Surely this is a job for the Greenwash Guerillas (GGs - 3), last seen outside BP's AGM in April 2005, and at the January 2005 Greenpeace Business Lecture as delivered by Shell Chairman Lord Oxburgh before that? Dressed in customised radiation suits and wielding state-of-the-art greenwash detection equipment (oh, all right, niftily customised domestic cleaning appliances), the GGs will be on hand from 3pm to warn those attending the event and passers-by not to risk life, soul or planet by entering Chatham House, and absolutely not to approach Peter Sutherland unless wearing the appropriate protective equipment.

After all, this man:
* is Chairman of one of the world's three largest purveyors of oil and gas, whose Baku-Ceyhan pipeline will pump 1 million barrels of oil per day every day for 40 years, therefore making BP a Climate Criminal par excellence, whatever its blanket ad campaign may claim to the contrary;
* is on the board of Goldman Sachs, a massive investment bank that engineers and profits handsomely from planetary destruction and the glaring - and growing - gap between rich and poor;
* was in charge of the World Trade Organisation as it came into being in the early 1990s. The WTO exists primarily to oversee the selling off - sorry, 'liberalisation' - of anything and everything that can turn a fast buck, and damn the consequences. Current ‘NAMA’ negotiations within the WTO would open up yet more vulnerable people and resources (forests, fisheries and minerals) to the already-bloodied talons of multinational companies. (For more on NAMA, go to  http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/global_trade/press_for_change/email_johnson/) While these negotiations need to be stalled, ultimately the WTO has to be dismantled, along with other institutions of global inequality like the World Bank and IMF, if we’re to set a course for true sustainability and social justice;
* has just been appointed Special Representative For Migration by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan - appropriate, perhaps, when you consider how much forced migration is being triggered by the onset of climate chaos?

He and many like him peddle the lie that all this well-rewarded activity and all the well-rehearsed reams of rhetoric are for the good of the poor and the planet…

One of the issues Mr. Sutherland plans to address is ‘How should relations between the WTO & civil society further evolve?’
‘With suspicion and a great deal of distance on the part of civil society’, say the GGs, since compromise and sell-out usually lurk around every corner when you accept an invitation to sit at the boss’s table.

This intervention is dedicated to all those arrested and held for many days after the December Hong Kong WTO Ministerial Meeting, and especially to the three protesters charged with 'unlawful assembly' or 'unauthorized assembly', and only released in mid-January:  http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php

And remember: Corporate Social Responsibility = 21st Century Snake Oil

Notes:
1. Chatham House can be found tucked away, almost next to BP HQ, at 10 St. James' Square. What are the odds that BP security will be seconded over to Chatham House for the afternoon?
2. The full title of the conference is 'The WTO and the Sustainable Development Agenda: Prospects after Hong Kong', 6 February 2006 - 7th February 2006.
3. The Greenwash Guerillas also sometimes appear as London Rising Tide, and can be contacted thus: c/o 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES.
 london@risingtide.org.uk
Tel: 07708 794665
www.londonrisingtide.org.uk
www.artnotoil.org.uk