Cairn Energy tries to gag environmentalists... and fails miserably

This image is illegal in some parts of Europe, go figure!

Scottish oil drilling company Cairn Energy has attempted to legally gag a Greenpeace protest that took place at its offices in Edinburgh on Monday. In the protest a number of activists dressed as polar bears occupied the see of the Scottish multinational searching for the missing emergency plans in the case of oil spill in the Arctic.

Funnily enough they managed to get a super-gag order from some obsolete judge, which pretended to achieved that any Tweets and Facebook updates made by the protesters during the incident be redacted.

The result is a total mess but essentially has achieved a much higher profile for the protest and by now everyone has seen the forbidden photos of the searching polar bears... and knows that there is a Scottish oil company that has no idea of what is doing - or so must we think considering its lack of transparency and fear of truth.

The gag order, which obviously has no effect outside the UK, forbids:

... disseminating, printing, uploading, sharing, copying or otherwise publishing any images, photographs, pictures or other material (or copies thereof) taken or recorded by Greenpeace activists present within 50 Lothian Road, Edinburgh on or around 18 July 2011. 

The oil corporation has been drilling at Greenland at depths greater than 900 meters. According to Greenpeace:

Cairn Energy is using its legal muscle to try and gag us from telling the truth about their dangerous oil drilling in the fragile Arctic environment. The company is clearly worried that our volunteers may have got their hands on their secret Arctic spill response documents and now they are determined to continue their cover-up by any means they can – even if that means impinging on important freedoms of expression.

This image instead is legal everywhere, oddly enough

Argh, those pesky polar bears may get to know!

As you can see in this video, both Greenpeace and Cairn Energy field managers know that having a PUBLIC emergency plan is compulsory by ethical requirements that the company and the Greenland government claim to follow:

Sources: Scotsman, Greenpeace New Zealand, etc.