Shell To Sea Banner Display at Patrick’s Bridge, Cork, 5pm-7pm

cork | rights, freedoms and repression | event notice Tuesday January 30, 2007 17:36 by Ray - Cork Shell to Sea corkshelltosea at gmail dot com

Visual solidarity with communities in struggle

Banner Display at Patrick’s Bridge, Cork, 5pm-7pm, Thursday 1st February 2007

The Cork branch of Shell to Sea will be doing a banner display at Patrick’s Bridge on the evening of Thursday 1st February. This should be a colourful display of many campaign banners and should provide considerable visual impact.

On this day, Shell will be both announcing its annual financial results and celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding. For the communities of Erris in Co. Mayo this will be no cause for celebration as they continue to resist the unsafe and unwanted Corrib Gas project, as they have done for the last seven years.

Banner Display at Patrick’s Bridge, Cork, 5pm-7pm, Thursday 1st February 2007

The Cork branch of Shell to Sea will be doing a banner display at Patrick’s Bridge on the evening of Thursday 1st February. This should be a colourful display of many campaign banners and should provide considerable visual impact.

On this day, Shell will be both announcing its annual financial results and celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding. For the communities of Erris in Co. Mayo this will be no cause for celebration as they continue to resist the unsafe and unwanted Corrib Gas project, as they have done for the last seven years.

Last year, Shell announced profits of €19 billion, one of the highest annual profit figures in history. In spite of these super-profits, Shell E&P Ireland has repeatedly claimed that to refine the Corrib gas at sea, as the Shell to Sea campaign has consistently demanded, was too expensive. It is clear that Shell intends that the future of communities in Erris is to be sacrificed to the pursuit of even greater profit margins.

The Cork branch of Shell to Sea carries out this public protest to express solidarity with all those communities in Ireland and around the world who have suffered at the hands of this greedy and delinquent company. Shell has destroyed environments, poisoned communities, facilitated the arming of mercenaries and arranged for governments to execute and otherwise murder those who had the temerity to stand in the way of their ruthless unprincipled way of doing ‘business’.

From South Africa to Brazil to Nigeria to Rossport, Shell’s centenary joy is seen only as yet another insult from a company that has robbed them of resources, land, health, livelihoods, safety, and even the hopes they had for their children’s futures. We remember all this with sorrow but also with defiance, for Shell will not be allowed another century of brutal greed for more and more people are becoming aware of this company’s true nature.

We will also be holding information stalls on Patrick St. the next two Saturdays to inform people about the issues involved and to build for the national Day of Action in Erris on Friday 16th February.