oyez oyez

JAMES MARRIOT SPEAKING ABOUT OIL SPONSORSHIP OF ARTS FROM SOTA12

2012-02-15T04:58:00.002-08:00

Platform at State of the Arts Conference, #sota12
Posted on February 15, 2012 by James Marriott

Presentation by James Marriott on ‘Artists & the Future Environment’*

The first speaker was writer Jay Griffiths, author of ‘Wild’, followed by myself, James Marriott, speaking for Platform. You can watch an interview I did after the presentation at the bottom of the text.

Thank you Jay for a beautiful exposition of the relationship between art and nature. I’d like explore this further in what we can call the practice of creating art, and in specific, the role of the Arts Council.

As Jay’s explained, all art has a relationship to nature, indeed all art is environmental. Regardless of whether the artist identifies the work as ‘art addressing nature’ or ‘art dealing with environmental issues’, the work itself will have an impact on the environment, locally and globally. Questions that arise from this include:

“Is the relationship between the artist and the environment one in which there’s a committed attempt to lessen the negative impacts of arts practice on the Earth?”

“Is the artist trying to draw attention to, or celebrate, nature and the wounds that humanity inflicts upon nature – such as the alteration of the Earth’s climate?”

“Is the artist trying reduce the impact of those wounds?”

I’m speaking here not because of the work of Platform alone, but also that of other artists and arts organisations who are committed to attempting to lessen the environmental impact of the arts and to creating, or fostering, art works that draw attention to those wounds, in particular climate change.

In March 2011, Platform, like many others, did not have its RFO status renewed in the form of becoming an ACE NPO organisation. Not surprisingly we were somewhat dismayed, but when we looked around it seemed that NPO status had not been awarded to any of the other arts organisations in London Region that have an explicit environmental focus. So we gathered together with Cape Farewell, Julie’s Bicycle, Tipping Point, Live Art Development Agency, ArtsAdmin, plus John Hartley – former ACE Arts & Ecology Officer – and Michaela Crimmin – former head of the RSA Arts & Ecology programme – and wrote to Moira Sinclair, Executive Director, ACE London. Working collaboratively we raised our concerns that the Arts Council seemed to be turning its back on this field, after having been its champion. Indeed just months before, Liz Forgan (Chair of ACE) when launching ‘Great Art for Everyone’, had talked of the necessity of addressing climate change in her opening paragraphs. So we requested a meeting and last July, thirteen of us met with seven ACE staff, four of whom were at Director level. We strongly delineated the changes we felt that ACE needed to make.

Three weeks ago, all parties met again, and to our delight we could salute some substantial shifts that had taken place. The agreement which each NPO body has to sign with ACE, now has a specific set of environmental deliverables. Julie’s Bicycle have been contracted to assist all the NPO’s in reducing their carbon dioxide emissions. ACE have supported Cape Farewell’s programme and the Tipping Point event in Newcastle next week. There’s a ‘Green Team’ in ACE at a national level and this subject area – Artist & the Environment – was added to the State of the Arts programme. As I say, neither I, nor we, would be sitting in this session if it weren’t for the collective labour of those organisations that demanded a meeting with Moira.

Part of the intent of these organisations has been to assert that ACE, as a key funder of the arts in England, has a fundamental role in driving artistic practice in a way that reduces environmental impact and draws attention to the wounds of the Earth, in particular climate change. By analogy, there was a time when questions of diversity and disablility were considered peripheral to ACE’s remit – now they are questions which stand at the core of ACE’s policies. Just as they should do. The aim, and hope, of those who’ve been pushing in the past year – and we’re determined to expand this group – is that the environment will become equally embedded in ACE’s practice. The new requirements in the NPO agreement, is an important symbol of a shift in direction.

It is especially heartening that ACE is making these moves when it is having to undergo very substantial cuts in its overall budgets, decimating its staff numbers and reducing the scale of the funds that it can disberse. On account of these changes, and in the light of the ideological inclinations of the Minister for Culture, ACE is pushing hard to encourage arts organisations to raise funds from private and corporate sources. For example through the Catalyst fund, which seeks to increase ‘philanthropy’. At this point when ACE is requiring NPO’s to monitor and reduce their carbon footprint, and ACE is itself endeavouring to act with greater environmental responsibility, it is important to consider the social and ecological impact of those other bodies which arts organisations are being encouraged to approach for support.

Consider the corporate sponsorship of the the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery, the British Museum and Tate – the lead sponsor of these four commanding heights of British culture, is BP. Meanwhile the National Gallery, the National Theatre, the South Bank Centre – along with the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum and the National Maritime Museum – all receive key sponsorship from Shell. Both of these oil companies are explicit in their intentions with this sponsorship. There is an important distinction here – whilst arts organisations are encouraged to seek ‘philanthropy, these corporations do not see what they are giving as ‘philanthropy’, but rather describe it as a means to building ‘partnerships’.

They see it as making an investment and understand that they receive something in return – what they receive is ‘the social license to operate’. This is a term used by the oil industry. It means the active creation of acceptance, or support, of a company’s activities by key sections of society, support which then enables the company to carry out its core function. In the case of BP and Shell this core business is the extraction and sale of oil & gas, the transfer of hydrocarbons from deep beneath the Earth into the engines of our society and then out into the air as carbon dioxide emissions. The transfer of carbon from the lithosphere into the atmosphere. This process is fundamental to our ever-growing impact on the Earth’s climate.

We should not underestimate the role of the oil companies in creating this impact. For example, the Kyoto Protocol essentially divides the world’s CO2 emissions by nation state – under this scheme, the UK is responsible for 2.5% of global CO2 emissions. By the same analysis BP is responsible for 5.6% of global CO2 emissions. This one company is therefore responsible for more than twice the emissions of the 62 million citizens of the UK combined. Anything that assists BP and Shell in their core activities – such as that which comes through their sponsorship of the arts – assists in this transfer of carbon from the belly of the Earth into the atmosphere, which is driving forward climate change.

What concerns a growing body of artists and arts organisations is the increasing pervasiveness of oil industry sponsorship of the arts, which thereby increases the environmental impact of the arts.

As Jay said: “We need a change in the climate of art to create the culture which nurtures nature, not only human nature but all forms of nature.” Not so long ago few arts organisations considered the carbon footprint of, for example, their touring programme. Now a change has come about to such an extent that considering this is part of the funding requirements demanded by ACE. Now it is time to take this change further, so that arts organisations consider the carbon footprint of the bodies from which they receive finance.

The strapline of this conference is ‘artists shaping the world’, and even the Minister of Culture said this morning “the arts sit at the centre of the changes in our society”. A fundamental change in our society that needs to take place is to take our culture off the use of oil & gas in order to slow down the pace of climate change. The arts can, and must, play a central role in this, but this will not be done unless we cease to finance our arts institutions from the sponsorship of oil & gas corporations, such as Shell & BP.

* one of the parallel sessions, at Arts Council England’s SOTA Conference 2012, chaired by Alison Clark-Jenkins, Regional Director Arts Council England North-East

BP DESTROY OCEANS

2012-01-24T05:46:00.000-08:00

FLOE PIECE LIBERATE TATE ARCTIC ICE

2012-01-16T03:44:00.001-08:00

Floe Piece - Liberate Tate from You and I Films on Vimeo.

Floe Piece
Liberate Tate. Arctic Ice, canvas, light, water.

"The fact that BP had one major incident in 2010 does not mean we should not be taking support from them." - Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate.

[Floe Piece - an expression applied to sheets of ice not more than a furlong in length]

The Deepwater Horizon disaster did not end in 2010 for the communities affected; BP's harmful impacts are numerous and occur across the globe year on year. In 2010-11 BP pushed forward expansion plans into the Arctic in Alaska, Canada and Russia.

Oil extraction in this region is only possible because of melting ice caused by climate change. Spills in Arctic waters are immensely more complicated than elsewhere, and indeed BP is itself responsible for the largest oil spill on Alaska's north slope, at Prudhoe Bay in 2006, where the company continues to drill for oil.

This Arctic ice has been transported from the Arctic region to London, the home of BP; today (14 January 2012) it has been carried by Liberate Tate from Occupy London at LSX to Tate Modern's Turbine Hall.

The journey of this block of ice retraces the line of connection from BP's devastating impacts on ecosystems, communities and the global climate to Tate, an art museum complicit in this destruction though its support of the company's efforts to create a positive public image, a social licence to operate.

liberatetate.org

LIBERATE TATE'S SPOKESPERSON ON WHY FIGHTING BP SPONSORSHIP PICKS UP THE CAUSE OF TAHRIR SQUARE

2012-01-04T23:27:00.000-08:00

Photo by Immo Klink
Liberate Tate's "License to Spill" protest at Tate Britain's summer party, 2010

by Coline Milliard, ARTINFO UK
Published: January 4, 2012

Despite public protests, Tate Britain, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Opera House are renewing their sponsorship deal with BP, which will fork out £10 million ($15.62 million) to the institutions in the next five years. On December 19, Tate director Nick Serota explained that the board had "thought very carefully about this and decided it was the right thing to do." Tate trustee artist Bob and Roberta Smith, publicly disavowed the move, but many, including the Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones, feel that corporate sponsorship by the likes of BP is a necessary evil in the current economic climate.

Artists collective Liberate Tate has been — with Platform and Art Not Oil — at the forefront of the debate since 2010. The collective turned up with BP logo-embossed buckets of molasses at the Tate Summer party in 2010, and they are now starting a series of art commissions to "free art from the grips of the oil industry through creativity." G, an anonymous spokesman for the group, answers ARTINFO UK's questions.

You have been campaigning for two years, and together with Platform, presented Tate with a petition signed by 8,000 people asking them not to accept money from BP. What does this renewed sponsorship deal mean to you?

We had hoped that the trustees would demonstrate leadership and help take forward the art world and Tate as a public institution into the 21st century. The lack of ethical progression, however, was an expected blow given the entrenchment of BP in our cultural institutions to date.

In renewing this sponsorship deal, Tate is knowingly making itself, to some extent, complicit in BP’s many controversial operations around the world, including its tar sands extraction in Canada, the local conflicts in Papua New Guinea being exacerbated by its hugely problematic gas plant there, and its expansion into Arctic drilling with its Russian partner. Only by breaking its links with BP will the Tate board of trustees be acting in the best interests of Tate and the arts as well as affected communities, future generations, and the world we live in.

Why the focus on Tate, when BP also sponsors the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Opera House?

Tate likes to position itself publicly as a forward-thinking institution that takes climate change and human rights seriously as part of its cultural activities, so it seems particularly incongruous that it should have such an entrenched relationship with a corporate entity like BP.

[But] the issue is, of course, about oil and the wider cultural sector. There have been performances at the British Museum, and groups like Art Not Oil and Platform have chosen to engage with these other institutions, but we are committed to making this happen at Tate first and foremost. We believe Tate is supporting BP rather than the other way round. This association is damaging to Tate’s reputation and its relationship with an increasingly climate-conscious public.

You started Liberate Tate following a workshop on art and activism at Tate in January 2010, in which the curators asked you not to comment on Tate's sponsors. Do you feel that this renewed sponsorship deal means more censorship in the institution?

Some of us experienced an attempt by Tate to limit freedom of expression because of their fears about corporate sponsors. We have to assume that there are many other pernicious choices made by Tate and others due to oil money. This is not straight-forward ideological censorship, but marketised censorship that ultimately maintains the link between sponsorship and advertising at the expense of freedom of speech. Yet censorship is only one area of concern.

Your philosophy in a nutshell?

Free art from the grip of the oil industry through creativity.

How would you define your current relationship to the gallery?

Tate is the space in which we stage performances and other interventions which then resonate beyond the gallery in the art world and the public domain largely though mainstream and social media. We make provocations. Our artworks are site-specific and self-curated, necessarily situated in the honourable tradition of institutional critique, but we leave it to others to have direct dialogue with Tate itself.

How do you work with Art Not Oil and Platform?

We have a common goal and sometimes-common methods and initiatives with Art Not Oil and Platform. The art scene is very privileged to have Platform, and their research and links with communities affected by oil companies are invaluable in informing our performances. Art Not Oil are activists we greatly respect. We hope that by creating art inside the gallery we can contribute something extra and complementary to what these groups and others are doing.

Are the members of Liberate Tate anonymous? And, if so, why?

As an art collective we have a group identity which is paramount. Who we each are could become a distraction from the work we do. That is why, for example, we sometimes cover some of our faces in performances such as "License to Spill" (2010), when we disrupted Tate celebrating 20 years of their partnership with BP (against the ongoing backdrop of the Deepwater Horizon spill!) and in "Human Cost" (2011) in the Tate exhibition "Single Form." These are largely aesthetic choices though.

Some of us are artists with a public profile based around a very different set of practices and output. We include a number of staff from Tate and other oil-sponsored galleries who want to keep their jobs yet help their employer through the power of art itself.

Others are active in many walks of professional life. We are not seeking to get a name for each of ourselves or to make a living from our work as Liberate Tate so it just does not seem important most of the time, especially given our focus.

Could you tell me more about the "Tate à Tate" project? When did it come about and how do you hope to implement it?

"Tate à Tate" is an alternative audio tour of Tate, with sound works by commissioned artists, allowing anyone visiting Tate to be part of a Liberate Tate durational performance in an unsanctioned installation inside the galleries providing a problematised experience of the presence of BP within these spaces. The work takes place in three parts — Tate Britain, Tate Modern, and the boat journey in between the two. We have been lucky to work with artists such as Ansuman Biswas, Isa Suarez, and Phil England on the project.

All the recording and mixes are finished so we are now in production, and it will be unveiled in the coming months. Members of First Nation indigenous communities in Canada impacted by tar sands have already had a trial run when they were passing through London.

The Guardian's Jonathan Jones has called protests against the BP sponsorship "the stupidest and most misplaced of supposedly radical campaigns." How would you like to respond?

Yes, he said: "Why not do something useful like join Occupy? While protests around the world this year, from Wall Street to Tahrir Square, have picked the right causes and enemies, the BP art campaign is mistargeted, misconceived, and massively self-indulgent."

It is misguided to not see what Liberate Tate and our allies are doing as part of this global movement for public accountability of public institutions and for ending vested interests that are shutting down the possibilities of a better future. Many of us are active in Occupy and on Saturday 14 January, we are taking part in an afternoon event (2-6pm), "The Corporate Occupation of the Arts," at the Bank of Ideas that has been squatted by the Occupy LSX folks. We work with and in solidarity with artists and activists in the Middle East. Many oil companies like BP have a terrible track record of supporting repressive regimes like that of Mubarak that have tried to crush the Arab Spring, and sponsorship implicates art institutions in that. When you are targeting BP sponsorship of Tate, you are also supporting the uprising of Tahrir Square.

We welcome all commentators to this debate, even when what they might say is perhaps not really thought out. If you want to attack Liberate Tate knock yourself out — as Gandhi may not have actually said: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win."

In a time of severe funding cuts for the arts, what alternative to private sponsorship do you champion?

Firstly, for all sides of the debate around oil sponsorship of the arts, we need to know how much BP is giving Tate as it has been kept a secret. How much of the £10 million is coming Tate's way? A publicly known figure would provide a solid point of reference to discuss the value of BP sponsorship, and the practical steps in a move away from it.

Secondly, there is a difference between being against any sort of private sponsorship and being against oil companies in particular given they are some of the most reprehensible corporate entities. People have different views on the wider question of corporates and art even within the Liberate Tate collective. We would welcome a deeper and wider debate about private sponsorship models — we have never said we are against business supporting arts per se.

What we refuse to accept is that the art world has to be stuck in the 20th century in regard to how corporations are involved, especially with public galleries, when a company clearly has harmful impact on society.

Arms manufacturers and tobacco companies are no longer socially acceptable as partners. Is the art world really in total ethical stasis, not able to progress further? When we know what we do about climate change and oil, and what BP has done and how many artists and art lovers object to that, it is only a matter of time before the exclusion of oil companies is the next leap forward.

What is your next step?

There are more Liberate Tate artworks and commissions in the pipeline (sic). When Tate and the other arts giants agreed a new BP sponsorship deal, the London Evening Standard headline had a nod to our work. It said: THIS COULD GET MESSY. We quite agree.

The effort to end oil sponsorship of the arts intensifies. Our invitation for artists, art lovers, and other concerned members of the public to act to ensure that Tate ends its oil sponsorship remains open. Together we can imagine and bring about culture beyond oil, where art is put back into the service of life.

PLATFORM - THE CORPORATE OCCUPATION OF THE ARTS

2012-01-04T09:54:00.000-08:00

Posted on January 4, 2012 by Kevin Smith

The Corporate Occupation of the Arts. -OccupyLSX / The Bank of Ideas
Earl St. EC2A 2AL – Sat 14th Jan 2012. 2- 6pm

We’re taking part in this afternoon of presentations and discussions at the Bank of Ideas, an abandoned office block purchased several years ago by the bank UBS and squatted bu Occupy LSX. More info about it all below

Could there be a crueller indictment of an art world that is convinced of its moral superiority to mainstream culture than to be subsidized by one of the criminal financial forces that has brought our culture to its very knees?
Mat Gleason

Art is the ultimate emotional branding.
Brunswick International Corporate Communications Partnership.

An afternoon of talks by artists, activists, writers and academics to explore the parasitic and exploitative relationship between art and capital. We will discuss the politics of sponsorship; activism against sponsors, Bloombergism, the transformation of the Art School and the ideological takeover of the dissensual values of art.

· Corporations who refuse to pay £billions in taxes are fêted for their relatively paltry largess and are awarded privileged access to events and policymaking. Donations no longer fit within notions of ‘patronage’ or ‘philanthropy’ but are strategically targeted blue chip branding exercises. This is part of a much bigger drive towards the marketisation of the arts and the privatisation of cultural provision and public space.

· There is a long history of Art’s aesthetic and sensual pleasures being used to conceal ethical irresponsibility. Now though, the space of dissent and critique is commodified and art’s autonomy is turned against itself.

· Whist arts funding is slashed, and the public space decimated, the artist’s labour is being yet more intensively exploited. Dozens of Associate Lectureship have been axed, a 10% wage cut imposed on ICA staff and 800 interns work for free. All this whilst corporate capital turns its casino logic into spectacular saleroom values.

· In campaigns against BP’s sponsorship of the Tate and demonstrations at auction houses, activists have recently brought public attention how the arts are used to whitewash toxic reputations and in the appropriation of arts positive values and associations. No account is taken of the contradiction between the utter incompatibility between the ethical promise of the art world and the destructive activities of many corporations.

· As is usual in Occupy, our conversation will turn from analysis and critique of ‘what is going on’ into planning and strategy for ‘what is to be done’.

Organised by Andrew Conio. (University of Wolverhampton and Chelsea School of Art.)

Speakers

Andrew Conio. Introduction – The State Against Art
Platform. Licence to Spill – Big oil and the UK art scene.
Liberate Tate. Performance interventions in gallery spaces
John Beck (Newcastle University) and Matthew Cornford (University of Brighton). The Art School and the Culture Shed.
John Cussans. Protest Pedagogy.
Mark McGowan. There is No Law Against Art.
Dean Kenning. The Corporate Occupation of Art.
Freee. Mel Jordan, Andy Hewitt and Dave Beech. Economists are Wrong.
Precarious Workers Brigade. How Can we Fight the Marketisaton and Corporatisation of the Arts?
Discussion.

THE OIL SHOW EXHIBITION BY HMKV DORTMUND GERMANY

2011-12-27T22:38:00.001-08:00

TATE CONSIDERS ENDING BP SPONSORSHIP DEAL AFTER ENVIRONMENTAL PROTESTS

2011-12-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

Anti-BP protesters at Tate
Environmental protesters throw molasses on the steps outside Tate Britain in protest against its sponsorship deal with BP. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

Director of group that covers four galleries around UK says decision is due on partnership deal with BP, expiring next year
Alex Needham
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 December 2011 17.05 GMT
Article history

The Tate galleries are considering ending their 20-year partnership with BP after demonstrations by green campaigners.

Tate's director, Nicholas Serota, has said a decision will be taken over whether to renew its contract with BP "quite soon", after earlier this month being presented with a petition against the gallery's sponsorship by the oil company from 8,000 Tate members and visitors organised by pressure groups Platform, Liberate Tate and Art Not Oil.

Serota said: "You will not be surprised to learn that the whole question of the support from BP has exercised trustees quite seriously over the past two years. Both the trustees as a board but also the trustees through their ethics committee, which was instituted about four years ago, have looked very carefully at the question."

He added that the trustees had decided that "the good that has been done through the money that has come from BP for the gallery, and for the gallery's public, has been very profound". The current three-year sponsorship deal runs out in 2012.

Art Not Oil has also called for artists to protest against BP's sponsorship of next year's Cultural Olympiad and Festival of London. The group is calling for artists to submit work to a "BP-free Cultural Olympiad gallery" on their website.

"The Olympics has presented the company with the perfect platform for some aggressive rebranding," said the group, calling on artists to take up the "opportunity to expose the gulf between the company's rhetoric and its actions".

The oil company's sponsorship of British arts institutions including the National Gallery and the Royal Opera House, thought to be worth more than £1m a year, has attracted protests since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in April 2010. Two months later, five gallons of molasses were poured down Tate Britain's stairs at the gallery's summer party. Demonstrators have also let off dead fish attached to helium balloons in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, which had to be shot down with air rifles by gallery staff.

The issue of corporate sponsorship is set to become increasingly contentious as arts organisations are encouraged to make up the shortfall in government funding by soliciting private donations. Last week, two poets withdrew from the TS Eliot prize because it was sponsored by the investment management firm Aurum Funds. The Poetry Book Society, which organises the prize, struck the deal with Aurum after its arts council funding was withdrawn.

On Thursday, Jeremy Hunt said artists should support businesses who want to donate to the arts. Doing so "is encouraging good behaviour by corporations", the culture secretary told a meeting of the New Culture Forum, a rightwing arts thinktank. Encouraging philanthropy, Hunt added, was his top priority for the arts.

The Arts Index, launched by the National Campaign for the Arts last week, calculated that business contributions to the arts were down 17% from 2007-10, but Hunt said he hoped this year's figures would show an increase of around 6%.

BP maintained that it remained "committed" to its role with both the Cultural Olympiad and the London 2012 Festival. But a spokesman said the company would not comment on the Tate sponsorship before discussions about its renewal.

A spokesperson for the Cultural Olympiad said: "BP are a supporter of many cultural institutions in the UK and we value their support."

DECISION ON BP SPONSORSHIP OF TATE TO BE MADE SOON

2011-12-05T04:09:00.000-08:00

Tate Director Nicholas Serota says decision on BP-Tate sponsorship to be made soon
Posted on December 5, 2011 by Kevin Smith

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]

Nicholas Serota said that: “The Trustees have recognised that BP has supported the gallery over a 20 year period. They have been in a partnership with BP over that period and have decided not to withdraw from that partnership in the belief that the good that has been done through the money that has come from BP for the gallery, and for the gallery’s public, has been very profound. They are in the process of whether or not to extend the relationship. All I can really say today is that the views that you have registered will be conveyed to the Trustees. It is a decision that is going to be taken quite soon,” and added that “The Trustees will have a very difficult decision to make.” [3]

The presentation of the petition came at the end of another difficult week for Tate-BP relations. On Monday (28 November) a national newspaper revealed Tate Trustee Patrick has branded the company as a “disgrace” [4] and on Tuesday (29 November) a new publication, Not if But when: Culture Beyond Oil was launched, featuring a number of people from the arts speaking out against the sponsorship link. [5]

That a significant and growing number of Tate members and visitors are adding their voices to those of artists with national and international standing for Tate to cut ties with the oil company is a clear demonstration that Tate’s Board and senior management now need to urgently review the relationship with BP.

Chris Sands of Liberate Tate said: “Tate can no longer respond by simply stating that BP is an important sponsor of the arts. Tate’s visiting public and its own Members are saying in large numbers that maintaining a relationship with an oil company like BP is harming both the reputation of Tate and the experience of enjoying great art in a public gallery.”

Mel Evans of Platform said: “When Tate Trustees make the decision about whether or not to renew BP sponsorship, they need to take into account how much the context has changed in the last two decades since the sponsorship began. We know that climate change is the biggest threat we have ever faced on a global level, and we know that oil companies like BP are chaining us to a dangerously outdated energy model while also actively lobbying to undermine low-carbon legislation. Tate needs to find sponsors that are in keeping with its commitment to sustainability and the human rights agenda.”

Note to editors:

[1] Liberate Tate (www.liberatetate.org) is an art collective exploring the role of creative intervention in social change dedicated to taking creative disobedience against Tate until it drops its oil company funding. Contact: liberatetate@gmail.com www.twitter.com/liberatetate.

Platform (www.platformlondon.org) is an arts and research organisation bringing together environmentalists, artists, human rights campaigners, educationalists and community activists to create innovative projects driven by the need for social and environmental justice. Contact: info@platformlondon.org www.twitter.com/PlatformLondon.

Art Not Oil (www.artnotoil.org.uk) encourages artists – and would-be artists – to create work that explores the damage that companies like BP and Shell are doing to the planet, and the role art can play in counteracting that damage. Contact info@artnotoil.org.uk.

[2] The full text of the Open Letter to Nicholas Serota about BP (online here http://liberatetate.wordpress.com/open-letter-to-nicholas-serota/) is:

Dear Nicholas Serota,

I am writing to you as someone who has enormous respect for the cultural contribution that Tate makes to the world, and also as someone who is greatly concerned by the damage being caused by BP to ecosystems, communities and the climate. Apart from the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico spill, BP is also expanding into devastating tar sands extraction in Canada, is drilling in risky regions in the Arctic and as a company is responsible for more carbon emissions than the UK itself. There is a contradiction in Tate being committed to climate action while also being heavily associated to a company whose business model is binding us to a catastrophically dangerous future and outdated energy model. This association is damaging to Tate’s reputation and its relationship with an increasingly climate-conscious general public. It is for these reasons that I call on Tate to: 1) Take the necessary steps to disengage from BP as a sponsor, and stop allowing Tate to be used to deflect attention away from the devastating impacts that BP has around the world. 2) As part of that process, and as a show of your commitment to the national public debate about ethics and sponsorship, to disclose the amount that BP donates to Tate, as has been the subject of Freedom of Information requests.

[3] Nicholas Serota’s full response at the Tate Members AGM 2011 was as follows: “You will not be surprised to learn that the whole question of the support from BP has exercised Trustees quite seriously over the past two years. Both the Trustees as a Board but also the Trustees through their Ethics Committee, which was instituted about four years ago, have looked very carefully at the question. They are aware, of course, that there are members of the audience, both here and also more widely, who have expressed real concern at the continuing support BP have been giving.

“The Trustees have recognised that BP has supported the gallery over a 20 year period. They have been in a partnership with BP over that period and have decided not to withdraw from that partnership in the belief that the good that has been done through the money that has come from BP for the gallery, and for the gallery’s public, has been very profound. They are in the process of whether or not to extend the relationship.

“All I can really say today is that the views that you have registered will be conveyed to the Trustees. It is a decision that is going to be taken quite soon. I will certainly register to the Trustees the point that you have made today and, indeed, the number of Members that have signed this petition.

“The Trustees will have a very difficult decision to make, I think, in terms of their responsibility as Trustees of the charity, to take monies that are offered to them from organisations that are continuing to act in a manner that is not in any way running against the laws of this country; that are basically a company that is continuing to act in a way that many other companies do in terms of producing oil, which probably many of the people in this room have used in order to come to this very event. But they nevertheless need to weigh all the considerations and it is not an easy choice, I think, for the Trustees to make.”

[4] See The Independent 28 November 2011: Tate trustee reignites BP row ahead of Turner Prize: Patrick Brill brands oil company “a disgrace”, as campaign groups call for end of sponsorship deal

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/tate-trustee-reignites-bp-row-ahead-of-turner-prize-6268886.html

[5] The latest example, adding to previous letters in national newspapers, is a new publication by Liberate Tate, Platform and Art Not Oil, ‘Not If But When: Culture Beyond Oil’, was launched on 29 November 2011 and includes a section dedicated to representing a range of artists’ concerns, including written statements, videos, music and drawings (available to read online here: http://blog.platformlondon.org/2011/11/27/read-online-now-not-if-but-when-culture-beyond-oil/ ).

BP FACES FIERCE BACKLASH FROM GREEN GROUPS OVER NEW OIL WELL

2011-10-12T23:29:00.000-07:00

Campaigners warn that wildlife at Shetland site would be at 'significant risk' from any spill

By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor

Thursday, 13 October 2011

BP's plan for a controversial deep-water oil well off Shetland should be halted by the Government, four of Britain's biggest green groups said last night.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Friends of the Earth urged the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, to refuse consent for the oil giant's proposed North Uist well as any spill from it would pose a "significant risk to wildlife" in one of the UK's most environmentally sensitive areas.

In a joint letter to Mr Huhne, the groups' leaders expressed anger that none of them had been made aware of BP's "public consultation exercise" about the well – which ended last week without a single response from the public – and raised concerns about the difficulty of coping with a deep-water oil leak in the hostile conditions of the North Atlantic.

The Independent disclosed yesterday that BP's own worst-case scenario for a spill from North Uist, to be drilled at 1,290 metres, or 4,230ft, below the surface, would involve oil leaking at 75,000 barrels a day for 140 days. This would constitute the worst oil spill in history and one more than twice the size of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico last year that brought the oil giant to the brink of collapse.

BP admits that in the event of a spill, the Shetland Islands – home to the UK's richest seabird breeding grounds, with more than a million birds present in summer – "may be affected."

Last night's letter to Mr Huhne was from Mike Clarke, chief executive of the RSPB; Richard Dixon, director of WWF Scotland; Stan Blackley, chief executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland; and John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK.

The case for drilling the well is now being examined by Mr Huhne's Department of Energy and Climate Change, which can give or refuse approval.

The four leaders wrote to the minister: "We strongly urge you to refuse consent for this proposed well. It is less than two years since BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the lessons from this terrible incident are yet to be learned and applied.

"Allowing deep water drilling off Shetland is dangerous and could be very polluting. We believe there is a significant risk to wildlife and protected areas, both around the UK and beyond, from an oil spill that could result from BP drilling this well."

The green leaders also said they were "very disappointed" with BP's consultation process, "which we believe was wholly inadequate, particularly in its failure to proactively engage with key stakeholders such as ourselves".

The comment reflects anger at the perception that BP deliberately tried to bypass potential objectors to the well by giving the consultation exercise very little publicity. None of the groups, who all could be considered prime stakeholders, knew it existed until they saw yesterday's Independent.

OIL ORGY - STOP TAR SANDS

2011-10-12T01:58:00.001-07:00

WARNING ADULT CONTENT

“Oil Orgy” invades Energy Summit from You and I Films on Vimeo.

RENA CONTAINER SHIP HITS ASTROLABE REEF IN NEW ZEALAND AND SPILLS OIL

2011-10-09T03:14:00.000-07:00

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Blue penguin gets a cleanup from veterinarians after the oil spill from the Rena off the Tauranga coast

Rena container ship and oil spilt

IAN STEWARD, NICOLA RUSSELL, LOIS CAIRNS AND ANDREA PEARCE
Last updated 16:43 09/10/2011

The Prime Minister is demanding answers as to how the Rena container ship hit Astrolabe Reef and started spewing oil into the sea.

John Key was visibly riled by the situation when he spoke to reporters in Tauranga today.

He said the Rena had "ploughed into" the well-known Astrolabe Reef at 17 knots in calm conditions on Wednesday "for no particular reason".

Key said there were "serious questions to be answered" and two inquiries had been launched.

He said it was a "major ship" owned by a "significant international shipping company".

"We want to know why."

Key rejected criticism that the salvage and oil-recovery effort had been too slow saying he had flown over the ship and he could see it was a "very, very complex situation".

"I can give (locals) assurances that everyone is doing everything as fast as they can.''

Asked if the presence of international visitors and media for the Rugby World Cup meant it was a bad time for the accident to happen he said it would always have attracted media attention as it was such an unusual event internationally.

Key is due to fly to Christchurch this afternoon to watch the All Blacks quarter-final with crowds in Hagley Park.

Opposition parties, the Greens and Labour, have both claimed oil booms should be put down now to prevent toxic oil from reaching sensitive Bay of Plenty estuaries and wetlands.

And Labour are blasting the government for being '' woefully under-prepared.''

Green MP and marine spokesman Gareth Hughes says the government could ''lessen the risk'' of the deadly substance reaching vulnerable wildlife.

''It is going to be much easier to keep oil out of wetland mudflats than to have to clean it out afterwards,'' he said of a potential ''catastrophic spill'' from the container ship.

Maritime New Zealand is investigating using booms at Matakana Island and Maketu Estuary but there is no certainty, he said. It's also not clear if this will include Little Waihi Harbour.

''Both the Maketu and Little Waihi harbours are important recovering wetlands and should therefore be provided with oil boom protection immediately,'' he said.

''The urgency is real: Metservice now have a strong wind advisory in place for the Bay of Plenty with winds turning Northeasterly and gusting up to 40 knots on Monday.''

BARGE ARRIVES

The Awanuia, a a double hulled bunker barge capable of holding 3000 tonnes of oil, reached Rena this morning and officials say it will be a "matter of hours" before it can start receiving Rena's load.

Officials are desperate to get the oil off the ship which ran aground on Astrolabe Reef on Wednesday, leaking about 10 tonnes of oil into the sea.

Though naval architects say the ship is currently stable, forecast bad weather moving in tomorrow could change that and hamper efforts to avert a massive environmental contamination.

The oil that has already leaked into the sea is being sprayed with dispersant and today two vessels are undertaking on-water oil recovery.
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Health authorities have issued a warning that Bay of Plenty people should not eat seafood from water with visible oil contamination.

Medical Officer of Health Jim Miller said any seafood that had "off or petrol like odours" should be avoided.

He particularly cautioned against eating shellfish from Motiti Island which is the nearest land to the Rena.

Despite an apparent slowing of the oil spill, preparations are still being made for a larger event if the ship breaks up and sinks.

Shore assessments are being carried out in areas where oil could come ashore and the New Zealand Defence Force has personnel on standby should a clean-up be required.

WAKE-UP CALL

The Greens have called for a moratorium on all off-shore oil exploration as the grounding of the cargo ship Rena raises serious questions about the country's ability to deal with major oil spills.

It comes as Key last night sounded an ominous warning of a potential environmental disaster.

"It's going to be a huge [salvage] exercise and the prime minister believes we need to brace ourselves for a very significant event," a spokeswoman for Key told the Sunday Star-Times.

Environment Minister Nick Smith said the Rena "had the potential to be New Zealand's most significant maritime pollution disaster in decades".

Salvage crews are in a race against time to remove oil from the stricken ship and prevent further spills, as big swells and gale force winds are predicted for tomorrow.

Gareth Hughes, the Green Party's marine issues spokesman, said the accident should serve as a wake-up call for the government. "They need to put a moratorium on all drilling, including test wells, because what we're seeing is that Maritime New Zealand is stretched dealing with what would be considered a minor spill compared with what you saw in the Gulf of Mexico," he said, referring the BP disaster last year.

Key said the government was introducing legislation to ensure adequate environmental protections were in place if deep-sea drilling was undertaken.

"The prime minister would point out that there is no connection between deep sea drilling and a maritime accident of this nature. They are completely unrelated except that they both occur at sea," the spokeswoman said.

Resources were yesterday being sent from Australia, and four navy ships and 500 Defence Force personnel were put on standby, as salvage crews tried desperately to seal the ship's fuel tanks. Officials estimated that Rena has spilled about 20 tonnes of oil.

Hughes said New Zealand was not geared to cope with the potential disaster.

"We've had to wait days for international experts to arrive in New Zealand, we've had to wait days for equipment to come from Australia.

It highlights that a small country with little oil infrastructure faces considerable risks when we have oil leaking into our environment. This has to be a wake-up call for the government in regards to its deep-sea oil plans and energy strategy."

Labour leader Phil Goff said it was not possible to stop all oil exploration, "but we are going to make it conditional on every environmental safeguard being put in place to stop any disaster occurring. We cannot afford a disaster like the Gulf of Mexico".

The spokeswoman for Key said: "This is a very complex and very difficult operation and the reality is the salvage operation will take weeks, not days. New Zealand has one of the best salvage teams in the world on the job - they are the experts and it's important that they are allowed to do their work."

Key is to meet today with local officials and the accident will be discussed at tomorrow's cabinet meeting.

The Star-Times spoke to a Tauranga resident, Tommy Kapai, who sailed his yacht within metres of the Rena yesterday. He said he could "taste" the oil from the grounded vessel. He said it looked like a ghost ship. "There is no life on it, it looks like an old, tired granny of the sea.

"You can see the red of the bottom of the boat and then as you come closer you start smelling the oil and then you can actually taste it in your mouth. It's gross."

He saw a dead penguin coated in oil floating past.

The Rena is carrying about 1700 tonnes of oil - making a spill a potentially bigger environmental disaster than the 2009 Queensland one, when 230 tonnes of fuel spilled into the Coral Sea, north of Moreton Bay. That cleanup took 16 months and cost $5 million.

Salvage expert Jon Walker, flown in from Singapore, said the company hoped the first pumps could be activated this afternoon but he admitted that the weather was a factor for the success of the mission.

Strengthening nor-easters and increased swell are forecast for tomorrow ahead of a storm on Tuesday.

Maritime pollution response co-ordinator Mick Courtnell said capacity was being marshalled to deal with the worst case scenario - the ship sinking and all the oil being released.

If the ship sinks, another danger arises as some of the containers contain the alloy ferrosilicone which, if it contacts water, gives off hydrogen - which is a fire risk.

Walker said salvaging the ship would require removing the containers off the ship. As the Rena does not have cranes, another ship with a crane would have to be parked alongside to attempt the delicate task.

The ship could then be pulled by tugs off the reef.

THE ESCALATION OF BP'S LIABILITY

2011-10-07T23:37:00.001-07:00

Gulf Coast residents continue to express their anger towards BP [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

As oil, sickness and contamination persist, Gulf residents and lawyers file thousands of lawsuits against the oil giant.
Dahr Jamail Last Modified: 03 Oct 2011 14:11

"If you got caught humping another woman - [if] you're both naked and caught in the act - you'd want BP to explain to your wife how it didn't happen."

This colorful analogy was proposed by Dean Blanchard, a seafood distributor on Grand Isle, Louisiana, to explain oil giant BP's continuing machinations to evade liability in the aftermath of the April 2010 disaster.
Louisiana seafood distributor Dean Blanchard, with recently found oil taken from a nearby marsh [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

During a recent discussion in his office, Blanchard told Al Jazeera that the fishing waters off Louisiana are only producing one per cent of the shrimp they formerly produced. "Half of the local fishermen have shut down," he stated. "They are dying. And [as] for the fishing, every day they are hauling dead porpoises in front of my place. I have a claim filed with BP, but none of us in the seafood business are being paid."

Speculating that he may soon have to close down his company, Blanchard spoke for hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents who remain angry and frustrated when he added: "I worked 30 years to establish my business, and now BP has destroyed my life."

Fallout and responsibility

In a key investigative report released on September 14, the US government heaped most of the blame for the oil disaster on BP, which now faces a raft of criminal and civil litigation and billions of dollars in potential damages.

The report concluded that BP violated federal regulations, ignored safety concerns and crucial warnings, and made careless decisions during the cementing of the well nearly two kilometres underwater.

"That report summarised what we already knew, and it will help establish the punitive damage case against the defendant [BP]," New Orleans-based attorney Stuart Smith, representing more than 1,000 cases against BP, told Al Jazeera.

Smith has been litigating against oil companies for 25 years, and in 2001 was lead counsel in a case that resulted in a $1bn verdict against ExxonMobil.

"The fastest way to lose a toxic tort case is to rely on the government or the defendant to collect the evidence," explained Smith, whose firm has spent more than $2m for its client's cases by collecting samples and data and having them analysed by experts.

As litigation against BP continues to mount, several studies have confirmed Smith and Blanchard's concerns about the deep impact of BP's oil disaster.

One recent study carried out by experts at Auburn University concluded that mats of oil that remain submerged on the seabed could pose a long-term risk to coastal ecosystems. Large quantities of tar balls and oil mats have washed ashore, or have been uncovered by recent storms, at Gulf Shores and Orange Beach, Alabama, as well as at several beaches in Louisiana and in Pensacola, Florida. A recent Al Jazeera over-flight of the area near BP's capped Macondo well, the origin of the April 2010 disaster, revealed a long swathe of oil and sheen.

Dr Wilma Subra, a chemist and MacArthur Fellow, has - since autumn of 2010 - been conducting tests on seafood and sediment samples along the Gulf for chemicals present in BP's crude oil and toxic dispersants.

"Tests have shown significant levels of oil pollution in oysters and crabs along the Louisiana coastline," Subra told Al Jazeera. "We have also found high levels of hydrocarbons in the soil and vegetation."

In response to the question of what local, state and federal governments are doing about the ongoing chemical exposures, Subra declared: "There is a lack of concern by the government agencies and the [oil] industry. There is a leaning towards wanting to say it is all fixed and let's move on, when it is not."

Blanchard, who perceives the federal government's inadequate response to the BP disaster as evidence of its collusion with the oil giant, meanwhile joked: "We're fixing to have a fundraiser to try to buy our politicians back from BP."

Health effects

On June 1, 2010, BP board chairman Henric Svanberg announced, in accordance with the company's pledge to provide $20bn in compensation to persons harmed by the disaster: "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case in BP. We care about the small people."

According to attorney Stuart Smith, however, neither oil companies nor the US government properly tends to citizens who suffer as a result of their policies.

"I've spent 25 years suing the oil and gas industry, and the government has never been on the side of the people," Smith informed Al Jazeera. "But the extent to which they've behaved that way this time is unbelievable. The government has not even acknowledged any health impact [from the disaster]."

Over the course of his career, Smith has represented a number of chemical plant employees with a condition known as toxic encephalopathy, a degenerative neurological disorder that can result in permanent brain damage. Caused by exposure to toxic substances, symptoms of the condition include memory loss, concentration difficulties, fatigue, seizures, depression, light-headedness, headaches and nausea. Similar symptoms are now being experienced by residents of the Gulf Coast.

Indeed, since July 2010, Al Jazeera has spoken with scores of Gulf residents, fishermen, and clean-up workers who have blamed negative health effects on the chemicals from BP's oil and dispersants.

"The government knew about … peer-reviewed studies of what happens when people are exposed to these chemicals, and millions have been exposed," Smith stated. "Peer-reviewed scientific literature shows that you'll have these health problems, and yet the government does nothing."

Al Jazeera recently spoke with Steven Aguinaga, a 33-year-old father of three who confirmed that he acquired "critically high levels of chemicals" in his body after swimming with his friend Merrick Vallian at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010.

"At the time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good," said Aguinaga. "I've been extremely sick ever since."

Al Jazeera has covered this subject extensively, and, given that BP has just confirmed filing a plan with US regulators to pursue its first deepwater oil work in the Gulf of Mexico since the April 2010 disaster, concerns of future problems persist. According to BP's application, the company wants to drill four new wells at a depth of 1770 metres (244 metres deeper than the Macondo well) in an area approximately 300km off the Louisiana coast.

Ecological litigation

A biological study published on September 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that effects of the oil on a small Louisiana marsh fish, the killifish, could be an early warning sign of trouble ahead for fish populations.

"The message that seafood is safe to eat doesn't necessarily mean that the animals are out of the woods," said Andrew Whitehead, an assistant professor of biology at Louisiana State University and a lead researcher in the study, which found that the fish were being exposed to oil in the sediment. The study indicates that the same kinds of health and reproduction problems are likely to occur in the Gulf as were witnessed among herring, salmon, and other animal populations in the aftermath of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil disaster, which prompted significant losses among various species.
Residents of Grand Isle, Louisiana, display their signs of protest [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

Doug Inkley, a senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, said in a written statement: "This study is alarming because similar health effects seen in fish, sea otters, and harlequin ducks following the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska were predictive of population impacts, from decline to outright collapse."

Unfortunately for BP, the Centre for Biological Diversity (CBD) is now suing the company for $19bn. A group that utilises the law to protect the lands, waters, and climate that species need to survive, CBD has an unparalleled record of legal successes, winning 93 per cent of its lawsuits.

"We have sued them under the Clean Water Act," Kieran Suckling, the executive director and founder of the CBD, told Al Jazeera. "The way the Act works is it levies a fine based on the number of gallons [of oil] spilled and how malicious or criminal BP was acting when the spill occurred."

According to Suckling, BP "should be made to pay $19bn under the Clean Water Act and in so doing be found to be criminally negligent. That $19bn should [consist of] entirely new funds, not including anything they've already put out, and those funds should be dedicated to Gulf Coast restoration."

CBD estimates that "approximately 6,000 sea turtles, 26,000 dolphins and whales, 82,000 birds, and countless fish and invertebrates may have been harmed by the disaster."

Cyn Sarthough, meanwhile, is the executive director of the Gulf Restoration Network (GRN), an environmental group active in all of the states along the Gulf of Mexico. GRN, like CBD, sues companies and government organisations that violate environmental laws.

"Much of our litigation is against the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), the group that was formerly the Minerals Management Service (MMS)," Sarthough told Al Jazeera. "There is also a challenge to BP's original oil spill response plan. We are engaged in this with several other claimants … [The plan BP] had in place was inappropriate and failed to meet safety requirements because it grossly exaggerated BP's response capabilities."

BP's liability: 'From bad to disastrous'

The Gulf Coast-based law firm Brent Coon and Associates (BCA) is considered one of the world's foremost experts on BP, and has successfully sued the oil giant in the past.

Brent Coon was the lead attorney in a case against BP for a 2005 explosion at its refinery in Texas that killed 15 workers. His firm forced BP to accept full responsibility and to compensate the victims and their families.

BCA now represents more than 5,000 claimants from BP's Gulf disaster and has been appointed by the Plaintiff's Steering Committee to head several key sub-committees relating to discovery.

"We represent a cross section of claimants, who range from people who worked within the oil industry, to shrimpers, captains, deck hands, restaurant and condominium owners," Coon told Al Jazeera in April. "We want full restitution and reparations for harm done by BP."

Coon reiterated that other companies involved in the disaster, such as Halliburton and Transocean, need to be held accountable as well. He remarked:

"From what I've seen, after representing thousands of people who were made sick or died from petrochemical industry hazards over the years, companies like BP, Exxon, Citgo, Shell, and others do not mind killing people as the cost of doing business, even when it's their own employees. I've seen it time and time again."

Coon additionally argued that, "[u]nless you criminally prosecute these people and make them pay for their decisions, they do not have a sufficient deterrent for the way they do business. Unless the government steps in and criminally prosecutes these bastards and hold them accountable, nothing is going to change".

According to Coon's calculations, BP will be forced to pay out another $10-20bn to cover economic claims. Some experts expect the total could be much more than that, even as high as $30bn.

Lawyer Stuart Smith agrees, writing recently that the federal government report on the 2010 disaster has caused the "state of BP's legal liability" to go "from bad to disastrous".
Attorney Stuart Smith feels confident his clients will be compensated by BP [Erika Blumenfeld/Al Jazeera]

He believes the report presents "incriminating new evidence" that "increases the likelihood that criminal charges will be brought" against the oil giant, and predicts the new findings will push BP to offer large settlements to spill victims, particularly commercial fishermen and charter boat captains.

"The company wants to put this nightmare in its rearview mirror as quickly as possible," added Smith, "both from a PR and business perspective." Corroborating this viewpoint is a recent Reuters report citing an anonymous BP insider as declaring: "We would like everything settled as soon as we can, otherwise you have lingering reputation issues and investor uncertainty."

Judge Carl Barbier, who will be hearing the civil damages claims against BP, has set a trial date for February 2012. According to Reuters, another source close to BP has anticipated: "I expect that early next year you will see the mother of all settlements."

If BP is found to have been grossly negligent, which the company denies, it could be fined over $21bn in Clean Water Act fines alone.

Given that the latest government report links the accident to BP's cost-cutting efforts, Professor Zygmunt Plater at Boston College Law School said claimants could receive a multiple of any compensatory award, which would mean that even at a 1:1 punitive-to-economic damage ratio, BP may have to offer at least an additional $5bn to cover punitive awards.

Smith is urging people with ongoing litigation against BP to stay the course: "Clients that hold out will, in the end, be compensated, because BP won't want to go to trial [since] the punitive damages will be so great."

He, along with Coon, feels his clients are going to get what they deserve.

"In light of this latest federal report, I think it may take more than $30bn to cover all the cases," said Smith. "One thing's for sure, BP is feeling the heat. We'll see early next year just how much the company will put on the table to make all this liability disappear, like so many gallons of crude."

Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

BP AND TRANSOCEAN ARGUE OVER FRESH GULF OF MEXICO OIL 'LEAKS''

2011-09-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

The US Coast Guard has warned that more oil may have leaked from the Deepwater Horizon rig, causing a new round of finger-pointing between BP and Transocean.
The oil rig 'Deepwater Horizon' catches fire, Port of Venice, Gulf of Mexico

Photo: Rex Features

By Rowena Mason
5:18PM BST 28 Sep 2011

There have been several sightings of oil near the site of last year's Gulf of Mexico accident in recent months. On Wednesday, the Coast Guard issued a warning to Transocean, the owner of the rig, saying it "may be financially accountable for debris removal costs and damages" if the rig or riser pipeline are found to be the cause. There was no evidence oil came from the well itself.

However, Transocean denied responsibility, saying: "If a volume of oil has remained in the riser [a pipe], there is no question that it is oil from BP's Macondo well. As owner and operator, BP is the responsible party for all fluids that emanated from the Macondo well head, and BP has repeatedly acknowledged that responsibility. Transocean has accepted responsible party status for rig fluids, such as diesel fuel, consistent with the law. We take this very seriously, and we are committed to working with BP, the Coast Guard and other parties to investigate."

BP immediately distanced itself from the cause of the new oil leaks. "The Macondo well is not leaking oil and is not the source of the sheens. We will continue to co-operate with the Coast Guard to investigate other possible sources, including Transocean's riser," it said.

BP's share price fell 1pc to 399.8p, as a fresh arbitration hearing with its four Russian billionaire partners got under way on Wednesday. A tribunal will decide whether BP broke an agreement with the Russians by trying to do a deal with Rosneft.

Separately, Bob Dudley, BP's chief executive, said it was applying to develop more gas in India, after its $7bn deal with Reliance Industries.

BP WANTS TO RESUME DRILLING IN THE GULF

2011-09-28T02:35:00.001-07:00

RBS PROTEST SONG "WANNA PUMP THE TAR SANDS (PRICE TAG)

2011-09-28T01:42:00.001-07:00

GLENCORE AND BP NAMED AS WORST OFFENDERS AT TOP OF TAX SECRECY TABLE

2011-09-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

Subsidiaries mapped: BP boasted the most convoluted corporate structure

By Rob Davies
10:11 PM on 19th September 2011

BP and Glencore have been named as the worst offenders in a report detailing the extraordinary lengths to which companies go to cover up their tax affairs.

Pressure group Publish What You Pay (PWYP), which campaigns for greater transparency on tax from mining and oil firms, mapped the subsidiaries of multi-national firms to determine which were the most secretive.

In the mining sector, Glencore (down 17.7p to 437.075p) won the dubious honour of keeping its tax payments the most closely guarded.

Of 46 subsidiary companies, nearly half were based in ‘secrecy jurisdictions’, where requirements to publish detailed accounts and tax data are minimal.

Miners BHP Billiton (down 67p to 1934.25p) and Rio Tinto (down 120p to 3505.25p) operated far more subsidiaries, 462 and 926 respectively, but just 20 per cent were in secrecy jurisdictions and just 15 per cent at Anglo American (down 116.5p to 2407.25p).

Glencore said it ‘provided all the disclosure required of a FTSE 100 company listed on London and Hong Kong’.

BP (6.15p to 407.3p) boasted the most convoluted corporate structure, with some 1,491 subsidiaries, of which 25pc were in secrecy jurisdictions.

Shell (35.5p to 2057.25p) has 1273, 41 per cent of them in tax havens.

Raymond Baker, director of research group Global Financial Integrity, said: ‘This is about getting rich secretly and not having to account for such riches locally,’ he said.

PWYP wants mining and oil companies to publish tax payments on a country-by-country basis to show their contribution to host countries.

The campaign group’s report come amid legislative moves in the US and Europe to clean up the natural resources business.

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-2039164/Glencore-BP-named-worst-offenders-tax-secrecy-table.html#ixzz1YT1i0uml

THE TITANIC DISASTER MEANT A LIFE OF SHAME FOR IT'S CEO. NOT SO BP'S TONY HAYWARD

2011-09-16T23:35:00.000-07:00

'Moving on' from the Deepwater Horizon environmental catastrophe, Tony Hayward is now set to make millions from a Kurdistan oil deal

former BP CEO Tony Hayward
'Public disgrace – the fact of it, whether justified or not – no longer presents an obstacle to powerful careers' … Ian Jack on Tony Hayward. Photograph: LARRY DOWNING/REUTERS
Ian Jack
guardian.co.uk, Friday 16 September 2011 20.30

Do the rich and powerful ever sink? After an explosion wrecked the Deepwater Horizon rig last year, killing 11 workers, nearly 5m barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico over the following three months. It was the biggest marine oil spill in history – an environmental catastrophe with effects that will be felt for many years. BP, to whom the rig was under contract, set up a $20bn (£12.6bn) fund to compensate the victims, selling assets as it watched its share price tumble. City and Wall Street rumours suggested BP couldn't survive. The company's chief executive, Tony Hayward, came to be vilified across America for what looked like insouciance in the face of a seemingly unstoppable disaster, a man with a flair for bad PR. In the early days of the leak he offered the consolation that the spillage was tiny compared to the size of the ocean. Later, as the oil came ashore, he apologised for the disruption to the livelihoods of fishing and tourist communities, and said that he too wanted his "life back". "He wouldn't be working for me after any of those statements," President Obama said, and by the end of the year, he had left BP.

What was to be his life thereafter? Hayward was 53 when he parted from the company he'd served for nearly 30 years, eventually on a salary of $6m.

The pension and severance package must have been generous. He could have reflected bitterly on the unfairness of his role as the lightning conductor for blame – as he said, Deepwater Horizon was a complex accident involving several companies – and then "moved on". He might have run a charity for tarred seabirds or, as a geologist, spent days with a hammer on the Dorset coast. Directorships could have supplemented his income. It would have been a quieter life – more time on the yacht – but by no means a poor one.

But Hayward did none of these things. Instead, he created an investment vehicle called Vallares with initial capital of £100m provided by Nat Rothschild, two other businessmen and himself. Stock market flotation raised £1.35bn, and this month Hayward, as Vallares's chief executive, announced that new shares worth a similar amount would be sold to finance a merger (technically, a reverse takeover) with a Turkish company, Genel Energy International, which holds rights to oil reserves in the Iraqi province of Kurdistan. Hayward will replace the Turkish entrepreneur Mehmet Sepil as Genel's CEO, clearing the way to a stock exchange listing that may have been problematic had Sepil, who was fined £1m last year for insider trading, remained in day-to-day charge rather than assuming his new role as president.

The company aims to be included in the FTSE 100 next year. The potential is enormous. In Hayward's words, Kurdistan may be "the last big on-shore 'easy' oil province available for exploration by private companies anywhere in the world", with reserves equivalent to the North Sea's before those were exploited. Already, thanks to his initial stake, Hayward is several million pounds richer.

I read this in the business pages last week. Elsewhere, the same paper recorded that a Manchester man had been jailed for 18 months for handling stolen goods (a 37in TV) in the riots. No one has accused Hayward of criminal behaviour, whatever the record of his new company's president, but the contrast in the consequences of two successive summer outrages is a striking one. The Deepwater Horizon crisis made Hayward the focus of American loathing in 2010, just as this year's looters had Britain's public and politicians calling for punishment and revenge.

But capitalism has encouraged Hayward to "move on" in a way it won't be doing anytime soon to anyone found with a stolen TV in the boot of their car. Public disgrace – the fact of it, whether justified or not – no longer presents an obstacle to powerful careers.

A century ago, disgrace had a different effect. The chairman and managing director of White Star Line, J Bruce Ismay, felt the full force of American contempt when the Titanic went down in 1912, and he never recovered. Many of the charges against him echo those raised against Hayward: that he neglected safety in pursuit of competition and profit. Hadn't he persuaded his captain to work up maximum speed while the ship entered an ice field? Hadn't he refused to equip the ship with more lifeboats because they would over-crowd the promenade deck? Nothing was ever proven.

Incontestably, however, he had escaped on a lifeboat when more than 1,000 of his company's passengers, including women and children, waited to be saved. He made a plausible case for his behaviour – he jumped into the boat at the last moment, he insisted, because no more women and children answered his call – but the shame never died. For HG Wells, capitalism's "noble pretension" had jumped downwards with Ismay: "He was a rich man and a ruling man, but in the test he was not a proud man." The powerful had been seen to be no better than the rest of us.

Like Hayward, he ran a company that had become only superficially British. Inheriting White Star from his father, his first act as owner had been to sell it to the Wall Street behemoth J Pierpont Morgan, who included it in the portfolio of his interests known as International Mercantile Marine. Like Hayward, he faced hostile Washington committees of inquiry who grew angry with his blocking answers: "I do not know" and "I could not say" (Ismay); "I am not a cement engineer" (Hayward). Neither man could charm the media. To American reporters, Ismay came across as disdainful and arrogant ("J Brute Ismay"); and in any case, he had previously made an enemy of the press magnate William Randolph Hearst, whose papers now crucified him as a cowardly aristo from the old world.

The details of Ismay's subsequent life are contained in a fine new biography by Frances Wilson. The next year, aged 50, he quit White Star and spent increasing amounts of time at his house in Connemara. A kind of normality continued. As Wilson writes, he understood the difference between surviving and being alive. He remained a director of railway and insurance companies, but travelled to meetings with the carriage blinds drawn. His unhappy marriage went on being unhappy. He never returned to New York in the 24 years he had left to live, and a household rule banned the Titanic from mention.

Reports, probably invented, said that when Irish children passed his gate they chanted: "Coward, coward, coward."

Pauline Matarasso, Ismay's granddaughter, has written of how much family conversation liked to stick firmly to facts: "Without a moral dimension, without words like hubris, competition, guilt, greed, hedonism, the event [the Titanic] was drained of emotion like a stuck pig of blood. It was their way of surviving; they could cope with a corpse." Her grandfather, she added, was "a corpse himself".

One might argue that disgrace didn't sink him, any more that it sinks the powerful today. One might also wonder how much he regretted passing up the opportunity to sink, literally, like his 1,500 dead passengers and crew. But at best, Ismay persisted as an undersea creature, shy and seldom seen. He never got his life back. This is what shame and feelings of personal responsibility did, once upon a time.

BP BEARS BRUNT OF BLAME FOR DEEPWATER HORIZON CATASTROPHE

2011-09-15T00:59:00.001-07:00

BP station in Alexandria, Virginia
BP’s share prices rose almost 5% but fell back after report was published Photograph: Molly Riley/REUTERS

Report says oil company is 'ultimately responsible' for oil spill but rig contractors also implicated in some areas

Damian Carrington and Alex Hawkes
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 14 September 2011 18.27

A key US federal report has focused the blame for the worst offshore oil spill in US history on BP, but criticised its contractors sufficiently for the markets to push BP's share price up. Amid a string of failures, BP's "cost or time-saving decisions… were contributing causes of the blowout," the report concluded.

Assigning ultimate responsibility for the disaster – and the billions of dollars of clean-up and compensation costs – will take years of legal action, but Wednesday's investigation report was seen as a significant indicator as it was conducted by the regulator responsible for offshore activities. The blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010 killed 11 people and led to almost 5 million barrels of oil being spilt into the ocean.

BP's share price rose almost 5% in London on rumours the report would help avert the company being found grossly negligent in future, which would increase its financial liabilities hugely. But it fell back after the report was published, finishing the day up 3.5% at 395.1p.

The investigation, jointly conducted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (Boemre) and the US Coast Guard, stated that a "central cause" of the blowout was the failure of a cement barrier in the drilling apparatus. The cement job was done by a contractor, Halliburton, but the report states that BP was, as designated operator, "ultimately responsible" for safety on the rig. It also stated that, in the days before the blowout, BP had "made a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added incremental risk, and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job".

BP and Halliburton are already engaged in a bitter legal fight, with the most recent development being the filing of claims against BP in the Texas state court on 1 September, accusing BP of defamation and amending its existing action in Louisiana to include fraud.

The Boemre/Coast Guard investigation also found that staff from BP and Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig and was responsible for safe operations aboard, had failed to react until it was too late to heed warning signs that arose during well tests. The report noted that Transocean staff had admitted to BP they had "screwed up by not catching" a similar warning sign six weeks before the blowout and that BP had failed to "take steps to ensure the rig crew was better equipped to detect kicks".

BP had experienced "personnel changes and conflicts" and BP's operations at the well were $58m (£37m) over budget at the time of the blowout, the report found.

The investigation found evidence for violation of seven federal regulations. BP are named alone in three, BP and Halliburton in one, BP and Transocean in another, and all three companies in the final two.

BP said the report concluded that the accident was the result of multiple causes involving multiple parties. "From the outset, BP acknowledged its role in the accident and has taken concrete steps to further enhance safety and risk management throughout its global operations," BP's statement said. "We continue to encourage other parties to acknowledge their roles in the accident." A presidential commission on the BP-Deepwater disaster concluded in January that there had been a "system-wide problem".

A spokesman for Transocean said: "The report confirms the primary cause of the incident was the catastrophic failure of the cement in the Macondo well, and finally puts to rest all previous allegations that improper maintenance of the blowout preventer contributed to the tragedy.

"We take strong exception to criticisms of the Horizon drill crew, nine of whom perished fighting to save their fellow crewmembers and the rig, for the actions they took in the face of such an unprecedented emergency," he added.

The report stated there was no evidence that the regulations themselves were a cause of the disaster, but did find that stronger regulations might have reduced its chances. The Obama administration created Boemre to replace the Minerals Management Service, the regulator at the time of the blowout. The service was disbanded following accusations that it had been "captured" by the oil industry. But Congress has yet to pass any legislation to address safety gaps highlighted by the disaster.

Only one person, BP engineer Mark Hafle, is mentioned by name in the report. Hafle's failure to investigate or resolve anomalies detected during a critical test possibly contributed to the failure of the crew to detect the initial influx of gas and oil. Hafle also chose not to run a cement log, a test that evaluates the quality of the cement job, in violation of BP procedures, the report found. Hafle refused to testify before the federal panel in August 2010, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

DON'T BE FOOLED BY BP- OLYMPIC GAMES

2011-09-13T00:59:00.000-07:00

By PLATFORM LONDON

CORRUPTION AT BP

2011-09-09T07:48:00.000-07:00

Bob Dudley, chief executive of BP, will be a member of the British trade delegation going to Russia with David Cameron. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

By Terry Macalister guardian.co.uk, Friday 9 September 2011

BP's anti-corruption drive in Russia picks up 365 offences

TNK-BP joint venture confirms 37 criminal cases under way as chief executive Bob Dudley prepares for Moscow trade visit

Bob Dudley, chief executive of BP, will be a member of the British trade delegation going to Russia with David Cameron. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images

BP's difficulties in Russia intensified on Friday as its TNK-BP Russian joint venture confirmed that 365 cases of corruption or other violations of company rules had been identified by security staff.

TNK-BP said 92 employees had been disciplined and 37 criminal cases were under way as a result of an internal drive to combat fraud which was enhanced nine months ago with the launch of a new "security hotline".

The Moscow company said the voluntary release of the figures and the work being done underlined its determination to root out dishonesty, but industry experts said it also highlighted the scale of BP's problems inside TNK.

The information was released just days before BP's chief executive, Bob Dudley, flies into Russia as part of a trade delegation alongside the prime minister, David Cameron, who is to hold meetings with his counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

Dudley is already struggling to deal with a raid on BP's Moscow headquarters by armed police as part of a $3bn (£1.88bn) legal compensation claim being launched by a group of TNK-BP's Russian shareholders.

Dudley's ambitious plans to undertake a share swap and Arctic drilling programme with state-owned oil group Rosneft collapsed in May, at a time when the British company needed some successes following the Gulf of Mexico spill last year.

BP is understood to have been actively pushing the TNK business to adopt tough internal procedures. Maksim Barskiy, deputy chairman of TNK-BP, said "integrity" was now one of the company's core values, and the steps taken showed it would not tolerate any form of corruption or fraud.

"We shall continue to improve our anti-corruption system, while at the same time seeking out advanced methodology and applying the best international practice in this area," said Barskiy.

"We will also act openly and make public any significant violations of business ethics. This will help not only to combat fraud and corruption more effectively, but will also attract to the company employees and partners for whom honesty is the cornerstone of their personal values."

The Russian business, which produces almost a quarter of BP's global hydrocarbon production, is also trying to ensure greater transparency from its contractors, it says.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has made the elimination of official corruption an important part of his political programme, after a 100% year-on-year increase in cases reported.

Criminal proceedings were launched against 10,000 officials in 2010, one-third of them for taking bribes, the government said earlier this year.

The official visit by Cameron is important as relations between the UK and Russia have been difficult. Putin has not met a British prime minister for four years.

Dudley will be hoping to get a better understanding of the government's view of BP, since the Kremlin refused to support the company in the row with TNK shareholders which scuppered its attempt to forge the Rosneft deal.

BP's situation was not helped when Medvedev called on his deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin, to step down from the chairmanship of Rosneft in the middle of talks. Rosneft signed an alternative deal with BP's rival ExxonMobil in August.

Tate Modern to power ahead with art in oil tanks...(Oh the irony!)

2011-09-09T00:49:00.000-07:00

By Alice Baghdjian
LONDON (Reuters) - Derelict oil tanks and forgotten industrial spaces hidden in the bowels of the Tate Modern art museum in London will open to the public in summer 2012, providing a new area to "revolutionise" the museum's work, directors said on Thursday.

The opening of the enormous and atmospheric oil tanks in the former power station on the banks of the Thames will provide flexible, subterranean "lunar" spaces and form the foundation for a further expansion of the world's most visited modern art museum. The expansion will also include a new 64-metre high building and is set to be completed in 2016.

"The oil tanks will give visitors a new way to explore and experience art at Tate Modern. Architecturally they are fantastic raw spaces, which are being carefully converted for public use without losing any of their unique industrial character," Tate Modern Director Chris Dercon said.

This completed space will not only showcase objects, but live performances, film, sound, learning spaces, piazzas and areas for socialising, including a terrace offering panoramic views of the British capital.

"The museum is not just about viewing and judging objects but mental and bodily exercises - we want to provide a new form of social space for interactions," Dercon said.

The costly Tate Modern Project development is estimated to reach 215 million pounds, 70 percent of which has already been raised through unnamed donors.

However, the expansion is necessary to maintain the museum's status as the one of the leading art organisations in the world and "set the benchmark" for the future of museums, according to the director.

"Museums are a constant work in progress and are constantly changing and transforming. That is the definition of contemporary arts today. The Tate Modern expansion is a response to the ever-changing field of contemporary art, and it will influence that field," Dercon said.

The project reflects a broader change in the contemporary art world over the last 10 years tending towards the use of media such as film and video, Dercon said.

"Contemporary art is performance, projection -- we need to provide spaces for events, live arts, time-based arts, as well as small events such as lectures, symposiums and films," Dercon said.

The finished project will not only expand gallery space by 70 percent, it will also increase visitor capacity of the museum.

The building is currently designed for two million visitors a year but often sees crowds in excess of five million and during 2010-11 this figure reached 7.4 million.

"The Tate Modern is the most popular modern art museum in the world and our aim is to make it better still. The Tate stands as a defence against all that is ugly and unimaginative in our world and is a storehouse of contemporary imagination and ideas that is open to all - no matter what age or where they come from" Chairman of Tate Trustees, John Browne said.

The opening of the oil tanks - the first phase of the Tate Modern Project - will coincide with London's hosting of the Olympics in 2012 and forms part of the larger Cultural Olympiad.

The museum is the hub of modern art in Britain and will host work from artists including Damien Hirst, Edvard Munch and Tino Seghal in 2012.

(Edited by Paul Casciato)
Business Traveler

THE SPY WHO QUIT M16 FOR BP'S OIL CASH

2011-09-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

The spy who quit MI6 for BP's oil cash... and set in train Labour's love-in with tyrant Gaddafi

By Steve Bird

He likes to proclaim in his Who’s Who entry that he enjoys the arts of Islamic calligraphy and falconry in his spare time.

But one boast the veteran Arabist Sir Mark Allen is unlikely be making to the pinstriped cronies he mixes with in London’s clubland is that he was the man who brought Colonel Gaddafi in from the cold.

Or that he forged close links with Gaddafi’s son, Saif, who has a PhD from the London School of Economics, which tarnished its name accepting vast sums from the Gaddafi clan.
Arabist: Sir Mark Allen is said to have forged close links with Gaddafi's son, Saif

As it happens, Sir Mark is on the advisory board of the LSE’s centre for the study of international affairs. He is also an adviser to the Monitor Group, the global consultancy firm and equity firm that Saif used to carry out the research for his doctorate.

As an MI6 spy, Sir Mark has for decades moved in a shadowy world that could have come from the pages of a John le Carré novel.

More...

* Torture victim to sue Britain: Libyan rebel leader could be in line for £1million payout
* Britain handed rebel to Gaddafi torturers: Devastating secret files in Libya reveal UK 'crossed the line' to prop up tyrant
* Rebel troops poised to strike remaining Gaddafi strongholds after negotiations break down

The 61-year-old father of two is thought to be the author of a fawning 2004 letter to Gaddafi’s ruthless former intelligence chief, Musa Kusa, discovered in an abandoned Libyan government building.

The letter appears to show that MI6 provided intelligence which led to the rendition of a Libyan dissident who was tortured.
Ruthless: Gaddafi's former intelligence chief Musa Kusa is thought to have received a fawning letter from Sir Mark

Ruthless: Gaddafi's former intelligence chief Musa Kusa is thought to have received a fawning letter from Sir Mark

Quite what all those other Libyans who were also tortured at Mr Kusa’s behest – he is known in Libya as the ‘fingernail-puller-in-chief’ – will make of the letter’s solicitous enquiries after the Kusa family is open to question.

Few Britons can claim to have met Gaddafi as many times as Sir Mark.

It was he who paved the way for Tony Blair to visit the dictator in Tripoli in 2004 and strike a pact with the dictator who promised to renounce weapons of mass destruction.

The deal helped secure extensive drilling rights in Libya for the oil giants BP and Shell, and it came as little surprise that Sir Mark should soon move seamlessly at around this time from the diplomatic service to become a £200,000-a-year adviser to BP.

The key to Sir Mark’s extensive contacts in Libya lies in his obsession with the Middle East. From Catholic private school at Downside in Somerset he went up Oxford to study Classics but quickly changed to Arabic.

From university he went to Jordan, bought a camel and explored the country. It was there that he fell in love with falconry, a sport he had dabbled in since the age of 14 and one mastered to an art by the Bedouin tribes.

He went on to study at the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies, a British ‘spy school’ in a village near Beirut.

At 23 he joined the Diplomatic Service and became known as one of the ‘camel-core Arabists’. To this day, Sir Mark can be seen occasionally wearing his black and white Palestinian keffiyeh, the traditional Arab headdress regularly worn by the late Yasser Arafat.
Acquaintance: Few Britons can claim to have met Gaddafi as many times as Sir Mark

Acquaintance: Few Britons can claim to have met Gaddafi as many times as Sir Mark

Working under diplomatic cover in Abu Dhabi and Cairo, he quickly developed contacts in the Arab world that were ‘second to none’. In 2003, he met Gaddafi and set in train Labour’s love-in with the tyrant. He was even said to have held a secret London meeting with Kusa, the Libyan spy chief, in the Travellers Club in Pall Mall. That summer, sanctions against the country were lifted.

But in 2004 Sir Mark quit the service early when he learned he would not be succeeding his boss Sir Richard Dearlove as head of MI6, and joined BP, although he never quite left his old diplomatic role behind.

In 2007, Sir Mark had made two telephone calls to Jack Straw, the then Justice Secretary, to discuss a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, although BP insists it had not lobbied specifically for Megrahi’s inclusion in any deal.

It just so happened that negotiations over prisoners were blocking a £15billion oil drilling deal that Sir Mark was helping to broker between BP and the Libyan regime. Weeks after those telephone calls, Mr Straw allowed Megrahi to be part of the prison transfer agreement with Libya. It was a decision that put the White House on a collision course with the UK. And last year the American Senate Committee announced that it wanted to cross-examine the former spy over his role in the shameful affair.

In one of Sir Mark’s books, Arabs, he admits he has ‘avoided’ naming sources, adding: ‘Those who read it and see their influence in it will know how much I owe them.’ How much he owed Musa Kusa is clear from the tone of that 2004 letter.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2034059/Sir-Mark-Allen-The-spy-quit-MI6-BPs-oil-cash--set-train-Labours-love-tyrant-Gaddafi.html#ixzz1XIbFeIl9

The BP Oil Disaster: Blaming Individual Consumers for Capitalist Destruction

2011-09-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

The BP Oil Disaster: Blaming Individual Consumers for Capitalist Destruction
by Ian Angus
Global Research, September 13, 2010
Climate and Capitalism

Following the BP/Deepwater oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, many commentators have tried to explain why it happened. Many blame greed and arrogance in BP’s executive offices. Others blame it on the Military-Oil-Government alliance that views free-flowing oil (and free-flowing oil profits) as something to promoted at all costs. But some writers identify a different cause. Bonus-seeking executives, corrupt politicians and oil-hungry generals all played a role, but they were only front men for the real villains – consumers.

“Who’s Really to Blame for the BP Oil Spill? We Are,” by U.S. green activist Dave Chameides, is typical:

“The bottom line is, no matter who did their work poorly, or who shirked their responsibilities, at the end of the day, we are the ones who are responsible for the disaster at hand.

“That’s right, we are the ones responsible.

“BP, like any other oil company, is in the petroleum game for one reason and one reason only: money. And where does that money come from? It comes from us.” [1]

Similarly, a Guardian article by British academic Mark Coeckelbergh was headlined, “We’re all to blame for the oil spill.”

“Moreover, and perhaps most important, we should not only consider responsibility for oil production but also for oil consumption. Business and finance are not isolated from our own choices. Companies such as BP can only do what they do because we want what they sell. We’re all too happy with cheap oil. …

“As consumers, we continue to depend on oil in various ways and therefore maintain the oil-hungry system that makes oil companies drill in deep water and undertake other risky activities. “[2]

These are just two of many such articles. [3] All promote a simple lesson: If only “we” would wean ourselves of our oil addiction, then “they” would stop destroying the environment. If “we” would just use less oil, then “they” wouldn’t have to drill in environmentally sensitive areas like the Gulf of Mexico.

As Al Gore wrote a few years ago: “All of us contribute to climate change through the daily choices we make … you can begin to take action and work toward living a carbon-neutral life.” [4]

Buy green products, drive less and save the world.

Such views rest on the implicit assumption that corporations – indeed the capitalist economy as a whole – are driven by consumers’ desires and choices, as displayed in the market. Economist Mark Perry of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, explains:

“Consumers are the kings and queens of the market economy, and ultimately they reign supreme over corporations and their employees. … In a market economy, it is consumers, not businesses, who ultimately make all of the decisions. When they vote in the marketplace with their dollars, consumers decide which products, businesses, and industries survive — and which ones fail. ”[5]

Perry is echoing the opinions of the influential libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises:

“When we call a capitalist society a consumers’ democracy we mean that the power to dispose of the means of production, which belongs to the entrepreneurs and capitalists, can only be acquired by means of the consumers’ ballot, held daily in the marketplace.” [6]

This view, usually called consumer sovereignty, is widely held, not just by conservative economists but by commentators of many political stripes. It is conventional wisdom in the worst sense of the term, a dominant superstition that is assumed to be obviously true and so is never questioned.

But there are many reasons to believe that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The following are just four of them.

1. The market is manipulated

Fifty-three of the one hundred largest economies in the world are corporations. Exxon Mobil alone is larger than 180 countries. [7] In 2000, Fortune magazine reported that the 500 largest industrial corporations had revenues equal to two-thirds of all U.S. production. [8]

Those corporate behemoths constantly use their immense economic power to influence consumers’ choices. As a result, the balance of information and persuasion in the consumer goods marketplace is overwhelmingly weighted in favor of sellers and against buyers, for corporations and against consumers.

Michael Löwy writes:

“Contrary to the claim of free-market ideology, supply is not a response to demand. Capitalist firms usually create the demand for their products by various marketing techniques, advertising tricks, and planned obsolescence. Advertising plays an essential role in the production of consumerist demand by inventing false “needs” and by stimulating the formation of compulsive consumption habits.”[9]

Michael Dawson argues convincingly that advertising has to be understood as part of a much larger marketing process that aims “to make commoners’ off-the-job habits better serve corporate bottom lines.”

“Big businesses in the United States now spend well over a trillion dollars a year on marketing. This is double Americans’ combined annual spending on all public and private education, from kindergartens through graduate schools. It also works out to around four thousand dollars a year for each man, woman, and child in the country. …”

Dawson calls this process a form of “class struggle from above.”

“On our side of such struggles, within broad limits – for example, we must eat, drink, and sleep – we have the power to choose what we do with our free time, and we fight to make that time as fulfilling as possible. Meanwhile, big businesses have the power to implant objects, images, messages, and material infrastructures in our off-the-job behaviour settings, and, thereby, to influence the choices we make in our personal lives. …”[10]

As liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith insisted, the immense sums spent on advertising “must be integrated with the theory of consumer demand. They are too big to be ignored.” This, he said, “means recognizing that wants are dependent on production…. [which] actively through advertising and related activities, creates the wants it seeks to satisfy.”[11]

This is not to suggest that consumers are helpless victims of all-powerful marketing monsters. Consumers frequently resist being manipulated, and specific advertising campaigns often fail. But by spending a trillion dollars a year on marketing, corporations don’t just promote individual products: they set the terms under which the market operates, define the range of permissible choices, and promote the constant expansion of needs and purchases that their profits depend on. They wouldn’t spend the money if it wasn’t working.

2. Consumers aren’t equal

Competition among consumers is also grossly unequal. “Consumer democracy” is rendered meaningless by the fact that a few consumers have most of the votes, because they have most of the money.

It’s sometimes argued that inequality of wealth doesn’t matter, because the rich are vastly outnumbered – our combined wealth lets the rest of us outvote the rich in the market. That sounds good, but it just isn’t true. The rich don’t just have more money than us as individuals, they have more than us collectively.

A recent study of the global distribution of household wealth, published by the prestigious World Institute for Development Economics Research, revealed just how much more the rich own than the rest of us.

“The richest 2 per cent of adult individuals own more than half of all global wealth, with the richest 1 per cent alone accounting for 40 per cent of global assets.

“The corresponding figures for the top 5 per cent and the top 10 per cent are 71 per cent and 85 per cent, respectively.

“In contrast, the bottom half of wealth holders together hold barely 1 per cent of global wealth.

“Members of the top decile are almost 400 times richer, on average, than the bottom 50 per cent, and members of the top percentile are almost 2,000 times richer.”[12]

Study after study leads to similar conclusions.

* In Australia, eleven very rich individuals own more than the country’s 800,000 poorest households combined. [13]
* The richest 5% of Americans own more than everyone else in the U.S. combined. [14]
* The 147 individuals who topped the 2002 Forbes “World’s Richest People” list had total wealth equal to the total annual income of three billion people, half the world’s population. [15]

Such gross inequality exposes the term “consumer democracy” for the fraud that it is. The capitalist market is a plutocracy: we all participate, but a tiny minority of very rich people has decisive influence.

3. Market choice is restricted

While consumers have some ability to choose among a variety of products, they can’t choose products that capitalists choose not to offer. Buyers face a “proffered world of micro-choices, where Ford versus Chevy is a live issue, but cars versus trains is most certainly not.” [16]

The market is also restricted by political, social and economic decisions – past and present – that few consumers have any ability to influence.

North America’s automobile-intensive culture, for example, is the product of a multi-pronged, multi-year campaign by the oil and automobile industries, beginning in the 1930s, to limit public transit, pour billions of public dollars into building roads, enforce zoning restrictions and building programs that encouraged urban sprawl – and at the same to promote the car as the quintessential symbol of success, freedom and modernity.

“Journalists never tire of pointing to the love of the automobile in the United States. But such ‘love’ is more often than not a kind of desperation in the face of extremely narrow options. The ways in which cars, roads, public transports systems (often notable by their absence), unban centers, suburbs, and malls have been constructed mean that people often have virtually no choice but to drive if they are to work and live.”[17]

There is even less choice when it comes to oil – it is so pervasive in every aspect of production and distribution that one analyst has justly called it “the stuff without which nothing else happens.” [18]

Indeed, it’s nearly impossible to buy a household product that isn’t partially or completely made from oil-derived chemicals. These are just a few examples:

Ammonia, Anesthetics, Antifreeze, Antihistamines, Antiseptics, Artificial limbs, Artificial Turf, Aspirin, Awnings, Balloons, Ballpoint Pens, Bandages, Basketballs, Bearing Grease, Boats, Cameras, Candles, Car Enamel, Cassettes, Caulking, CDs & DVDs, Clothes, Cold cream, Combs, Cortisone, Crayons, Curtains, Dashboards, Denture Adhesive, Dentures, Deodorant, Detergents, Dice, Diesel fuel, Dishes, Dresses, Drinking Cups, Dyes, Electric Blankets, Electrician’s Tape, Enamel, Epoxy, Eyeglasses, Fan Belts, Faucet Washers, Fertilizers, Fishing Boots, Fishing lures, Fishing Rods, Floor Wax, Folding Doors, Food Preservatives, Footballs, Glycerin, Golf Bags, Golf Balls, Guitar Strings, Hair Coloring, Hair Curlers, Hand Lotion, Heart Valves, House Paint, Ice Chests, Ice Cube Trays, Ink, Insect Repellent, Insecticides, Life Jackets, Linings, Linoleum, Lipstick, Luggage, Model Cars, Mops, Motor Oil, Nail Polish, Nylon Rope, Oil Filters, Paint, Paint Brushes, Paint Rollers, Panty Hose, Parachutes, Percolators, Perfumes, Petroleum Jelly, Pillows, Plastic Wood, Purses, Putty, Refrigerant, Roller Skates, Roofing, Rubber Cement, Rubbing Alcohol, Safety Glasses, Shag Rugs, Shampoo, Shaving Cream, Shoe Polish, Shoes, Shower Curtains, Skis, Soap, Solvents, Speakers, Sports Car Bodies, Sun Glasses, Surf Boards, Sweaters, Synthetic Rubber, Telephones, Tennis Rackets, Tents, Tires, Toilet Seats, Tool Boxes, Tool Racks, Toothbrushes, Toothpaste, Transparent Tape, Trash Bags, TV Cabinets, Umbrellas, Upholstery, Vaporizers, Vitamin Capsules, Water Pipes, Wheels, Yarn [19]

That’s not to say that people shouldn’t conserve, shouldn’t try to be as green as possible. Of course we should. But only radical social and economic change can possibly free us from dependence on oil. That choice isn’t available in the market.

4. Consumers don’t control production

In his article blaming consumers for the BP oil spill, Dave Chameides (who calls himself “Sustainable Dave”) recommends remedial action: “Stop driving your car one day a week … Ride your bike.”

That’s a good idea … but bear in mind that your bicycle’s tires, brake pads, handle grips, cable sheaths, lubricant, paint and other components are all made from oil. The metal was smelted, and the frame was formed and assembled, in factories that depend on oil. The finished bike was delivered to the shop in a diesel-powered truck driving on asphalt (oil again) roads.

The point, as environmental sociologist Alan Schnaiberg and his colleagues point out, is that even though consumers may decide what to buy from among the products that capitalists put on offer, they don’t get to choose how those products are made.

“While individual consumers may be the ultimate purchasers of some of the products of the new technologies, decisions about the allocation of technologies is the realm of production managers and owners. … [I]t is within the production process where the initial interaction of social systems with ecosystems occurs and where the key decisions about the nature of social system-ecosystem relationships are made…..

“The decision of which alternative forms of production will be offered consumers is not in their hands. It remains in the hands of a small minority of powerful individuals … who are empowered by their access to production capital. It is in those decisions where social systems (the producers’ access to capital and labor, and their assessment of potential liability, profitability, and marketability) and ecosystems (the producers’ access to natural resource inputs and ecosystem waste sinks) first interact.” [20]

Michael Dawson makes a similar point:

“Ordinary product users remain shut out of major economic decisions. Corporations plan, design, and sell goods and services according to their own profit requirements, without providing any means of subjecting basic productive priorities to popular debate and vote.” [21]

Even if we accept the farfetched idea that oil companies drill new wells only to please consumers, no one can reasonably suggest that consumers somehow forced BP to cut every possible corner, suborn regulators, violate safety guidelines, and worse. Those decisions were made in BP’s executive offices, and consumers had no say.

“In the end,” writes environmental policy professor Thomas Princen, “the idea of consumer sovereignty doesn’t add up. It is a myth convenient for those who would locate responsibility for social and environmental problems on the backs of consumers, absolving those who truly have market power and who write the rules of the game and who benefit the most.”[22]

Blaming Individuals for Capitalist Destruction

If the idea that consumers are in charge makes little sense for the capitalist economy as a whole, it is completely absurd for the oil industry. As New York Times columnist Bob Herbert points out, working people simply don’t count in this system:

“The fact that 11 human beings were killed in the Deepwater Horizon explosion (their bodies never found) has become, at best, an afterthought. BP counts its profits in the billions, and, therefore, it’s important. The 11 men working on the rig were no more important in the current American scheme of things than the oystermen losing their livelihoods along the gulf, or the wildlife doomed to die in an environment fouled by BP’s oil, or the waters that will be left unfit for ordinary families to swim and boat in.

“This is the bitter reality of the American present, a period in which big business has cemented an unholy alliance with big government against the interests of ordinary Americans, who, of course, are the great majority of Americans. The great majority of Americans no longer matter.”[23]

Nevertheless, as Michael Dawson writes, whenever mainstream thinkers comment on today’s social ills, they always “blame the little folk”

“Ordinary product users, who, because their purchases can be used to accuse them of choosing what they get, usually take all the transferred blame for capitalists’ costly, socially irrational actions.” [24]

It’s true that producers must sell their products, but the idea that consumers therefore control corporate behaviour is ideology, not fact. Immensely wealthy corporations decide what to produce and how to produce it. They spend billions to promote specific products and to protect their power. They allow us to choose – but only among the narrow range of options that they believe will be profitable.

In the Gulf, BP did what every capitalist corporation does – it kept costs down to keep profits up. Its irresponsible actions were bound to cause a disaster eventually – but if the company had lucked out this time, if the explosion hadn’t happened, BP’s executives and shareholders would have been rewarded for producing offshore oil more cheaply than more cautious competitors. That’s the way capitalism works.

The immediate cause of this particular disaster was BP’s greed for short-term profits. The long-term cause, of this and many other disasters, is an irrational grow-or-die economic system that is totally dependent on oil, on “the stuff without which nothing else happens.” A system in which private profit always takes precedence over the environment and human lives.

The journalists, pale greens and others who blame individual consumers are trivializing the problem and distracting attention from the social roots of environmental destruction. No matter how sincere they may be, they are making it harder to achieve real solutions.

This article was first published in Climate and Capitalism,1 an online journal focusing on capitalism, climate change, and the ecosocialist alternative which is edited by Ian Angus.
Related Climate & Capitalism articles

* Conspicuous consumption and destructive wealth: The case of Ira Rennert2
* Murray Bookchin on Growth and Consumerism3
* Growth and Consumerism: Nature or Nurture? 4
* Do Consumers Cause Climate Change?5
* Barry Commoner: The Illusion of Consumer Sovereignty6

Notes

[1] Dave Chameides. “Who’s Really to Blame for the BP Oil Spill? We Are.”7 Care2, May 12, 2010.

[2] Mark Coeckelbergh. “We’re all to blame for the oil spill.8” Guardian. June 9, 2010.

[3] Some other examples:

* Who’s To Blame For The BP Disaster?9
* The Bp Oil Spill: Who’s to Blame?10 (See comment by ‘Martin Smith’)
* The Oil spill…..who’s to blame? 11
* BP oil spill – who’s to blame?12
* Breaking Down the BP Gulf Spill Blame Game13

[4] Al Gore. An Inconvenient Truth. New York: Rodale, 2006. p. 305

[5] Mark Perry. “Consumer, Not Corporate, ‘Greed’ Is Ultimately Behind Layoffs.” 14Macinac Center for Public Policy, January 7, 2002.

[6] Ludwig von Mises. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951. p. 21

[7] James Gustave Speth. The Bridge at the Edge of the World. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. p. 62

[8] Douglas Dowd. Inequality and the Global Economic Crisis. London: Pluto Press, 2009. p. 59

[9] Michael Lowy. “Advertising Is a ‘Serious Health Threat’ – to the Environment.” Monthly Review, January 2010. p. 20-21

[10] Michael Dawson. The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005. p. 1, 134. See also Dawson’s excellent website with the same name.15

[11] John Kenneth Galbraith. The Essential Galbraith. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2001. p. 35,

[12] James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolf. “The World Distribution of Household Wealth16.” United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, February 2008. p. 7

[13] Calculation courtesy of Dick Nichols. The eleven are the ten men and one woman from Australia on the Forbes magazine list of the world’s billionaires. The 800,000 households are the poorest decile (10%) according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

[14] Jonathon Freedman. “Don’t Be Fooled by Europe’s Mood.”17 The Guardian, May 9, 2007.

[15] Eric Toussaint. Your Money Or Your Life: The Tyranny of Global Finance. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2005. p. 34.

[16] Dawson. The Consumer Trap. p. 144.

[17] John Bellamy Foster. Ecology Against Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2002. p. 101

[18] David Strahan. The Last Oil Shock. London: John Murray, 2007. p. 116.

[19] based on http://www.ranken-energy.com/Products%20from%20Petroleum.htm18

[20] Kenneth A. Gould, David N. Pellow, and Allan Schnaiberg. The Treadmill of Production: Injustice and Unsustainability in the Global Economy. Paradigm Publishers, Boulder, 2008. p. 20, 22

[21] Dawson. The Consumer Trap. P. 144.

[22] Thomas Princen. “Consumer Sovereignty and Sacrifice: Two Insidious Concepts in the Expansionist Consumer Economy.” In Michael Maniates and John M. Meyer, editors, The Environmental Politics of Sacrifice. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. p. 152

[23] Bob Herbert. “More Than Just an Oil Spill.”19 New York Times, May 21, 2010.

[24] Dawson. The Consumer Trap. p. 144.

Ian Angus is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Ian Angus

PLATFORM'S TATE TOUR

2011-07-30T02:07:00.001-07:00

Platform
Promoting creative processes of democratic engagement to advance social and ecological justice

PLATFORM works across disciplines for social and ecological justice. It combines the transformatory power of art with the tangible goals of campaigning, the rigour of in-depth research with the vision to promote alternative futures.
Home › Blogs › Kevin Smith's blog
Coming soon - the 'Tate a Tate' audio tour

Earlier this year, working alongside Liberate Tate and Art Not Oil, we made a call out to commission a sound artist to create an 'alternate Tate audio tour' - a work of site-specific sound art that would be themed around the issue of BP sponsorship of Tate. We were overwhelmed with almost 40 responses, and in the final shortlist, the quality of the ideas was so high, that we ended up choosing three of them instead of just one. The idea now is that the tour won't be restricted to just one gallery space - the three pieces will correspond to Tate Modern, Tate Britain and the riverboat journey in between the two of them.

The artists that are working on the different pieces are:

• Ansuman Biswas (Tate Britain)
• Phil England and Jim Welton (Tate Modern)
• Isa Suarez, Mark McGowan and Mae Martin (Tate riverboat)

The tour is going to be launched in Autumn. We don't want to give away too much about the content, but all three pieces are shaping up to be very distinctive, and we're hoping that this unsanctioned sound installation inside Tate galleries will provide visitors with a new experience of the presence of BP within those spaces. Now is a good time to once again thank the many people who contributed to our crowd-funding drive that has made this project possible - it's as much about the vote of confidence in the aims of the project as it is about the money.

This work comes at a time when BP is ramping up the promotion of its sponsorship activities in the run-up to the Olympics. Its first major TV ad campaign focused almost exclusively on its cultural and sports sponsorship and said pretty much nothing at all about its primary product. In the adverts sportspeople are seen in museums and in one case a runner is filmed on a pristine beach. BP’s sponsorship of arts institutions like Tate is clearly not an act of philanthropy, it’s a very cheap piece of PR to detract attention away from the devastating impacts its causing around the world.

For those who may have missed it, don't forget to check out the amazing video of Reverend Billy and the Church of Earthalujah performing an exorcism of BP from Tate Modern Turbine Hall. We knew it would be entertaining, but I think everyone was surprised by how it was also very moving and powerful.

TATE IN SPONSORSHIP DEAL WITH TAX DODGERS VODAPHONE

2011-07-26T22:59:00.000-07:00

Tate announces partnership with Vodafone

25 July, 2011
by: Spoonfed Arts Team

Tate announces latest corporate partner...

Tate Modern

Another week, another announcement of a big corporate tie-in from Tate. The second week of July saw London's most famous art institution team up with a Nigerian bank and now they've just announced a new partnership with everyone's favourite phone provider, Vodafone.

The partnerhsip will launch on Thursday with the catchily named Tate Debates, a weekly online discussion on the Tate blog. Over the course of 2011 Vodafone will also be working in support of Tate's various “digital activities”.

Now, we hate to make predictions about such things, but this looks like it's asking for trouble. Vodafone have been in the news a lot recently for allegedly not paying a £6 billion tax bill, and being let off by Dave Hartnett, the big boss man at Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, despite, according to Private Eye, advice to the contrary from HMRC's own lawyers. This has provoked outrage, with UK Uncut protestors staging sit-ins in various Vodafone stores across the country.

In recent times Tate itself has been extensively criticised for its ongoing relationship with BP, by the likes of No Logo author Naomi Klein, corgi-eating performance artist Mark McGowan and musician/artist/polymath Billy Childish, whilst Tate Modern has played host to its fair share of demonstrations from various anti-BP protestors. It's therefore safe to say that people care deeply about where Tate take their money from and we suspect the Vodafone tie-in is not going to be a popular one. UK Uncut are probably plotting their next move already.

REV BILLY'S NOTES ON TATE EXORCISM

2011-07-26T22:53:00.001-07:00

The Exorcism of Tate Modern, Caffeinated at 40,000 ft.
by Reverend Billy Talen on Tuesday, July 26, 2011 at 10:40am

We wrote “Excorcise BP from the Tate Modern” in our press release. We used the phrase easily, and people took it and ran with it. “Drive out the Devils.” “Exorcising the Taint from Tate” and so on. Everybody had their own slant. But all of us were glibly plugging in a basic ritual from old priesthoods, going back through Jesus to the first nations.

Exorcism - the act of driving out a dark spirit that has possessed a person or a place, by commanding it to leave in the name of a more powerful power, in our case the life of the Earth - this is one of the oldest of our human rituals. However, exorcisms are also embedded in the arts of our culture like little noticed but powerful micro-climates.

I’m listening to Muddy Waters sing “I'm Your Hootchie Cootchie Man” on one of those audio feeds in the British Airways 767. Atlantic Ocean in the windows. Muddy Waters makes me want to go on to Howlin’ Wolf. That’s one tributary of magic - up from New Orleans. By the time they were throwing sticks in Chicago in the 50’s – what had the African ritual become? Well, a sexualized parody, but in the funny threat there is something dark and focused. Waters says, “I’m gonna mess with you.” That makes me want to continue on to Little Richard, the medicine man with multiple genders, the radical faerie exploding with incantations, the Tutti Fruttis and Good Gollies ringing out across puritan America.

We want to find a new kind of power to use against the destroyers of life, the coal companies and the Pentagon, the marketers setting the bait for babies, and the Wall Streeters with their damaging false prosperity. Our protests that look like parodies of 60’s marches – and I’ve served my country in a hundred of ‘em! - that’s a form of dissent that has “lost its magic.” The on-line petitions, the “encourage your congressperson!”, - well that’s a pale imitation of the magic of democracy. Democracy as actual magic? Example: When Abraham Lincoln gave his Malice Toward None speech and Frederick Douglas followed him into the White House with his analysis of it. That political speech is artful magic.

Tim DeChristopher out-bidding the oil companies for pristine southern Utah. THAT was magic. He called the auctioneers on their theatre, and taught us all how naked the Emperor had become. His hex-prayer was to just recite higher and higher numbers of imaginary wealth. Tim declared that he was the richest man in the room. He imitated their empty power ritual – and then became powerful himself. His jail time will have its magic too, and we will walk in the land he saved from George Bush’s friends while we wait for him and he waits for us. What Tim did – you could call it art, or politics, or law, or medicine – all of those words and none of them. The Earth spoke through him and re-united all those old categories. The feds want to keep it legal, but his power is deeper than that.

Whole sections of our culture have slid into a kind of provincialism, because they aren’t singing about, poeming about, painting about – the Earth’s crisis. You can’t be hip ignoring life itself. The wasteland of the arts is a painful thing for those of us who grew up in that world. Now serious actual magic – even just the possibility of it - is forgotten. What we have now is technique and careerism. Broadway has become the provinces. It is not primary culture. Whole theatre seasons go by without life of the Earth in the storyline of any play, at a time when the physical life of the Earth is in the throes of dramatic pain.

But the incredible six-months long Miro exhibit at the Tate Modern – with BP money backing it? Here we have the destruction of meaning. If the Director of the Tate meets you at a cocktail party and says, “Well mobsters have been financing the arts since the Medicis.” You tell that guy to look in the window. The Thames is an oceanic estuary which at high tide is about 4 feet below the edge of the Tate’s lawn. The Tate has actually hung a climate change exhibit, paid for by fossil fuels money, while the Thames rises in the window. Doesn’t that being-possessed-by-dark-spirits-is-the-real-world-honey cycle need to be broken by some high-velocity mockery?

Beauty wants to begin again. We climate change resisters need to go back to when communicating wasn’t separate from life. Miro has much in his work that is from the Earth, bio-morphic shapes, as if he knows where life comes from. He is at home with the comedy of fundamental particles. He could be painting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, that is, before the dark spirits of British Petroleum changed the picture.

------

If you got to the end of this long writing – will you suggest some authors who are looking into these kinds of questions? Caffeinated at 40,000 ft. I fell like I opened a doorway

BP FUCKING THE FUTURE

2011-07-26T00:34:00.000-07:00

REV BILLY EXORCISES TATE FROM BP OIL SPONSORSHIP

2011-07-19T01:24:00.001-07:00

REV BILLY LAYS HANDS ON TATE MODERN

2011-07-16T08:09:00.001-07:00

Come on down! Reverend Billy,well known for performing excorcisms in Tesco's and suchlike,lays hands on TateModern: casting out demon of #BP’s oil sponsorship monday @5.30 : http://bit.ly/LiberateTate Revernd Billy has recently performed at Granby Street Toxteth Liverpool8 to help save houses from being demolished and at this years 'Latitude Festival' in Suffolk. Watch more episodes & subscribe: http://revbilly.com/podcast Sign up for our e-bulletin: http://revbilly.com/bulletin What is The Church of Earthalujah? http://bit.ly/EarthalujahExplained

Activists target BP at gallery | News

2011-06-14T23:30:00.000-07:00

Activists target BP at gallery | News

2011-06-09T16:00:00.000-07:00

6 min - 7 Jan 2011 - Uploaded by youandifilms
Henry Basil from the Lutselk'e Community shares his experience of living with the Tar Sands Industry. Produced by You and I Films

END OIL SPONSORSHIP OF THE ARTS

2011-06-09T01:03:00.001-07:00

End oil-sponsorship of the arts
This promenade theatre from Platform - activism, education and the arts of the City of London followed the flow of oil and money from banks to insurance companies to art galleries. They are taking bookings for groups of academics, students or other interested parties to repeat the performace. Contact mel platformlondon org if you are interested.
Oily Anatomies and Toxic Landscapes (Part 1) | Reflecting on Environmental Change through Site-based
performancefootprint.co.uk
The “performance footprint” network held its third and final scheduled meeting in London on May 20th/21s

Liberate Tate remembers Barry Mason

2011-06-08T02:55:00.001-07:00

http://liberatetate.wordpress.com/2011/06/05/remembering-barry-mason/

DISOBEDIENCE MAKES HISTORY CAMPAIGNER DIES

2011-06-06T01:09:00.001-07:00

End oil-sponsorship of the arts
Sad news that Barry Mason, who took part in the original 'Disobedience Makes History' workshop at the Tate that gave birth to Liberate Tate, has passed away. Condolences to his family and loved ones.
Cycle campaigner Barry Mason dies on holiday in Spain [5 June 2011]
www.london-se1.co.uk
Indefatigable Southwark cycling campaigner and Surrey Docks Farm manager Barry Mason has died on holiday in Spain.
http://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/5328

SEIZE BP CAMPAIGN

2011-06-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

Seize BP Campaign

To fight for the the seizure of BP's assets to provide comprehensive compensation and relief for all affected people and for cleaning up the environment.
Seize BP Campaign
www.causes.com

GERMAN ARTIST SELLS OIL ART TO BUY BP

2011-06-01T08:29:00.001-07:00

BERLIN, June 1 (UPI) -- BP, embattled by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, faces a new foe: German artist Ruppe Koselleck paints with oil washed onto beaches across the globe and sells his paintings with an optimistic goal in mind -- to take over the European oil major.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2011/05/31/German-artist-sells-oil-art-to-buy-BP/UPI-60081306869236/#ixzz1OTyNB9zF

2011-05-17T00:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-05-13-calling-all-artists-the-climate-movement-needs-you

HUMAN COST AT TATE BRITAIN BY LIBERATETATE

2011-04-20T03:12:00.000-07:00

BBC LONDON'S ANDREW TOBAR DISCUSSES BP SPONSORSHIP

2011-04-20T02:59:00.001-07:00

LETTER FROM ARTISTS TO END BP SPONSORSHIP

2011-04-20T02:49:00.001-07:00

Letter
Tate should end its relationship with BP

The Guardian, Wednesday 20 April 2011

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.

Naomi Klein writer

John Keane artist

Lucy R Lippard writer

Matthew Herbert sound artist/composer

Charles Thomson artist and co-founder, The Stuckists

Billy Childish artist

Leila Galloway artist, senior lecturer, DMU

Professor Brian Holmes cultural critic

Beverly Naidus artist, educator activist

Lorena Rivero de Beer performance artist, Free University of Liverpool

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith artist, cultural art worker

Lisa Wesley artist

Dr Wallace Heim academic writer

Fabio Sassi artist

Milena Placentile curator

Beka Economopoulos, Jason Jones and Ange Tran Not An Alternative arts collective

Emma Byron artist

Gary Anderson artist and educator, Free University of Liverpool

Lena Simic artist, Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home

Lucy Neal producer, artist, educator

Rebecca Solnit writer activist

CJ Mitchell deputy director, Live Art Development Agency

the vacuum cleaner artist

Michelle Waters artist

Kooj Chuhan artist, creative produce

Salette Gressett International Arts Manager

Matthias von Hartz director, Hamburg International Festival

Dr. Loraine Leeson artist, Fulbright Scholar in Residence University of Washington Tacoma US

Amy Balkin artist and lecturer, California College of the Arts San Francisco, US

Mark McGowan artist, associate lecturer, Chelsea College of ArtJohn Jordan Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination

Cameron Davis artist, professor, University of Vermont

John Volynchook photographer

Roxane Permar artist

Noel Douglas artist, designer

Fran Crowe artist

Ritu Sood painter, writer

Monika Vykoukal curator 40

Cecilia Wee curator, writer

Hayley Newman artist

Jane Trowell artist, educator, Platform

Stephen Duncombe professor, New York University

Jonathan Baxter artist, arts organiser

Alejandro Meitin Ala Plastica

Carrie Reichardt co-founder, Treatment Rooms

Mike Russell photographer

Sean Scullion author and owner, Paganarchy Press

Aidan Jolly musician, digital artist, community artist

Jeffrey Blackler photographer

Brett Bloom artist

Mark Vallen painter, printmaker, writer

Carolyn M Stubbs fine artist, writer

Gloria Dawson writer

Ryan Van Winkle writer

Caroline Halliday artist

Doug Minkler artist

Tim Jeeves artist

Margareta Kern artist

Pamela Gilmore performer

Dr. Julia Lee Barclay writer, director

Ellie Harrison artist

Greg Patch artist

Calum F. Kerr artist

John Ledger artist

Phil Maxwell artist

Hazuan Hashim artist

Camilla Cancantata musician

Britt Jurgensen independent performance maker

Tom Besley assistant manager, Resonance FM

Christa Drennan consultant, mental health and the arts

Raoul Martinez artist

Carys Bryan artist

Jody Joanna Boehnert designer

Bridget McKenzie cultural consultant

Edgeworth Johnstone artist

Victoria Lucas artist

Mary Paterson artist

Nick Viney artist40

Peter Harrison artist

Alana Jelinek artist

Karen Grant artist

Mikk Murray artist

Robby Herbst artist, teacher, Llano Del Rio Collective

Maria Bartolo fine art lecturer

Peter Cusack sound artist, field recordist

Marcia Farquhar sculptor and story-teller

Jordan Baseman artist

Jem Finer artist

Marsha Bradfield artist

John Cussans artist

Tim O'Riley artist

Josephine Berry Slater editor, Mute magazine

Jennet Thomas artist, senior lecturer at Wimbledon College of Art

Cat Phillipps artist

Anna Best artist

Paul Noble artist

Andy Best media artist

John Hartley artist, co-director, Difference Exchange

Jonathan Allen artist

Alex Brew artist, curator, writer

Ben Eastop arts consultant

Gareth Evans writer, curator

Angela Kingston curator

Jo Joelson artist, co-director, London Fieldworks

Phil England co-founder, Resonance FM

Max Pugh film-maker

Neil Callaghan artist

Jamie Perera sound artist

Alaina Simone independent curator, artist agent and creative consultant

Marianne Soisalo artist, eko noiz

Felix Gonzales film-maker

Hemant Anant Jain writer, illustrator

Kerry Burton artist

Peter Offord artist

Sai Murai (Simon Murray) poet, artist, Liquorice Fish

Immo Klink artist, photographer

Amber Hickey artist

Kate Rich artist 40

Sue Palmer artist

Siobhan Mckeown video editor

Maya Ramsay artist

Lisa Nowlain artist

Stuart Bracewell artist

Jon Sack artist, writer

Professor Stephen Bottoms University of Leeds

Helen Sloane curator

Ed McKeon contemporary music specialist, curator, lecturer and broadcaster

Ian Mack painter

Heather McRobie novelist, journalist

Amy Scaife photographer

Dr Isabelle Fremeaux Birkbeck College

Guppi Bola art activist

Silvia Sellitto artist

Dr Anja Kanngieser radio-maker, Birkbeck College

Muriel Louveau performer, composer

Ruppe Koselleck artist

Ryan Frank designer

Simon Scardanelli composer

Yolanda de los Bueis artist

Space Hijackers artists, performers

Darren Sutton art-interventionist, Liberate Tate

Isabeau Doucet painter

Federico Zukerfeld artist, member of the International Errorist movement

Mark Godber producer

Sam Trotman producer

Dr Hilary Ramsden artivist, researcher

Gill Lloyd and Judith Knight directors, arts admin

Tom Pengelly artist

Rick Burgess artist

Lawrence Sullivan artist, researcher Chelsea College of Art and Design

Shelley Sacks social sculpture practitioner

Isa Suarez composer, sound artist

Justin Randolph Thompson artist

Dathini Mzayiya artist

Liliana Dmitrovic artist

Rob Van Beek artist

PG Lyons artist, editor40

Kristian Buus photographer

Jaime Gili visual artist

Marc James Léger cultural worker

Hugh Lewis film-maker, artist

Andrew Boyd author, producer

Katherine Ball artist

Luke Munn artist, curator

Clare Patey artist, curator

Kenny Young Artists Project Earth

VIDEO OF BP SLEEP-IN AT TATE MODERN

2011-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

SEE WHY TRACEY DIDN'T FILL IN HER CENSUS

2011-04-18T00:03:00.001-07:00

BP TIME FOR BED AT TATE MODERN

2011-04-17T23:32:00.000-07:00

BP SLEEP-IN AT TATE BRITAIN

2011-04-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

<- Back to BP Week of Action
THE GREAT BP-SPONSORED SLEEP-IN

Sunday 17 April 2011, 2pm at Tate Modern, Bankside, London (map)

UPDATED: LAST MINUTES TIPS - READ BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE!

* Leave plenty of time to get there and check TfL for disruptions so you don't miss your 4 minutes of sleep-in fun! (It's the London Marathon so travel is going to get messy and Blackfriars station is closed).
* Synchronise your watch with this website
* Print out your BP-branded sleep mask

To mark the one year anniversary of the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, join us for ‘The Great BP-sponsored sleep-in’, a 4-minute flash mob art installation inside Tate Modern. Imagine the turbine hall of this former power station filled with BP-branded sleeping figures, who will soon wake from their BP-sponsored coma to sound the climate alarm.

BP’s greenwash is sleepwalking us into the climate crisis. BP sponsors galleries like Tate to try and clean up its tarnished image, and distract us from its devastating activities around the world. Every pound of dirty oil money accepted by Tate helps legitimise a long legacy of environmental destruction and human rights abuses. It’s time to take off the blindfold, rub the sponsorship sleep from our eyes, and give Tate and BP a wake-up call.

This family friendly event will highlight BP’s sponsorship to the public, and show that we are not prepared to stand by as the Tate helps BP greenwash its image… and allow us all a few minutes to dream of a future free from oil spills and oil sponsorship of the arts.
SIX STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL SPONSORED SLEEP-IN

1. Synchronise your watch using this website
2. Enter the building before 2PM
3. Choose your sleep-in spot – café, corridor, lift, gift shop, and of course exhibits are all fair game, but please pick somewhere on Levels 1 (turbine hall level), 2 or 3 (this is where our camera crews will be to film the fun).
4. At exactly 2.15PM, unpack your BP branded sheet, pillow, pyjamas, night cap, sleep mask, teddy bear, alarm clock, hot water bottle or any other sleep related props (see here for ideas and downloadable props) and start the sleep-in!
5. Exactly 4 minutes later, the flash mob will be over as alarm clocks sound the wake-up call throughout the gallery. Take off your sponsored blindfolds and bedding, leave them behind if you wish, and head outside to…
6. Post-slumber party on the South Bank. Listen to speakers from BP-affected communities from the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian Tar Sands, help engage gallery-goers with leaflets and vox pop video messages, and enjoy live music and a pedal-powered sound system.

So join us on April 17th, and show the Tate that we won’t take oil sponsorship of the arts lying down!

Join the Facebook event (don't forget to invite all your friends!)

DEAR NICK SEROTA...STOP TAKING SPONSORSHIP FROM BP

2011-04-16T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Mr Serota,

I am writing to add my voice to calls from across the UK for respected institutions such as yours to take a stand against the unethical practices of BP, by ending your sponsorship agreements with the company.

This week marks the one year anniversary of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, which caused the deaths of 11 workers, triggered America’s largest ever environmental disaster and sparked controversy about the role of one of the UK’s most iconic companies.

Since April 2010, BP has been on a PR offensive to reclaim its image - not least through its relationship with galleries such as Tate - and to reassure us all that it has learned its lesson and moved on.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Last December, BP made the hugely controversial decision to start extracting high-polluting oil from the Canadian tar sands. It is pressing ahead with drilling in the fragile Arctic, and deep-sea drilling in Russia. And, like every other year, BP is destroying the lives and livelihoods of frontline communities around the world.

By forging and maintaining links with a corporation such as BP, Tate is dirtying its own name with its implicit consent to such actions. Every pound of dirty oil money accepted by Tate helps legitimise a long legacy of environmental destruction and human rights abuses. You are helping BP to buy public acceptance at a time when we need to have our eyes wide open to climate change and other problems the company is causing.

Out of respect for your excellent work in offering access to the arts, and bearing in mind your support for critical and challenging approaches, I am asking you keep dirty oil out of our cultural heritage.

Yours sincerely Violet Maze

AI WEI WEI - FREEDOM NOW

2011-04-10T01:41:00.000-07:00

AI WEI WEI IS MISSING

2011-04-10T01:38:00.001-07:00

CENSUS- CUT THE CRAP

2011-04-10T01:36:00.000-07:00

Tracey Dunn
Today at FACT in Gallery 2 at 1pm I will be cutting my CENSUS up and turning it into paper flowers. They will be added to my 'Stop The War' photo exhibition's 'Peace Garden' which has been made by children in the Gallery all week. By law the CENSUS requires a response...this is mine.

DEEP HORIZON OIL SPILL

2011-04-09T01:18:00.000-07:00

Ruppe Koselleck, born 1967, picks up tar and crude oil mud at beaches in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deep Horizon Oil Spill to paint crude oil paintings in the museum. With the trade of his art he bankrolls the stock acquisition of an oil company. http://dermeisterschueler.blogspot.com/search/label/1%20Takeover%20BP

LehmbruckMuseum - Exhibitions - Ruppe Koselleck

www.duisburg.de

RELEASE AI WEIWEI-SIGN THE PETITION

2011-04-08T10:23:00.000-07:00

Tate

Join with Tate, @MuseumModernArt, @guggenheim and others in signing a petition for the release of Ai Weiwei - http://bit.ly/weiweipetition

BP sponsored flashmob at TATE modern

2011-04-07T09:02:00.000-07:00

Will you be at The Great BP-sponsored Sleep-in Flashmob? Sunday 17 April 2011, 2pm, Tate Modern http://bit.ly/fq1G1Y #tarsands #climate #BP

TATE modern the Great BP sponsored Sleep-In flashmob

2011-04-07T08:57:00.000-07:00

BP’s greenwash is sleepwalking us into the climate crisis. BP sponsors
galleries like Tate to try and clean up its tarnished image, and distract
us from its devastating activities around the world. Every pound of dirty
oil money accepted by Tate helps legitimise a long legacy of environmental
destruction and human rights abuses. It’s time to take off the blindfold,
rub the sponsorship sleep from our eyes, and give Tate and BP a wake-up
call.
More info: http://www.artnotoil.org.uk/bpweekofaction/flashmob
Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=137704989634221

BP SPONSOR TATE

2011-03-28T04:10:00.000-07:00

ClimateCampLdn

NEW ACTIONS ALERT: BP AND CULTURE: TIME TO BREAK IT OFF! A week of action to kick #BP out of our cultural spaces 14 – 20 April 2011 #Ukuncut

Anti Cuts March London

2011-03-26T14:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who marched today to show how they feel about the pointless cuts to the UK. If tax avoiders like Topshop or Vodaphone paid their taxes we would not be in this nightmare scenario. Banks too need to pay back the taxpayers money they took to bail them out for their failures and stop taking such greedy bonuses.There is really no need for the cruel Condemnation cuts.

LiberateTATE

2010-09-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

LoveTATE hateOIL...htpp://bit.ly/cKdVSV for 'release 1'.Don't forget you can help by following LiberateTATE on twitter

happy birthday

2010-09-14T12:55:00.000-07:00

To George Lund...funkadelic chicken..see him in action on you tube animal utopia

LoveTATE hateOIL

2010-09-14T12:50:00.000-07:00

To stop TATE being sponsored by BP ...follow LiberateTate on twitter.Meanwhile checkout photos and video at http://yfrog.com/jto66uj and http://bit/ly/asTLug

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE TALKS IN DECEMBER

2009-11-17T12:51:00.000-08:00

Everyone knows nothing is going to be agreed. Sadly none of the world leaders really care about saving the planet.It has become obvious that they are unable to put the planet before profit.We knew this all along really. Thousands of protesters will be attending to show that another world is possible and it appears it will only be achieved via direct action.Have compassion for our ignorant leaders.

Disillusion

2009-09-23T11:53:00.000-07:00

Cooling now, the flame burns lower, flickers, dips, goes out.

CLIMATE CAMP LONDON APRIL 1ST

2009-04-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

I joined the camp at Bishopsgate with my 75 year old father to protest peacefully against carbon trading in the city.

As an environmentalist I wished to be part of a concerned group of citizens who want to 'save the planet' and stop unethical trading.

It was a wonderful experience...musicians,dance,workshops,bike repairs, a fully functioning kitchen and even a famers market!....FARMERS MARKETS NOT CARBON MARKETS.

Unfortunately the camp was trashed by the riot police later but while I was there it was UTOPIA.

ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE!!

G30

2009-04-01T06:55:00.000-07:00

The G30 get together of worlds leaders. Geeing up the economic downs, gloom and doom. Boom and bust. Cut backs, inflation, deflation. Money makes the world go round. The world makes the money round but has it has rolled off the planet?
Have UFO's been and stolen the money? No it was identified spending objects. Spend spend, spend, greed, greed greed. Poor get poorer. Angrier and angrier. Equal distribution of wealth and a shared society for all. Less usage of earth,s diminishing materials and emphasis on preserving the world. We need a clean world fit for today and tomorrows world.

The Animal Ball

2009-02-25T03:35:00.000-08:00

being a great dancer I had an invite to the Animal Ball. I found my self dancing with the tarantula as it tangoed. I next danced with the octopus as it ocean tentacled in a woogie wave. At the same time the crab did the salsa in a side ways pincer movement. The monkey was swinging and stomping to jazz music. The crocodile was twisting and rolling to rock music. The dodo was doing the extinct two step. The hippo was hip hopping to hip hop music. The rat was rapping in a ratamataz style. The tuna fish were swimming in synchronization to a sea shanty tune. The sea horses were boogie bobbing when the mackerel were feeling the blues in the sea. The python was zig zaging to Ziggy Stardust music. The elephants were trunk waltzing in a stomp. The lammas were lamenting to a limbo. The frogs were leap frogging to a Frog Lake ballet. The chickens and penguins were doing a funky dance. The jelly fish were wobbling to mellow jazz. The Irish terrier was jigging to folk music. The turkey was jiving with a duck to Glen Miller's music.

Football Fools ( pools) Results

2009-02-11T07:15:00.000-08:00

Kidneypond 2 frogs. Everlasting battery 1 volt.
Chester Zoo two by two. Peter Belly 1 button
Chelocean 1 fathom. Sunandsand 3 deck chairs
Lapton Villa Hotel 0 rooms. knights Castile 1000 soap suds
Heatburn 2 tanfasticks. West Pork 2 sausages
Women United 5 lipsticks. Women City 4 handbags.
Bottoms Up 3 cheers. Old Spam 2 sandwhiches
Celery Stick 3 stalks. Lone Rangers 2 kimo sabies
Chelsea Buns 5 currants. Totem Poles 4 whoops
Faint Hearts 12 sighs. Aberdean Angus 11 moos
Crystal glasses 7 clinks. Torn kecks 5 holes
Gretna Green 1 million marriages. Ross 12 fish fingers
Nottingham Forest 1 Robin Hoods. Boston Tea Party 5 kilos of tea
Alloa 3 hoola hoops. Cowthenbeef 3 corns
Stirling £ 400000000. Broke ( Stoke) 0
Rottenham 2 nose pegs. Notthisfield 0 grass
Wicklow 2 spots. Henhouse 2 speckled eggs
Buckingham Palace 10 corgis. Loch Ness 1 not spotted monster
Henhousemore 12 chicks. Uddersfield 5 cows
Landsend 15 English Channels. John O Groats 8 highland flings

A Fairer World For All

2009-02-11T04:51:00.000-08:00

Today the price of living is beyond fairness. The cost of heating ones domain makes me boil over. The cost of using energy for eating makes me fast. The cost of being clean makes me unclean. The idea of keeping those fat cats in the height of luxury when the poor can't even afford to heat their own homes, food and wash is scandalous. Where have all the profits gone to explore cheaper, efficent energy.? Gone to subsidise the fat cats milking the poor.

What A Beach

2009-02-10T05:02:00.000-08:00

One sunny day i went to the beach. The sand fancying a sandwich began to swallow me up but got away i was like quick sand.
The water lapped at my feet good job i changed my socks. But the waves ebbing to and fro were waving in unison to the seasiders.
The seas gulls dropping doodlebugs on my head gave me an Afro hairdo. A crab put a bucket on my head and give me a quick short back and sides. A sandpiper with bagpipes played Gull of Kintyre. The cockles and mussels were cocky and muscled in on the deck chairs. The whales went to Rhyl in Wales for a thrill on the fair. I sat down on a deck chair it began to shuffle me looking for a full deck. An octopus with its tentacles at tenterhooks tangoed with me. Feeling seasick i jumped on driftwood and drifted off on the high tide.

Vegetable Fiasco

2009-02-09T06:52:00.000-08:00

I went to a greengrocers. Cheap prices trolley good show. Before my very eyes some of the veg were eating a table. The yams were jamming with the jams. The toms were treading on a toe. The peas were I poding. The green beans being has beans were having a beano. The cuecumbers were playing snooker with their cues but cunbersome. The celery were stalking in cells. The cabbages cabbaged leafed around in bunches. The carrots were rotting in their cars. Onions had on neon peel appeal.
The potatoes were chasing their toes with a pot. The lettuce went religous saying "lettuce pray." The green onions kept playing the record green onions.
The leeks were spys leaking sensitive information to the red radical radishes.
The turnips turned up uninvited. The sprouts spread out and sprouted everywhere i got wind of this and exited stage left.

Kitchen Sink Drama

2009-02-03T07:25:00.000-08:00

The pots i was washing went potty and saucy. They boiled my eye lashes and stewed my hair with ketchup. I looked at the colander it showed the date?
My friend looked at me and said " Wok's up." I finished up away with the food mixer. The pans caused pandamonium concocting recipes of disaster. The knifes and forks were always falling out back stabbing. The salt and pepper mills were assaulting and shaking me. I sneezed at this.
The cork screw was screwy. Food for thought I digested enough of this. I left the kitchen couldn't take any more and went for a takeaway.

True Grit?

2009-02-03T05:25:00.000-08:00

Flakes of snow stopped the country from functioning again. With todays technology and early warning weather forecasts we still are caught by heavy falls of snow. The gritters are also caught out again. How about about a giant hot vapour machine with vacumn type tubes. That melts the snow on the roads and streets in an instant?

Garden of Weedin

2009-01-30T05:34:00.000-08:00

I had a garden and one day the long grass needed cutting. I gave it a short back and sides and my fingers turned green. The compost corner was telling dirty jokes and threw dung at me.
Tried to trim the roses but it was the war of the roses they pricked me!! The raspberries gave me a raspberry when i went to pick them. The apples stalked me and gave me the pip in my eye. Not the apples of my eye. The spring onions sprung to life dancing bringing tears to my eyes. The potatoes going bad threw peel and eyed me up. The callous cauliflowers gave me the cauliwobbles. The pears ganged up on me in pairs going pear shaped. I pulled at the weeds they became weird shouting, " Weed, Weed." Bill and Ben came from the bottom of the garden. Time to wave bye bye.

Woke Up On The Right Side Of Bed

2009-01-29T07:23:00.000-08:00

I woke up on the right side of the bed. I had a close shave as the razor sharpley attacked me. Also had a brush with my teeth.
I put the kettle on but it wouldn't fit. Poured a cup of P ( it tasted like it).
For breakfast i put on the TV and ate a bowl of the porridge programme. It tasted like Strangeways
My mobile alarm buzzed it had a bee in it. I flew out the door after sprouting wings to catch the bus. I arrived at the office, opened a file and did my nails. My boss called me into his office.
He remarked, "You've got up on the right side of the bed again, you've put your slippers on the wrong feet they're on mine."

Collapse of Old Building on Park Road

2009-01-28T07:26:00.000-08:00

I work as a volunteer at the Innovations Factory IT drop in Centre corner of Park Road and Park Street Dingle. It was on Tuesday that i was at home having my collapsed bay window ceiling plastered when the building on Park Road collapsed. I would have passed the building at roughly the same time as it fell onto the pathement and road on the way to the IT Centre.
Good job i was being plastered elsewhere.

The Clothes Episode

2009-01-24T05:44:00.001-08:00

My pants legged it and turned up at a place called The Pant in Welshpool.
My shirt shirked and became shirty. My shoes were a heal and with out soul they gave me the boot. My socks became odd and socked it to me. My jumper became jumped up and pulled the wool over my eyes. My briefs fell out with me and fell down. My pyjamas left for a party. My friend's skirt shirked and skirted off. Her sweater sweated profusely. My thermals caught fire and singed my....................... eye lashers of course. When i eventually found some of my clothes i put them on a clothes horse but it ran away to Ascot!!!

Be Aware of Pongy Neighbours

2009-01-24T05:26:00.000-08:00

If your thinking of moving to the countryside there maybe something stirring in the wind. With nearby storage of waste materials, mucky, slurry dungy things may manifest. A pong in the wind may carry to your door from the nearby farms. You may have to call your home the Pongyrosa or Pongy Wind in the Willows. Poo, poo the idea to moving to rural parts?
This is todays stinky news phew.

Obama calling Obama calling

2009-01-24T05:19:00.000-08:00

Obama is calling on London in April for the G20 special summit.
Will Obama's coming be in time to save the world?
Is the world ready for Obama?
Will he have enough time to solve the world's problems?
At least we have and at last we have an American president of substance.
Hail to the man of destiny carrying the world's burdens on his shoulders.

Exterminate Exterminate

2009-01-24T05:13:00.000-08:00

Toxteth born Chief Dalek John Scott Martin has passed away and gone to the land of Daleks . ( hopefully not)
Chief Dalek for 110 episodes he enjoyed the part because his identity was hidden.

Vera's Poems

2009-01-22T20:44:00.000-08:00

The following poems are by Vera Crossfield from Orrell Park Community Centre (to be read out by The Town Crier on the fifth Floor: Tate Liverpool)
THE GIRLS
We are a happy cheerful lot 'girls' of Orrell park
We meet each monday, ready for any lark,
We sit and talk, and laugh a lot, and put the world to wise
We listen tentatively to our speakers, that Margi organise
Our projects that we engaged in, of that there has been many.
Of outings in buses that sometimes don't cost us a penny.

With Helen and Lilian just ready to go
There is Stella and Eileen, Ann and Joan,
Vilma and Vera and we hardly ever moan
We are open house to one and all
Come and join us we have a ball

Mondays 1pm til 3pm
Orrell park Community Centre
Moss Lane

THE FUTURE OF YOUTH: WISE WORDS FROM AN OLD ONE

I have known pain
I have known sorrow
I have known loss
Of which there is no gain

These things will happen
Along your future life
As they did in mine
It is life's pattern

As your life will unfold
Build a good character
Live life to the full
In time like me you will be old

Go forth dear youth
Live, love and be ahppy
And before you can know it
You too will be long in the tooth!

ODE TO LIVERPOOL
By Carol Atkinson and Vera Crossfield

Once a thriving shipping port
Now more famous for its sport
Men grew rich through human trade
Slaves transported - fortunes made
Trading links brought untold wealth
Splendor bought with pain and stealth

As years ro9ll by and time oves on
Those trading links have long since gone
The docks fall into disarray
We learn the phrase urban decay,
As jobs are lost along wiht pride
Life seems bleak on Merseyside

But as sail through eighties gate
We hear the term regenerate
The Albert Dock restored inside
Houses built or gentrified
No longer desolate and forlorn
The City Centre is reborn

Now this city has new fame
The Capital of Culture name
A chance for growth and to create
Will culminate in year 08
The city's art is celebrated
Music, poets, actors, feted

But urban troubles still remain
The yobs that treat us with disdain
Graffitti, litter, theft with knives
Guns and violence blight our lives

Still Liverpool's spirit can't be broke
Nolonger always England's joke
The people full of fun and humour
Rise above the scorn and rumour
Always changing, vibrant and cool
The dynamic city of Liverpool!

House of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZs

2009-01-19T08:30:00.000-08:00

The House of Snores (Lords sleeping). Sleeping fishermen Rip Van Winklers. School Govenors Sleepy heads. Sleeping nutters pillow cases. Loud mouths sleeping wind bags.
Bed lambs ( sheep counting sheep) Cat naps. zzzzzz meow zzzzz meow. Dirty old man fourty winks. Bags under the eyes ( Specsaver shopping bags.) Sleepless in Liverpool Calm eiderdown, Not a lorra kip. Slumber Jack sleeping tree feller. Goodnight bed room suite dreams.

Back Benchers, Front benchers?

2009-01-19T07:44:00.000-08:00

Front benchers , back benchers. They sit and debate the same rhetoric. But if they sat on deck chairs debate seaside issues rising tides? Rocking horses gambling.? Armchairs arnaments.?
Couches potatoes.? Three piece sweets jelly babys, smarties, gob stoppers.? Stools pigeons.? Wicker chairs the environment.? Baby chairs growing up.? Rocking chairs old age. ?
Chair man and chair women. What about the chair children?

The Ice Age Goeth?

2009-01-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

Glaciers disppearing. No more ice creams? Ice bound land masses melting. No ice for my tea? Rising sea levels must learn to swim and buy a good mop? Will there be a greener green land? Snow good worrying cuts no ice i already use less energy. I will move to South America where the sea levels are higher.

Safer World Give The Trident Missles a Miss?

2009-01-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

We already have a vast amount of missles in the world that can destroy humankind 100 times over. The UK should be one of the first countries to disband them pave the way for others.
The billions spent on them should go towards creating and educating a far more peacful world without threats.

Bush Has Gone Cometh The Man

2009-01-17T06:02:00.001-08:00

Bush has branched himself off. Many times he was the burning bush sprouting dead leaves.
He never twigged the real world or real problems. With his prickley rhetoric, a thorn in the side. Dead wood has drifted away. Obama is a charmer, not an alarmer. A man with a mission with vision a panorama. Not a two headed Lamma. He will bring real drama, karma. With a bit of Ghandi, John Lennon and the Dahli Lama.

Warning Storm Brewing and Not in a T-Cup

2009-01-17T05:59:00.001-08:00

There is a storm coming next week not from the economic climate but from the weather forecast. Gales, heavy rain, blizzards, hurricane gusts of over 100mph. Keep dry, keep safe and keep warm. Wrap up well.

Life On Mars?

2009-01-17T05:54:00.000-08:00

Is there Life on Earth? Have we lost the way to be less selfish more kind, respectful more humble. Love our planet, love our people, animals, nature and learn to love your self. Be more happy and content.There is only one life, one destiny, one you.

STOP HEATHROW 3RD RUNWAY...OWN THE RUNWAY LAND

2009-01-17T03:52:00.000-08:00

If you go to the 'Greenpeace' website http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/ you can join the 'AIRPLOT' project and become the benficiary of some land in the village of Sipson,north of Heathrow airport, which is where the 3rd runway is proposed to be built.

You can refuse to let Heathrow airport make a compulsory purchase of your land and therefore help save the planet from airplane emissions which are contributing to global warming and the destruction of our environment.

Happy New Year

2009-01-03T05:28:00.000-08:00

Rocky, funky, jazzy new year. Appreciate all music.
Joggy new year keep fit and healthy.
Nappy new year bring up your children well with good nature and manners.
Chatty new year communicate with others in a happy and respectful way.
Ecology new year save energy and recycled stuff.
Dump the junk food new year eat more fruit and veg.
Drink less alcohol and life threatening substances new year.
Be kind to your neighbour new year

New Year Resolution

2009-01-03T05:12:00.000-08:00

Time to end wars. Condemn the war mongers agressors. Help the worlds destitute, starving.
Save on energy burn less power use a bike instead of car. Help to save the environment by supporting green issues. Be good to one another instead of arguing, fighting learn to love and laugh more. Watch less violent movies watch more comedy fun filled films/shows. Instead of turning to crime value, love your fellow beings we only live here on once in a short space of time.
Visit culture and history more. Learn more about yourself, where you live
and about other cultures. Visit cathedrals, churches lite a candles for peace, love, harmony.
Be courteous, helpful, kind, humble. Dont think of material things or money be less selffish. Eat less fatty foods and more healthier stuff.
Be positive good things will come when you have good karma.

I DREAM TATE FLOODS UP TO 4TH FLOOR

2008-12-26T03:06:00.000-08:00

On Christmas night I had a dream that TATE Liverpool had water coming up through the 4th floor.It was very real and appeared that the River Mersey was rising dramatically.
Let's hope it just stays a dream!!

PARLIAMENT HAS RECORDS OF GARDEN FESTIVAL SITE GIFTED TO LIVERPOOL CITIZENS

2008-12-23T01:51:00.000-08:00

Secretary of state for the Environment,, in the early 80's, Michael Heseltine set up the International Garden Festival by the River Mersey in 1984 in response to the Toxteth riots.He said in Parliament that after the 6 month festival was over that a small amount of the land would be built on with homes and that the rest would be 'a gift of additional green parklands for the people of Liverpool'.These houses he mentioned were built about 20 years ago .

The House of Commons have a stenographer who records everything spoken in what is called the 'Hansard Register'.Michael Heseltine's speech is recorded in this register.

Google: 'hansford register heseltine liverpool garden festival' for related reading.
I have also found a very interesting speech by Mr.Patrick Jenkins (197w dated 19/12/84) when I googled 'hansard register millbank systems' and searched 'liverpool garden festival' regarding the future of the site.

So....how come our land is in the hands of property developers to build 1,300 apartments? LangtreeMcLean paid about £12,000,000 for this green space.

I have sent an email to Lord Heseltine at the House of Lords to invite him to attend and speak at our event in the TATE Liverpool's '5th Floor exhibition' on Sunday January 11th 2009 2-4pm on the 4th floor in the 'International Festival' space.

Unidentified Hissed Object

2008-12-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

We will see this coming festivities many unidentified hissed objects. In the home , in the streets, in the pubs becuase they will look enibriated, squiffy eyed, turn into instant crooners, casanovers, comedians, conjurers. But not like them selves until the following morning hangovers. Who hit me on the head with a frying pan?

The time of year to be good to all?

2008-12-18T05:58:00.000-08:00

If this time of year is to be good to one and all why aren't we good to each other the rest of the year?

Bring Back The Christmas Of Old?

2008-12-18T05:36:00.000-08:00

The open log fire with stockings hanging full of fruit and nuts. The smell of roasted chest nuts on the fire. The Christmas dinner slowly cooking mists up the windows. The port gurgles its ruby red substance into the glass. The innocence and humbleness of discovering a toy soldier or teddy bear.Returning from the Christmas Eve service with happy red warm glowing faces infront of the fire. The slight patter of snow flakes leaving patterns on the window pane.
Snow fights in the garden. The angel on the Christmas tree glistens in the light casting spells of Christmas cheer. Bring back the Christmas past.

Christmas Cheer

2008-12-18T05:10:00.002-08:00

Got the turkey trots and stuffed. Developed ear sprouts. Become mince pie eyed. Feel like a Christmas pudding and saucy. Mistle toed and going Christmas crackers. Hissed on Christmas wine and beer. Merry hissed much.

What is Christmas?

2008-12-18T05:10:00.001-08:00

Shop till you drop. Shop for stuff you don't really want. Frenzied last dash spending cash on reduced stuff. Sitting watching TV the same films, sipping alcoholic drinks, eating great mouthfuls of rich food. What is Christmas?

All We Want For Christmas Is Utopia?

2008-12-18T04:59:00.000-08:00

A Peaceful, harmonius, more caring, totally shared society, aradicate poverty, crime, pollution,greed, suffering, world

There's No Business Like Snow Business

2008-12-18T04:42:00.000-08:00

Las Vegas the desert gambler's paradise has had a rare blanket of snow. Snow fell like giant chips carpeting the sand dunes into snow dunes. Anyone For skiing on the strip?

Loo, Loo Loves George

2008-12-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

George's sister's dog Loo,Loo always makes a fuss when she sees him. Sister says the dog has a canine crush on George but it is only puppy love.

Money For Old Soap?

2008-12-18T04:29:00.000-08:00

The Old Brookside Estate famous for the Brookside Soap opera recently sold for £735,000.

Mama Mia Sinks The Titanic?

2008-12-18T04:22:00.000-08:00

Mama Mia movie is becoming at the box office more popular than the Titanic epic film.

PICTURES FROM THE FIFTH FLOOR OPENING AND MORE

2008-12-17T04:20:00.000-08:00

SAVE THE GARDEN FESTIVAL CAMPAIGN EVENT IN TATE

2008-12-15T04:37:00.000-08:00

On Sunday January 11th 2009 at 2-4pm Save the Festival Garden Campaign host an event in the International Festival space on the 4th floor TATE Liverpool.

Property developers LangtreeMcClean won the public enquiry to build 1,300 apartments on the site but nothing has happened yet.One of the developers has gone into administration,the 'credit crunch' is probably delaying the start of building and Riverside Drive and Priory Wood have recently had some serious holes appear.Riverside Drive was closed for weeks when the sewer pipes collapsed and it's only just opened up to vehicles again last night.

It is surely time for discussion regarding the loss of our public spaces.The Garden Festival Site is a 'green wedge',a mature forest home to a complete bio diverse eco system of plant and wildlife.Some of the Promenade has also been given away for free to the property developers by Liverpool City Council.Is this democracy?

2009 is Liverpool's 'Year of the Environment' and we should really have been celebrating our 24 year old forest and coastal pathway.Instead we are trying to come to terms with it's future as a housing development.

The area is an old landfill site and although permission was given to build the apartments, the future residents will not be allowed to have gardens as the land must not be dug due to the toxic substances underneath.The flats will also be built on stilts to prevent contamination.

We should be protecting green spaces in the current climate and teaching people about the importance of wilderness for our health and wellbeing.

There will be a rainforest organisation film screened which shows how we are destroying nature internationally and we will show our own local Garden Festival film.There will be food to eat and John Davies,international photographer and curator of 'Cities on the edge' exhibition and book, will lead the debate on the loss of public spaces and land give aways.
Please come along to see what our campaign achieved over the last year and a half.

oyez oyez

JAMES MARRIOT SPEAKING ABOUT OIL SPONSORSHIP OF ARTS FROM SOTA12

BP DESTROY OCEANS

FLOE PIECE LIBERATE TATE ARCTIC ICE

LIBERATE TATE'S SPOKESPERSON ON WHY FIGHTING BP SPONSORSHIP PICKS UP THE CAUSE OF TAHRIR SQUARE

PLATFORM - THE CORPORATE OCCUPATION OF THE ARTS

THE OIL SHOW EXHIBITION BY HMKV DORTMUND GERMANY

TATE CONSIDERS ENDING BP SPONSORSHIP DEAL AFTER ENVIRONMENTAL PROTESTS

DECISION ON BP SPONSORSHIP OF TATE TO BE MADE SOON

BP FACES FIERCE BACKLASH FROM GREEN GROUPS OVER NEW OIL WELL

OIL ORGY - STOP TAR SANDS

RENA CONTAINER SHIP HITS ASTROLABE REEF IN NEW ZEALAND AND SPILLS OIL

THE ESCALATION OF BP'S LIABILITY

BP AND TRANSOCEAN ARGUE OVER FRESH GULF OF MEXICO OIL 'LEAKS''

BP WANTS TO RESUME DRILLING IN THE GULF

RBS PROTEST SONG "WANNA PUMP THE TAR SANDS (PRICE TAG)

GLENCORE AND BP NAMED AS WORST OFFENDERS AT TOP OF TAX SECRECY TABLE

THE TITANIC DISASTER MEANT A LIFE OF SHAME FOR IT'S CEO. NOT SO BP'S TONY HAYWARD

BP BEARS BRUNT OF BLAME FOR DEEPWATER HORIZON CATASTROPHE

DON'T BE FOOLED BY BP- OLYMPIC GAMES

CORRUPTION AT BP

Tate Modern to power ahead with art in oil tanks...(Oh the irony!)

THE SPY WHO QUIT M16 FOR BP'S OIL CASH

The BP Oil Disaster: Blaming Individual Consumers for Capitalist Destruction

PLATFORM'S TATE TOUR

TATE IN SPONSORSHIP DEAL WITH TAX DODGERS VODAPHONE

REV BILLY'S NOTES ON TATE EXORCISM

BP FUCKING THE FUTURE

REV BILLY EXORCISES TATE FROM BP OIL SPONSORSHIP

REV BILLY LAYS HANDS ON TATE MODERN

Activists target BP at gallery | News

END OIL SPONSORSHIP OF THE ARTS

Liberate Tate remembers Barry Mason

DISOBEDIENCE MAKES HISTORY CAMPAIGNER DIES

SEIZE BP CAMPAIGN

GERMAN ARTIST SELLS OIL ART TO BUY BP

HUMAN COST AT TATE BRITAIN BY LIBERATETATE

BBC LONDON'S ANDREW TOBAR DISCUSSES BP SPONSORSHIP

LETTER FROM ARTISTS TO END BP SPONSORSHIP

VIDEO OF BP SLEEP-IN AT TATE MODERN

SEE WHY TRACEY DIDN'T FILL IN HER CENSUS

BP TIME FOR BED AT TATE MODERN

BP SLEEP-IN AT TATE BRITAIN

DEAR NICK SEROTA...STOP TAKING SPONSORSHIP FROM BP

AI WEI WEI - FREEDOM NOW

AI WEI WEI IS MISSING

CENSUS- CUT THE CRAP

Tracey Dunn Today at FACT in Gallery 2 at 1pm I will be cutting my CENSUS up and turning it into paper flowers. They will be added to my 'Stop The War' photo exhibition's 'Peace Garden' which has been made by children in the Gallery all week. By law the CENSUS requires a response...this is mine.

DEEP HORIZON OIL SPILL

RELEASE AI WEIWEI-SIGN THE PETITION

BP sponsored flashmob at TATE modern

TATE modern the Great BP sponsored Sleep-In flashmob

BP SPONSOR TATE

Anti Cuts March London

LiberateTATE

happy birthday

LoveTATE hateOIL

COPENHAGEN CLIMATE TALKS IN DECEMBER

Disillusion

CLIMATE CAMP LONDON APRIL 1ST

G30

The Animal Ball

Football Fools ( pools) Results

A Fairer World For All

What A Beach

Vegetable Fiasco

Kitchen Sink Drama

True Grit?

Garden of Weedin

Woke Up On The Right Side Of Bed

Collapse of Old Building on Park Road

The Clothes Episode

Be Aware of Pongy Neighbours

Obama calling Obama calling

Exterminate Exterminate

Vera's Poems

House of ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZs

Back Benchers, Front benchers?

The Ice Age Goeth?

Safer World Give The Trident Missles a Miss?

Tracey Dunn
Today at FACT in Gallery 2 at 1pm I will be cutting my CENSUS up and turning it into paper flowers. They will be added to my 'Stop The War' photo exhibition's 'Peace Garden' which has been made by children in the Gallery all week. By law the CENSUS requires a response...this is mine.