Edinburgh's Assembly Hall is host to one of the two counter-conferences organised for today to put some alternative proposals and thinking on the table for this week's G8 summit.
Its subtitle is Corporate Dreams, Global Nightmares, and it's the brainchild of the more radical wing of the non-governmental organisations spectrum – namely, War On Want, Friends of the Earth, and the World Development Movement.
The venue is an appropriate choice – a Gothic, Harry Potter-style spired church and meeting hall on the Mound in Edinburgh. The Assembly Hall is the headquarters of the Church of Scotland, but also served as the temporary home of the Scottish parliament before it moved to its new and controversially expensive building at Holyrood. What better place for a debate on the ideas and philosophies of world trade?
The Guardian's ubiquitous George Monbiot attacks Bob Geldof, Bono and even Nelson Mandela for being coopted by the G8 ministers, lacing his speech with a wide-ranging analysis of the conflict in the Congo, the situation in Zimbabwe and the fine-print of the "conditionality" of the G7 finance ministers' deal on debt a few weeks ago.
Being the morning after the night before, there are a few empty seats. But there are 300 people in the audience when the Egyptian-born Marxist professor Samir Amin begins a 20-minute recap of 60 years of global trade rules since the second world war.
With several keen students – of all ages – frantically scribbling down notes, and a few others nodding off in the back rows, it feels very much like being back at university.
There's a free screening this afternoon of the award-winning documentary The Corporation, and the Green MEP Caroline Lucas talking on climate change – one part of the G8 agenda which was pretty much forgotten about yesterday because of Live 8's concentration on Africa.
