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Protest shackles Total Oil petrol station

pellarin | 02.11.2007 00:43 | Anti-militarism | Repression | Social Struggles | London

During the Thursday evening rush-hour a dozen protestors caused a central London Total petrol station to close.




On 1st November protestors gathered at the 24-hour Total petrol station on Marylebone Road in central London. They were calling for Total Oil to pull out of Burma due to their funding of the Burmese military regime. The protest began at 5pm to coincide with rush hour.

The protest consisted of banners, placards, leaflets and a petition. One protestor wore shackles to signify the oppression of the Burmese people.

Within 10 minutes of the protest beginning staff closed the station, blocking off the forecourt and switching off the lights. Even the accompanying shop was shut. When it became apparent that the protest was continuing the police were contacted. One officer arrived and after consulting the staff told the demonstrators that there were not allowed onto the forecourt and risked arrest if they "interfered" with the business's trade by blocking the entrance or locking onto any of the pumps. (It should be noted that none of the protestors had entered the forecourt or caused any "interference".)

After an hour the station re-opened. The protest continued until 7.00pm.

See also:
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383937.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383875.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383782.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383335.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/383321.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/382852.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/382648.html
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2007/10/382635.html

pellarin
- Homepage: http://www.totaloutofburma.blogspot.com

Additions

'Long Way Down' for the Burmese people, thanks to Total Oil

02.11.2007 11:46

UN goodwill ambassador and Hollywood star Ewan MacGregor's goodwill does not seem to extend to the plight of the Burmese people and Buddhist monks in their struggle against a brutal military dictatorship which practises murder, torture and detention of monks and pro-democracy activists, as well as forced labour, rape and conscription of child soldiers.

MacGregor, who played Jedi knight Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels, stars in 'Long Way Down' (BBC2, Sunday evenings), which logs the actor's epic journey by motorbike with childhood friend Charlie Boorman from John O' Groats to Cape Town. The project has UNICEF as one of its partners. Unfortunately, the show is also sponsored by Total Oil, which provided its Excellium fuel for all vehicles for the entire trip. It would seem that MacGregor and the BBC have a lot to answer for.

A worldwide day of action against French oil giant Total's investment in Burma has been called for Wednesday 7th November, the day the company's quarterly results are published. Total's continued involvement in the operation of the Yadana gas pipeline in the south of the country, in partnership with Chevron-Texaco, is opposed by the country's democratically-elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest or detention for 12 years. The pipeline earns the regime hundreds of millions of pounds in revenue every year, with only a tiny fraction reaching the Burmese people. The main customer for the pipeline is Thailand.


dv
mail e-mail: dviesnik at yahoo dot co dot uk


Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

UK Lord involved in Total Oil

02.11.2007 17:21

from the house of lords register at

 http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld/ldreg/reg09.htm

check out last entry 12(e)
he has many oily interests.....


FRASER OF CARMYLLIE, Lord

*12(d) Non-parliamentary consultant

Partner, Fraser Forrest LLP
International Energy Consultants

*12(e) Remunerated directorships

Non-executive Chairman, JKX Oil and Gas plc
Non-executive Director, Alkane Energy plc
Non-executive Director, ICE Futures
Non-executive Director, London Metal Exchange
Non-executive Director, TOTAL Exploration UK Ltd

*12(f) Regular remunerated employment

Chairman, Statutory Committee, Royal Pharmaceutical Society (chairing disciplinary hearings 3/4 days most months)

*12(i) Visits

Visit (6-9 June 2007) with wife to Baku with Executive Committee of the Anglo-Azerbaijani Society, my flight and my wife's flight paid for by Society

15(d) Office-holder in voluntary organisations

Hon President, ATTEND (formerly National Association of Hospital and Community Friends)

16(b) Voluntary organisations

Patron, Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh

lady t


franchised revolutions, color coded regime change and low intensity democracy

03.11.2007 07:45

The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA
 http://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.html

Peter Ackerman: billionaire sponsor of toxic NGO’s
 http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/10/03/peter-ackerman-billionaire-sponsor-of-toxic-ngos/

When CIA realized how useful could the Albert Einstein Institution be, it brought Colonel Robert Helvey into play. An expert in clandestine actions and former dean of the Embassies’s Military Attachés Training School, "Bob" took Gene Sharp to Burma to educate the opposition on the non violent strategy for criticizing the cruelest military junta of the world without questioning the system. By doing this, Helvey could identify the "good" and the "bad" opponents in a critical moment for Washington: the true opposition, led by Mrs. Suu Kyi, was labeled as a threat to the pro-American regimen.

«Bob’s» job was easily done. Since he was military attaché in Rangoon from 1983 to 1985 and helped to structure the dictatorship, he knew everybody. By playing a double game, Colonel Helvey simultaneously directed a classical action of military support to Karen resistance: by providing weapons and controlling a limited guerrilla, Washington wished, indeed, to maintain the military junta under pressure.

Myanmar's “Saffron Revolution”: The Geopolitics behind the Protest Movement
 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0710/S00277.htm

Burma’s “Saffron Revolution,” like the Ukraine “Orange Revolution” or the Georgia “Rose Revolution” and the various Color Revolutions instigated in recent years against strategic states surrounding Russia, is a well-orchestrated exercise in Washington-run regime change, down to the details of “hit-and-run” protests with “swarming” mobs of Buddhists in saffron, internet blogs, mobile SMS links between protest groups, well-organized protest cells which disperse and reform. CNN made the blunder during a September broadcast of mentioning the active presence of the NED behind the protests in Myanmar.

The concert-master of the tactics of Saffron monk-led non-violence regime change is Gene Sharp, founder of the deceptively-named Albert Einstein Institution in Cambridge Massachusetts, a group funded by an arm of the NED to foster US-friendly regime change in key spots around the world. Sharp’s institute has been active in Burma since 1989, just after the regime massacred some 3000 protestors to silence the opposition. CIA special operative and former US Military Attache in Rangoon, Col. Robert Helvey, an expert in clandestine operations, introduced Sharp to Burma in 1989 to train the opposition there in non-violent strategy. Interestingly, Sharp was also in China two weeks before the dramatic events at Tiananmen Square.

U.S. covert support for the opposition in Myanmar is based on a rapidly expanding U.S. involvement back into South Asia. Growing U.S. corporate concern with China’s growth and the Pentagon’s drive to implant a new generation of U.S. bases to control the Straits of Malacca is leading to a renewed U.S. involvement in the region. Some 80 percent of the oil bound for China passes through these straits.

The real attitude of U.S. imperialism toward the movement in Myanmar will not be guided by Washington’s concern for democratic change. It will depend on U.S. economic interests and strategic military plans in the region.
 http://www.workers.org/2007/world/myanmar-1108/

Soros the Guiltless
 http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/10/soros_the_guiltless.html

Ranging from the Asia Times and the South China Morning Post to a collection of skeptical Western bloggers, they make the claim that various Washington DC-based agencies and a few key political actors are actually pulling the strings in the Burmese uprising. The rationale behind this "foreign interference," as it has been termed by both the Burmese and Chinese governments, has been given as (take your pick): interests in oil and/or gas reserves, heroin, methamphetamines, geopolitical advantage, and power projection by the United States

Promoting ‘democracy’ through civil disobedience  http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/722/37496
For readers unfamiliar with the NED and its anti-democratic “democracy” cohorts, a brief introduction to the work of Professor William I. Robinson is in order. Simply put, Robinson hypothesised that as a result of the public backlash against the US government’s repressive and covert foreign policies in the 1970s, foreign-policy-making elites elected to put a greater emphasis on overt means of overthrowing “problematic” governments through the strategic manipulation of civil society.

In 1984, this “new” thinking was institutionalised with the creation of the quasi-nongovernmental organisation the NED, which acts as the coordinating body for better-funded “democracy promoting” organisations like USAID and the CIA. Working closely together, these “democratic” organisations use a combination of both covert and overt strategies to intervene

Stephen Zunes of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict and Tikkun does damage control after getting busted fellow traveling with the CIA, Pentagon, DARPA, The US State Department and The US Air Force.
 http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/727/37727

the vital role played by soft power in promoting the hegemony of transnational capitalism: “soft” strategies that were pioneered by liberal foundations like the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, which worked hand-in-hand with the CIA to create civil society front groups and co-opt progressive activists all over the world
 http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/725/37638

Venezuela: Another marigold revolution?
 http://www.kuwaittimes.net/read_news.php?newsid=MTQ1NjM1MDYx

A Meta-Group Managing Drugs, Violence, and the State
 http://oraclesyndicate.twoday.net/stories/2635968/
In 2003-2004, Filin and Likhvintsev worked on the Georgian project, financed by KBR Halliburton, apparently, with the approval of the CIA. The project had the goal of weakening the competitors of Halliburton in the oil business and, in a broader context, of facilitating the geopolitical objectives of the United States in the Caucasus. The OPS man in Georgia is Audrius Butkevicius, former Lithuanian minister of defense, presently advisor to Badri Patarkatsishvili.

2003 and 2004 were the years of the two Georgian “Rose Revolutions,” in which Mikheil Saakashvili displaced Eduard Shevardnadze. A role was played by western foundations such as the Albert Einstein Institute, with which Butkevicius was allegedly associated.

baza


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