summary Job Description

Do you want to shift UK policy away from supporting destructive oil and gas projects and repressive dictatorships?

Platform is a leading charity that combines arts, research and campaigning for social and environmental justice. We run global campaigns against pipelines, pollution and human rights abuses and are widely recognised as the “oil industry watchdog”.

Platform’s Carbon Web project aims to undermine the links between UK oil companies and those who support them, such as government departments, investors and cultural institutions. As Energy Policy Campaigner, you will play a central role in delivering the Carbon Web programme. You will be responsible for driving multiple campaigns that demand corporate and government accountability. Working with a dynamic team of six campaigners, your task will be to challenge the oil companies who are shaping UK policy and to campaign for greater democratic control over government decision-making. Continue reading →

Tate Director Nicholas Serota says decision on BP-Tate sponsorship to be made soon

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Photo: Charles Glover

Pressure mounts on Trustees to reject extension of relationship with BP as more than  8,000 Tate Members and visitors sign open letter calling on the art museum to break links with oil company

5 December 2011 – For Immediate Release

The decision about whether or not to renew an increasingly controversial sponsorship contract with oil giant BP is due to be made “soon” according to comments made by Tate Director Nicholas Serota at the Tate Members AGM Friday (2 December).

The comments were made in response to an open letter delivered to Nicholas Serota at the Members AGM signed by over 8,000 Tate Members and visitors, demanding that Tate disengage from BP as a sponsor due to the devastating impacts BP has around the world. The Open Letter has been organised by a coalition of organisations including Liberate Tate, Platform and Art Not Oil [1].

In the text of the letter, signatories underline that they have “enormous respect for the cultural contribution that Tate makes to the world”, but are also “greatly concerned by the damage being caused by BP to ecosystems, communities and the climate”. [2]

Continue reading →

RBS and Climate Week – who dumped who?

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People & Planet Edinburgh at Climate Week protest

News has reached us that RBS isn’t sponsoring the 2012 Climate Week, due to take place in March. RBS was a controversial sponsor of last year’s event, which many saw as an opportunity for the bank to gain some ill-deserved environmental credentials in the face of public criticism over its appalling record of fossil fuel finance.

Working with allies like People & Planet, WDM Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland and UK Tar Sands Network, we published a report at the start of last year’s Climate Week called Dirty Money – Corporate greenwash and RBS coal finance that highlighted the tension between RBS’ coal finance and its attempts at climate credibility. The organisers of the event were embarrassed by headlines in the newspapers like Green groups boycott Climate Week over RBS and a number of high profile figures such as Alastair Mcgowan and Iain Banks signed a letter in the papers that flagged up RBS’ record in providing coal and tar sands-related finance. We coordinated a letter that was sent to all the hundreds of different groups signed up to take part in the event, and people who turned up for the Climate Week awards in Central London had to get past a throng of climate change protesters.

Continue reading →

BREAKING: Shell to face grilling from Nigerian House of Reps over human rights abuses

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The House of Representatives, part of Nigeria’s legislative body has ordered an official investigation into the allegations that Shell fuelled violence in the Niger Delta by paying armed militant gangs. As John Ameh reports from Punch, in Abuja:

The House of Representatives on Wednesday ordered an investigation into the allegation that Shell Petroleum Development Company funded some communal clashes in the Niger Delta, resulting in the loss of lives.

A House resolution in Abuja sent for the SPDC to appear before the Committee on Petroleum Resources (Upstream) to respond to the allegation.

A motion by a lawmaker from Rivers State, Mr. Andrew Uchendu, accused the company of “directly funding rival groups in their areas of operation,” over the years.

Uchendu told the House that the SPDC had always denied complicity in the killings until a recent report by a non-governmental organisation indicted the Anglo-Dutch oil giant.

The allegations, contained in Platform’s new report, Counting the Cost, have put Shell’s human rights record in Nigeria under fresh scrutiny. Platform is calling on Shell to break its close ties with the Nigerian military, clean up decades of oil pollution, stop payments to armed groups and respect the human rights of local residents. The oil giant has been summoned by the investigation and will have to answer to the House of Assembly, where it could face a grilling over its conduct in the oil-rich Niger Delta.

The Committee on Petroleum Resources, headed by Mr. Muraina Ajibola was given two weeks to conduct the investigation and submit its report before the House.

Platform welcomes the prompt steps taken by the Nigerian House of Representatives to investigate this urgent issue. However, we urge the National Assembly and the Federal Government, and the home governments of the UK, Netherlands and US to properly hold Shell accountable for its abuses in the region. We remind the National Assembly of its duty to the people of Nigeria to act transparently and accountably in all its investigations. All too often, inquiries into human rights incidents have proved opaque, undemocratic or have never been made public, as in the inquiry into the military raid on Odioma community. The impunity long enjoyed by oil companies and the Nigerian government must be brought to an end before a stable peace can develop.

Report ties Shell to human rights abuse, environmental destruction in Niger Delta

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US radio station FSRN interviews Platform’s Ben Amunwa on the new report, Counting the Cost, which implicates Shell in new human rights abuses in the Niger Delta.

The interview includes reference to the different ways that Shell’s ‘community development’ projects have undermined stability, and the company’s appalling record of environmental destruction and oil spills. The full report is available here.

BBC: Shell spill: what happened & why it matters to Shell

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An in depth account of the Shell’s North Sea oil spill – the largest in a decade – and why it matters, by BBC Business News, with mention of Platform, Greenpeace & others.

Shell spill: What happened and why it matters to Shell

By Damian KahyaBusiness reporter, BBC News

Environmental groups are furious that the largest North Sea spill in a decade was not revealed to the public for three days. Why did it happen and will Shell’s recent environmental problems affect the company’s ambitious plans?

On 10 August, a routine helicopter flight over the North Sea spotted a “sheen” on the sea’s surface near Royal Dutch Shell’s Gannet Alpha platform.

The oily sheen covered just 0.5 sq km to begin with, according to figures provided to the BBC by Shell.

But it was an indication that below the surface, something was leaking.

Shell immediately informed regulatory bodies, including the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the government’s Joint Nature Conservation Commitee.

The DECC says, however, that it remained up to Shell to decide when and how to make the information public.

Continue reading here.

On not always labouring furiously

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“The mind should not be kept continuously at the same pitch of concentration, but given amusing diversions… Our minds must relax: they will rise better and keener after a rest. Just as you must not force fertile farmlands, so uninterrupted productivity will soon exhaust it, so constant effort will sap our mental vigour, while a short period of rest and relaxation will restore our powers. Unremitting effort leads to a kind of mental dullness and lethargy…

Sleep too is essential as a restorative, but if you prolong it constantly day and night, it will be death. There is a big difference between slackening your hold on something and severing the link…

We must indulge the mind and from time to time allow it the leisure which is its force and strength. We must go for walks out of doors so that the mind can be strengthened and invigorated by a clear sky and plenty of fresh air.

At times it will acquire fresh energy from a journey in a carriage and a change of scene, or from socialising and drinking freely…

Liberate the mind from its slavery to cares, emancipate it, invigorate it, embolden it for all its undertakings.

So here you have the means of preserving your tranquillity, the means of restoring the faults that creep up on you unawares. But be sure of this, that none of these is strong enough for those who want to preserve such a fragile thing unless the wavering mind is surrounded by attentive and unceasing care.”

A few months ago, we discovered a very early typewritten PLATFORM manifesto (1986) which referred to “labouring furiously” til social and ecological justice was achieved. Once we had stopped laughing, we had yet another conversation about the constant effort to get some kind of balance between political commitment, collective care & mental health, and individual’s human needs. It’s an issue for so so many people, groups and organisations.

Personally, I don’t usually look to an ancient Roman for advice on antidotes to overwork, but this one does it for me. It’s from Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life”, which also contains the epic line “Life is long if you know how to live it”. Found in a new Penguin edition in my friend’s flat this week. Thanks Helen.

However, i see from Wikipedia that the man himself had his struggles
“He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero (tricky!). He was later forced to commit suicide for complicity in the Pisonian conspiracy to assassinate this last of the Julio-Claudian emperors; however, he may have been innocent.” Hmm.