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On 20th January we held a screening of the film of Naomi Klein’s book ‘This Changes Everything’. 56 people from as far afield as Kettering, Bedford and Amersham were in the audience.

The film has a strong focus on communities affected by the extraction of fossil fuels, looking mostly at the Athabasca region of Alberta in Klein’s native Canada. The large-scale extraction of tar sands has been a relatively recent phenomenon. A number of the Cree first nation people have been staging legal challenges on the grounds that the industry is making normal life for them impossible. There are also episodes set in Greece and India where we were told of the frighteningly high number of coal-fired power stations planned. China is shown as having terrible problems of air pollution but also a country that has the capacity to make quick changes which have already started with the rapid expansion of solar power and reductions in the use of coal. The last coal-fired power station supplying Beijing will close in 2016.

One of Klein’s strengths is the focus she gives to deniers and corporate backers of the status quo including the Heartland Institute and James Delingpole. She does this by letting them speak for themselves to expose their own unscientific views. The audience gasped in amazement at statements such as the one that concerns about climate change are just a Marxist Trojan horse to undermine capitalism.

The film contains a number of ‘what if…’ questions, the last of which is ‘what if climate change is not the problem but the answer?’ By this she means, are the renewable energy solutions to climate change opportunities to change our economic system away from one that is dominated by big corporations supplying and depending on fossil fuel?

We have arranged a free community screening of the film of Naomi Klein’s book ‘This Changes Everything’

• Wednesday 20^th January
• Doors open 7.00
• The Guildhall in Central Milton Keynes. 300 Saxon Gate, MK9 2ES. Enter through the main door of Christ the Cornerstone Church. This is the big domed church in the city centre.

Donations are welcomed towards the cost of hiring the venue.

This Changes Everything presents portraits of communities on the front lines, from the Alberta Tar Sands to the coast of South India.

Interwoven with these stories is Naomi Klein’s narration, presenting the idea that we can seize the existential crisis of climate change to transform our failed economic system into something radically better.

A poster for the event can be viewed here

Transition MK have organised this event on Friday 20th November

A poster giving a short summary is available at this link

Every year Global Justice organises a speaker tour. This year’s has just been held. It started in Dundee and finished in Dublin, visiting 7 cities in the British Isles. The nearest the tour came to our group was Oxford where Tina Everett of that local group expertly chaired the event.

There were two visiting speakers from overseas. Maude Barlow is chair of the citizens’ group, the Council of Canadians. She spoke about CETA, The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement that has been negotiated between Canada and the EU and what its implications will be, based on Canada’s experiences of NAFTA, the North American Free trade Area. During 21 years of NAFTA two thirds of the legal challenges corporations make to Canadian regulations are on environmental issues. She explained how companies can set up subsidiaries in a country to take advantage of the option to use Investor Protection, ISDS that trade deals offer. Negotiations on CETA have been completed. It is currently being translated into more than 20 European languages. When it comes into force American companies will not have to wait for TTIP. They will be able to use their Canadian subsidiaries to sue for damages they claim result from regulations in Europe.

Yash Tandon, Ugandan trade expert and author of Trade is War, concentrated on the devastating effects on Africa of trade between that continent and the former imperial powers. Between 50 and 60 million Africans have been dispossessed of their land. Yash is clear that Economics as it is taught is not a discipline; it is an ideology. He said there are three possible responses to the injustices of corporatisation, pessimism, cynicism or activism. Cynicism is the worst. He supports short term and long term activism.

Guy Taylor of Global Justice spoke about TTIP and CETA. A common theme with these and other trade deals is allowing corporations to sue governments in secret courts over decisions they don’t like.

18th February 2015

The purpose of the event was to celebrate the relaunch of WDM as Global Justice Now, a name which has been chosen to reflect more accurately the aims and activities of the organisation. In particular it was felt important to move away from the word development which has been taken over by coal companies, banks and others. Some people even thought the World Development Movement was part of the World Bank.

In 1978 David Everett, Frankie Fischer, Ken Harris, Tim Bartlett and others founded the Milton Keynes local group of the World Development Movement. In 2011 Tim and Pauline Welch reformed the group. It is important to maintain a network of local groups. The organisation is run on democratic lines and these local groups feed opinions and vote at national level. An important and effective form of activism is lobbying through response cards and on-line petitions.

The relaunch is about more than a change of name. WDM was always an active organisation and Global Justice Now is increasing the campaigns and lobbying techniques. The amount of research done by the team in London is enormous and the information is used to support the campaigns. Nick Dearden who has been the Director for about 18 months is amazingly energetic and knowledgeable. Thanks to some recent legacies the organisation is relatively strong financially.

As part of our relaunch event in Milton Keynes we looked at short films made by the national organisation including ‘Banking while Borneo Burns.’ Search for Global Justice Now on YouTube to see all of these. I particularly like the one about Santa shutting down a branch of HSBC.

Alan Mawer

A new post written Heidi Chow

Can be viewed at the Global Justice Now main web site here