BP AGM Picture 'Story'
Deidres Photo casebook | 18.04.2005 20:37 | London
( next year it's at the Excel centre where they also have the DSEI arms dealer bash ).
Perhaps if they had it at the same time they could swap oil directly for weapons..... :-)
Welcomer To the Oil Festival Hall
Searching bags for subversive literature?
You are entering a Toxic Greenwash Hazard Zone
Greenwash Guerilla On The Trail of Corporate Bullshit
FIT Team on the Trail of Greenwash Guerillas
Making a Killing out of Oil....
We'll guard your banners
BP: Evading Standards
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Report, leaflet & press release, for all you completists out there
19.04.2005 11:00
(Pictures available at
Up to 15 vanloads of police were on hand at BP's 2005 Annual General Meeting to assist the Greenwash Guerrillas in protecting the general public from potentially lethal levels of toxic greenwash contamination. Police were acting on a tip-off from the Greenwash Guerrillas that greenwash levels at the meeting, held at London's Oil Festival Hall on Thursday April 14th, would constitute a serious health hazard, and made sure the public were kept well away from what is usually a well-used public building.
Shareholders, hypnotised by the surfeit of friendly green BP logos, by the thought of ever-greater dividends and by the prospect of a free lunch, brushed aside warnings (both personal and planetary) and marched into the meeting.
700 green 'BP in the dock: the charges' leaflets were distributed by Greenwash Guerrillas and friends to predominantly supportive passers-by; (see text below). Banners reading 'Oil Festival Hall' and 'Toxic Greenwash Hazard', one highlighting the public money pumped into the Baku Ceyhan pipeline and one highlighting BP's role in the assassination of a Colombian activist, were all on display. Pretty much anyone with half a plan to raise their concerns about BP outside the meeting was searched, with one Greenwash Guerrilla being searched twice for daring to leave and return to an invisible police-designated 'protest area'.
BP's pre-meeting blurb stated, illegally, that 'We do not permit entry to persons whose conduct, behaviour or general demeanour may interfere with the good order of the meeting.' At least two shareholders were refused entry on these grounds, the second, wearing a greenwash radiation suit for his ow protection, being accompanied by a BBC World Service business correspondent who witnessed the whole charade and featured a clip on that evening's business report;
By all accounts the meeting itself, held in the main auditorium of a heavily BP-branded OFH, ran depressingly smoothly, with profit-blinded shareholders happily waving through massive salary hikes for the bosses while wondering what free BP-branded trinket they would find in their BP-branded packed lunch bags...
London Rising Tide (LRT) has focussed some of its efforts for the time being on pressuring the Oil Festival Hall to refuse to have BP back in 2007 once its renovations are complete, by for example depositing spoof leaflets in the building announcing its renaming. LRT is also running 'Art Not Oil 2005' alongside BP's Portrait Award (www.artnotoil.org.uk & www.nationalpetroleumgallery.org.uk). And the Baku Ceyhan Campaign (www.baku.org.uk) has pledged to keep a searchlight planted firmly for the next five years on BP's 1-million-barrels-of-oil-per-day pipeline, the sort of determined, long-term attention that the company would love to live without.
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Leaflet given out on the day:
(side A) CAUTION: TOXIC GREENWASH HAZARD!
YOU HAVE ENTERED A RESTRICTED AREA. YOU MAY NEED TO BE QUARANTINED DUE TO GREENWASH INFECTION. DO NOT PANIC.
INSTRUCTIONS;
1. IMMERSE YOURSELF IN THE FACTS
2. TAKE A HEALTHY DOES OF SCEPTICISM
3. ASK PLENTY OF HONEST QUESTIONS
4. TO MINIMISE TRANSMISSION OF THE VIRUS, DO NOT REPEAT WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD
5. DO NOT SHARE PLATFORMS WITH USERS OF GREENWASH.
THIS IS A PUBLIC HEALTH WARNING FROM THE GREENWASH GUERRILLAS
(side B)
WARNING! You are within choking distance of a serious spillage of ultra-powerful super-sophisticated extra-toxic corporate greenwash; (greenwash = profit-seeking environmental & social whitewash.)
BP in the dock: the charges
* ‘BP & Shell have discussed with the government the prospect of claiming a stake in Iraq's oil reserves in the aftermath of war.’ Financial Times, 11.3.03.
* BP has a commitment to expand its fossil fuel production by at least 3.5% per
year, (though this figure is likely to top 5% during 2005-6).
* Fossil fuel-induced climate chaos hit Europe in August 2003, killing tens of thousands of mostly older people in record-breaking temperatures; 150,000 may
have died worldwide.
* BP has bankrolled Colombian paramilitary death squads in exchange for the ‘protection’ of its oilfields, (www.colombiasolidarity.org.uk)
* ‘Exposed: BP, its pipeline, and an environmental time-bomb’ Independent (26.6.04) on BP’s US-inspired and protected Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil & gas pipelines, which will be a human rights disaster & produce over 150m tonnes of CO2 each year for 40 years, causing untold damage to the world’s climate; www.baku.org.uk
* BP invests less than 1% of its annual budget in solar & other renewable energy sources, much less than it ploughs into advertising and PR.
* 15 workers were killed and over 100 injured in an explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery on March 23rd 2005; 11 BP employees died at work during 2004.
* In 2005, as BP oil-workers see their personal safety, union rights and wages in tatters (www.oilc.org), BP boss Lord “As always, the best is yet to come” Browne’s own salary soared to £5.6m…
Contact the Greenwash Guerrillas via 07708 794665
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
See also www.artnotoil.org.uk www.remembersarowiwa.com
www.risingtide.org.uk www.carbonweb.org
www.nationalpetroleumgallery.org.uk
PS. This information focuses on BP, but they’re all it: there’s no such thing as a good oil company. Here’s to a post-corporate, fossil fuel-free future!
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Press release sent in advance of the meeting:
GREENWASH GUERRILLAS AND METROPOLITAN POLICE TO CORDON OFF OIL FESTIVAL HALL FOR BP AGM,
THURSDAY APRIL 14TH 2005
In a bid to add muscle to claims of being a ‘green force’, many vanloads of London’s Metropolitan Police will be present at BP’s Annual General Meeting from 10.15am on April 14th. They will be joining forces with little-known group the Greenwash Guerrillas to ensure that the public are kept out of the newly-renamed Oil Festival Hall(1) during BP’s Annual General Meeting.
“There is a clear and present danger of highly toxic levels of greenwash at this meeting,” said the Met’s Head of Green Policing Bob Trotter. “For that reason, we will not be allowing members of the general public to enter the Oil Festival Hall for the day. We are also extremely concerned that any BP shareholders entering the building will be at great risk of greenwash contamination, but we will be unable to prevent them from doing so.”
He went on to say that “Rumours that we are doing this to shake off our ‘Metropolitan Petroleum’, ‘friend of Big Oil’ image are entirely unfounded.”
DeAnne Massey of the Greenwash Guerrillas said “This is an unusual partnership for us, but we realised that while we possess state-of-the-art greenwash detection and decontamination equipment, we couldn’t cope alone with the tide of greenwash forecast for the BP AGM. While we look forward to having a warm working relationship with the Met on April 14th, we reserve the right to be openly critical of them whenever we see fit.”
BP executives are thought to be working late into the night on plans to put a positive spin on the death of 15 workers at its Texas City refinery in March, on the massive climatic impact of its Baku-Ceyhan oil pipeline, (described as an ‘environmental timebomb’ by the Independent, 26.6.04), and the vast profits for 2004-5 that led to boss Lord “As always, the best is yet to come”(2) Browne’s £5.6m salary.
More info: 07708 794665
c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES.
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
See also
www.artnotoil.org.uk
www.nationalpetroleumgallery.org.uk
Notes:
1. The Oil Festival Hall was until recently known as the ‘Royal Festival Hall’; notices announcing the renaming have been distributed throughout the Hall during recent weeks.
2. 'As always, the best is yet to come': Lord Browne signed off his letter in BP’s Annual Review 2004 with these remuneratively accurate words.
Sto
excellent
19.04.2005 13:07
Perhaps if they had it at the same time they could swap oil directly for weapons.....
Nice one liner.
sig