Carnival of Dust: Folks from greater than 30 activist teams from London and all over the world met on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday fifteenth June 2012 for the Carnival of Dust, a funeral procession for the numerous killed by mining and extraction firms, highly effective monetary organisations whose crimes are legitimised by the Metropolis of London.
Though little mining now goes on within the UK, London stays the mining capital of the world with most of the largest and strongest mining and extraction firms listed on the London Inventory Trade and buying and selling on the London Steel Trade. The Carnival of Dust named a few of them as main criminals, together with Xstrata, Glencore Worldwide, Rio Tinto, Vedanta, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, BP and Shell.
Many activists all over the world have been murdered for standing up in opposition to the pursuits of those firms, whose greed has led to crimes in opposition to humanity on an enormous scale all over the world. As I wrote in 2012, “They lie behind the hundreds of thousands who’ve died in wars within the Congo and elsewhere, behind the torture and rapes and different human rights abuses which might be used to drive folks off their land, behind the large areas of land poisoned by poisonous wastes, forests and complete mountains destroyed, ecocide on a really huge scale.”
Many of those crimes have been well-documented however these firms are nonetheless supported by our pension schemes and guarded by our authorities, in addition to being allowed to get away with avoiding or evading hundreds of thousands or billions of kilos in UK taxes.
A lot of those that got here to the carnival have been wearing black, and the funeral procession had a New Orleans model theme. The cortège “included a big snake, a turtle and a tortoise, a reminder of XStrata’s prison diversion of the McArthur River, destroying the ecosystem and despoiling the sacred websites of Australian aborigines.”
There have been a variety of coffins to symbolize the useless, naming a few of the firms concerned with messages resembling ‘Glencore Values – Poisonous Belongings, Poisonous Environments‘. One other learn ‘XStrata – X-Rated on Human Rights‘ and identified the CEO Mick Davis “Will get £30 million to remain in job whereas 2 Lifeless 80 Injured protesting at Tintaya mine in Chile.’
The greater than 18,000 youngster miners within the Phillipines have been represented by a small coffin. One learn ‘10 Million Lifeless By means of Battle in 16 years equals a 9/11 each 2 days‘. Crimson drops for blood ran down the facet of a black coffin with the messages ‘Resist Company Terrorism’ and ‘London Steel Trade – Setting the International Commonplace in Bloodshed‘ . One other coffin testified to the genocide in West Papua the place Indonesian troops have torched villages.
Among the protesters walked with pictures of some of the better-known activists murdered for standing as much as company terrorism, and a leaflet named some – “Valmore Locarno, Fr Fausto Tentorio, Victor Orcasita, Alexandro Chacon, Fr Reinel Restropo, Dr Gerry Ortega, Armin Marin, Dr Leonard Co, Elizer Billanes, Jorge Eliecer, Floribert Chebeya, Raghunath Jhodia, Abhilash Jhodia, Damodar Jhodia, Petrus Ayamiseba.” Different placards confirmed unnamed and horribly mutilated victims.
After transient speeches the procession moved off from St Paul’s in the direction of the Inventory Trade behind the marching band, however they have been blocked by limitations and personal safety employees at Temple Bar, stopping them going into the now privatised Paternoster Sq.. After a brief protest there it moved off, strolling alongside public streets to the north entrance of the Inventory Trade on Newgate Road.
The doorway was blocked by a line of police however the protesters stopped from a brief rally, listening to a speech by Benny Wenda who managed to flee to the UK after being arrested, imprisoned and tortured by Indonesian troops. There have been heavy showers and all of us received reasonably moist, although some protesters have been lucky to be carrying black umbrellas with slogans on them; the slogans ran within the rain however the umbrellas stored these beneath reasonably drier.
From there the cortège moved on to protest in entrance of the Financial institution of England, the place there have been a number of speeches from researchers and activists. From there we moved to a remaining rally on the London Steel Trade, the place we heard an extended exposition of the assorted buying and selling actions which trigger a substantial amount of dying and unnatural catastrophe throughout the globe.
The got here a studying of the names of a few of the distinguished murdered activists, every identify being adopted by the protesters shouting ‘Current’ or the Spanish ‘Presente’ to indicate they have been nonetheless part of the dwelling, within the hearts and minds of these mourning them. On the finish of the listing there was a two-minute silence within the reminiscence of them and the hundreds of thousands of others killed for the earnings of the mining firms. After throwing ashes on the constructing the procession continued to its end at Altab Ali park.
By this time I used to be very moist, and so have been my cameras and lenses, with condensation steaming up on internal glass surfaces. Most of the later pictures have been taken with a wideangle fisheye, a single focal size lens that was extra resistant than the 2 zooms I exploit for many of my work. I used to be drained and wanted to get someplace to dry out, so whereas many have been planning to go on to additional protests in Inexperienced Park and on the Embankment it was time for me to go house.
Extra photos on My London Diary at Carnival of Dust.
Tags: Anglo American, BHP Billiton, BP, Carnival of Dust, Metropolis, Metropolis of London, crimes in opposition to humanity, drive folks off their land, ecocide, ecological catastrophe, ecosystem, extraction, funeral procession, Glencore Worldwide, human rights abuses, London, London Steel Trade, London Inventory Trade, march, McArthur River, mining, mining firms, peter Marshall, protest, Rio Tinto, sacred websites, shell, inventory alternate, poisonous wastes, Vedanta, XStrata
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