This morning, members of the Edinburgh WDM group held a protest at the Barclays branch on George Street.  This was to highlight the role that the bank  is playing in creating hunger by pushing up the price of key staple foods, through its reckless speculation on the global food markets.  Barclays is the UK’s biggest player in food speculation.  For more information and to take action go to www.wdm.org.uk/food.  It’s time to stop big banks like Barclays preying on the poor.

Preying on the poor

Barclays Capital and other investment banks are betting on food in financial markets, driving up food prices and leaving millions around the world facing hunger and poverty.  WDM Edinburgh will be be joining other groups across the country to highlight this issue, by doing a stunt outside Barclays.  Come along and join us:

Outside Barclays on George Street, 11 am, Saturday 9 April.

It’s time we stood up to the banks and put an end to their greedy behaviour.  For more info and to take action go to: www.wdm.org.uk/food-speculation

WDM Edinburgh and Lothians are hosting a film night on Wednesday the 15th of December at the Brass Monkey pub on Drummond Street.

The film which we’ll be showing,  Food Inc. ,  reveals the malign workings of the US food industry and is sure to give you plenty to chew on while you sit back and relax over a pint in the comfortable surroundings of the Brass Monkey.  So gather your friends and head on down for a laid-back evening of film and discussion.

The evening kicks off at 7pm, which gives you plenty of time to get to the bar, have a chat and get comfortable before the film starts at 7.30pm.  We hope to see you all there!

Free Entry – All welcome!

Watch the trailer for Food Inc. below:

Tar Sand Extraction (Copyright Cooperative Campaigns)

This weekend several members of the Edinburgh group attended a very well-organised evening of talks on the tar sands developments in Alberta, Canada, the world’s largest fossil fuel project.    This was a joint event between The Co-operative, The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, WDM and FOE Scotland, and had a very good turn-out – particularly considering it was a Friday night!

The talks kicked off with an introduction by the very eloquent Colin Bains, Campaigns Adviser at the Co-operative Financial Services.   Colin gave an overview of  what is at stake if tar sands developments are allowed to continue – and, if the accompanying slide show was anything to go by, it isn’t a pretty picture.  If you want an idea of the scale of these developments, have at the Tarnished Earth photo gallery here: Tarnished Earth Picture Gallery from the Guardian

This was followed by a very moving account from Chief Al Lameman from the Beaver Lake Cree Nation.  The Beaver Lake Cree are a small indigenous community from North East Alberta, whose homeland is being systematically destroyed through tar sands operations, and the hundreds of kilometres of pipelines and seismic exploration lines that accompany it.  The community has launched a legal challenge to protect their environment by putting a stop to any further tar sand developments within in it’s ancestral lands, taking on not only the government of Alberta and Canada, but also the world’s largest oil companies.  Jack Woodward, the lawyer representing the Beaver Lake Cree, explained to the audience the particulars of their two lawsuits (watch him explain it here)

Other speakers included Duncan McLaren, Chief Executive of FOE Scotland and Head of Campaigns for WDM Scotland, Liz Murray, who explained the link between tar sands and our current campagin to clean up bailed out banks – tar sands being one of sevaral dodgy deals that the Royal Bank of Scotland are currently investing in.    Liz Murray’s talk was accompanied by a great new video which focused on the RBS week of action last year – this will be available to watch online soon!

Followed by a Q&A session with the audience, all in all, it was a very informative and inspiring evening – thanks to everyone who helped organise it.

If you have a minute to spare, show your support by taking online action here:

• Tell the Chancellor, George Osbourne, to stop RBS investing taxpayer’s money in projects and companies that are wrecking the climate and threatening human rights
• Call on your MP to support the introduction of mandatory carbon reporting by 2012
• Say NO to tar sands (photo petition

The Co-opererative’s photo exhibition ‘Tarnished Earth’ will be touring the UK, starting in London.  Find out more details here.

Hi everybody, apologies if you tried to access our site and couldn’t, we were experiencing some technical difficulties, which have now been fixed. Now that we’re back online, we’ll be keeping you up to date with all the latest news and what the group are doing, so be sure to watch this space!

For this month’s group meeting we invited one of the Transition Edinburgh University team, Ric Lander, to come along and tell us a little about who they are and what they do.

Ric began by introducing the idea of transition communities, which aimed to move away from economic dependence on fossil fuels – an unsustainable source of energy – and towards a low-carbon, low-energy existence. This requires looking at and rethinking all the ways we currently use fossil fuels. As Ric pointed out, it is important that this is viewed positively and promoted as a tangible alternative. He also put forward some interesting ways that this message had been relayed to students at Edinburgh uni. He highlighted that another important aspect of transition is its emphasis on community building.

His talk was followed by a lively discussion with the group, on matters such as transition on a local level vs transition on an international level , which in turn brought up issues such as Fair Trade, exports etc.

Further info can be found on:

http://www.transitionedinburghuni.org.uk/

On Monday 7th June , the WDM group had a group outing to “Bananas ” at the Filmhouse – a film which tells of the fight of banana workers in Nicaragua to get compensation from multinationals for the effects of pesticides used in growing their bananas. This was part of the Take One Action film series and was followed by a Q and A session from the audience with John McAllion a director of the Fair Trade Forum . The group had a further lively discussion in the bar on the film (and other related topics) We plan to have more group outings with discussions to films which link with the aim of WDM (justice for the world’s poor).

If you haven’t seen this film already, it is definitely worth a watch!

“Juan ‘Accidentes’ Dominguez is on his biggest case ever. On behalf of twelve Nicaraguan banana workers he is tackling Dole Food in a groundbreaking legal battle for their use of a banned pesticide that was known by the company to cause sterility. Can he beat the giant, or will the corporation get away with it? In this suspenseful documentary, filmmaker Fredrik Gertten sheds new light on the global politics of food”