Ever wonder where American gets most of its oil? If you thought it was Saudi Arabia or Iraq you are wrong. America’s biggest oil supplier has quickly become Canada’s oil sands. Located under Alberta’s pristine boreal forests, the process of oil sands extraction uses up to 4 barrels of fresh water to produce only one barrel of crude oil.

It goes without saying that water — its depletion, exploitation, privatization and contamination — has become the most important issue to face humanity in this century. At the same time, the war for oil is well underway across the globe. A struggle is increasingly being fought between water and oil, not only over them.

Alberta’s oil sands are at the centre of this tension. As the province rushes towards a large-scale extraction, the social, ecological and human impacts are hitting a crisis point. In only a few short years the continent will be a crisscross of pipelines, reaching from the arctic all the way to the southern US, leaving toxic water basins the size of Lake Ontario, and surface-mines as large as Florida.

H2Oil follows a voyage of discovery, heartbreak and politicization in the stories of those attempting to defend water in Alberta against tar sands expansion. Unlikely alliances are built and lives are changed as they come up against the largest industrial project in human history.

Ultimately we ask what is more important, oil or water? And what will be our response?

With hope and courage H2Oil tells the story of one of the most significant, and destructive projects of our time.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-03-22
End Time: 21:00

Thursday, February 4, 2010 7:00-9:00 pm at Room PE 250

Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming?

Scientists are often so focussed on measuring the evidence required to
determine how things work that they either forget or do not have time for the needs of public education, and the directions the nation will take in applying the knowledge gained by science. James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore have recently produced a book entitled ‘Climate Cover-Up,’ in which they examine the powerful public relations forces brought to bear against mainstream climate science, physics and chemistry, in order to blunt the message that we need to take steps to avoid future harm.

As a PR professional himself, Hoggan felt a strong need to keep the work of PR honest, and he recognized the methods that were used in the attacks on the science findings. He says “it is infuriating, as a public relations professional, to watch my colleagues use their skills, their training and their considerable intellect to poison the international debate on climate change.” Some of the arguments of the self-appointed skeptics are lacking in both common sense and modern science, but other tactics and campaigns are skillfully designed to appear to show debate among informed physical scientists regarding whether there is an effect caused by atmospheric change at all.

Hoggan and Littlemore track the funds and describe the motives behind the campaigns, noting that “few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climatechange.” They call the unprecedented PR attack ³a triumph of disinformation one of the boldest and most extensive PR campaigns in history.”

Speaker: Richard Littlemore

Richard has spent 20 years in daily newspapers (the Ottawa Citizen, the Winnipeg Tribune and the Vancouver Sun), before turning his hand in 1995 to freelance journalism and public affairs. He wrote the David Suzuki Foundation¹s first public information package on climate change in 1996 was vice-chair of the Greater Vancouver Regional District’s Air Quality Committee in 1996 and 1997 and sat as a delegate to the Canadian government’s (failed) Kyoto Implementation Process from 1997 to 1999.

In addition to his DeSmog endeavors, Richard is a regular speech writer for many business and academic leaders and is a senior counselor and the lead writer at James Hoggan and Associates.
Most importantly, he is a parent to three teenage boys who, like all
children of their generation, deserve to inherit a world uncompromised by climate change.

Moderator: Dan Johnson

Date: Thursday, February 4, 2010
Time: 7:00 ­ 9:00 pm
Location: Room PE 250 University of Lethbridge 1st Choice Saving
Centre
Cost: Free to everyone, refreshments supplied

Visit the SACPA website: http://www.sacpa.ca

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-02-04
End Time: 21:00

One hour away from Miami the elected President of the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation was twice removed from office with the complicity of the international community. “ARSITIDE and the Endless Revolution” is a feature documentary that explores through investigative lenses the events that led to the removal of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the democratically elected President of Haiti. Filmmaker Nicolas Rossier takes the viewer into a journey of political intrigues, armed criminals posing as freedom fighters and economic fiascos. What emerges is a young democracy being constantly tested and ultimately destroyed.

The film features renown physician and anthroplogist Paul Farmer, President Aristide himself, actor and UN goodwill ambassador Danny Glover, Political commentator and linguist Noam Chomsky, Assistant Secretary of State Roger Noriega, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Expert James Dobbins, John Shattuck and many Haitian Voices.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-03-12
End Time: 21:00

OilCrash, produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.

The idea that the world’s oil supplies have peaked, or will soon, is gaining mainstream currency. Robert B. Semple, Jr., associate editor of the New York Times editorial board, writes in the paper’s March 1, 2006, online edition:

“The Age of Oil — 100-plus years of astonishing economic growth made possible by cheap, abundant oil — could be ending without our really being aware of it. Oil is a finite commodity. At some point even the vast reservoirs of Saudi Arabia will run dry. But before that happens there will come a day when oil production ‘peaks,’ when demand overtakes supply (and never looks back), resulting in large and possibly catastrophic price increases that could make today’s $60-a-barrel oil look like chump change. Unless, of course, we begin to develop substitutes for oil. Or begin to live more abstemiously. Or both. The concept of peak oil has not been widely written about. But people are talking about it now. It deserves a careful look — largely because it is almost certainly correct.”

Semple concludes: “These [are] not doomsday scenarios from conspiracy theorists, but hard scientific facts backed by serious research.”

You needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to see a connection between America’s current obsessions with the Middle East and national security, and the world’s looming oil crisis. The frenzied search for alternative sources of energy now being pursued by the largest multinational energy corporations makes it clear they also believe a crisis is fast approaching. Each day’s headlines, whether the subject is Iraq or South America, sheds new light on the issue.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-02-24
End Time: 21:00

SILHOUETTE CITY is an immersive journey through the recent history of American apocalypticism. Using archival video, movement propaganda and original investigative material, the film tracks the movement of apocalyptic Christian nationalism and its most extreme adherents from the margins to the mainstream, the military and beyond.

In the midst of a sudden loss of power on the political right and a destabilizing economic crisis, an apocalyptic right-wing populism has gathered force. According to Political Research Associates, the leading right-wing watchdog organization:

“When the Right isn’t in power, some right-wing groups become increasingly violent. In the midst of a global economic meltdown, right-wing populism has even greater appeal. We’re watching as the Right mobilizes resentment against gays and lesbians, people of color, immigrants, Muslims?tactics that frequently find a receptive audience among people hurt by a faltering economy. Already, organized White supremacists are blaming Jews, a perennial standby in scapegoating, for Wall Street’s crisis.

Today, the conditions are present for a perfect storm of bigotry and reaction.”

If current events are prompting a resurgence of conspiracy culture and anti-government paranoia, the future of the American Right is at the fringes of contemporary apocalyptic Christian nationalism. In the age of a networked Christian Right, movement propaganda has the potential to reach a greater speed and audience than ever before. The film examines the striking ideological and rhetorical similarities between The Covenant, The Sword & The Arm Of The Lord (CSA)- a group that provided the model for militia group activity in the 1990s-and the mainstream Christian Right of today. It reveals how the apocalyptic intensity and rhetoric of final warfare are symptoms of those impulses opposed to cultural openness-and as the formal and conceptual methods of propagandizing their struggle are laid bare-the CSA provides a case study in grassroots response to right-wing apocalyptic impulses. Globalization, rapid worldwide economic expansion and the subsequent decline have rallied religious extremists internationally to join in a fight against a common enemy: modernism and secularism.

This sense of urgent desire for radical closure seeks to find its expression-whether it be grassroots organizing, hate speech or direct violence.
Start Time: 12:00
Date: 2010-02-10
End Time: 13:30

A panel of judges, with assistance from the audience will choose the first place winner. Second place will receive $300.
Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-03-09
End Time: 21:00

A panel of judges, with assistance from the audience will choose one student to advance to the final round. The other student will receive the third prize of $100 cash.
Start Time: 16:30
Date: 2010-03-02
End Time: 18:00

Columbia is the trade union murder capital of the world. Since 2002, more than 470 workers’ leaders have been brutally killed, usually by paramilitaries hired by private companies intent on crushing the unions. Among these unscrupulous corporate brands is the poster boy for American business: Coca-Cola.

Talk to Martin Gil: His brother Isidro was killed at point-blank range while working at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, because he was part of a union bargaining unit. Like most violent crimes committed against Colombian union leaders, Gil’s murder went unpunished.

However, U.S. lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth, as well as activist Ray Rogers, stepped in and launched an ambitious crusade against the behemoth Coca-Cola. In an incredible three-year saga, filmmakers Germán Gutiérrez and Carmen Garcia follow these heroes in a legal game of cat and mouse. From Bogotá to New York, Guatemala to Atlanta, Washington to Canada, The Coca-Cola Case maintains the suspense of a hard-fought struggle.

The lawyers filed several cases at the U.S. federal court against Cola-Cola for murder, abduction and torture committed in Colombia and Guatemala. Thanks to activist Ray Rogers, they also attacked the brand image of the Atlanta-based giant, with the devastating campaign Stop Killer Coke!, causing dozens of U.S. colleges and universities to boycott the drink.

Still the company would not give up. After five years of haggling, will the lawyers get justice? In the end, they reach a settlement of sorts, but what will the victims choose – cash, or power and integrity?

Start Time: 19:00
Date: 2010-02-23
End Time: 21:00

A panel of judges, with assistance from the audience, will choose 2 students to advance to the final round. The other 2 speakers will receive cash prizes of $100.
Start Time: 16:30
Date: 2010-02-23
End Time: 18:00

A panel of judges, with assistance from the audience, will choose one of the speakers to advance to the next round.
Start Time: 12:15
Date: 2010-02-02
End Time: 13:30