Een eerbetoon aan Howard Zinn

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Op vrijdag 12 juli 2013 22:26 schreef heite het volgende:
Is dit het topic waar je youtubefilmpjes dumpt die geen hond gaat kijken?

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Op vrijdag 12 juli 2013 23:22 schreef Bram_van_Loon het volgende:
Heite, spreek alsjeblieft voor jezelf.
Gezien het grote aantal filmpjes zou ik het echter wel op prijs stellen als wordt aanbevolen met welke paar filmpjes te starten.

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Newly disclosed emails obtained by the Associated Press show former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels sought to remove Howard Zinn's work from state classrooms just weeks after the historian's death in 2010.

Daniels wrote, "This terrible anti-American academic has finally passed away." After he described "A People's History" as a "truly execrable, anti-factual piece of disinformation that misstates American history on every page," Daniels asked: "Can someone assure me that it is not in use anywhere in Indiana? If it is, how do we get rid of it before more young people are force-fed a totally false version of our history?''

Censoring Howard Zinn: Former Indiana Gov. Tried to Remove "A People's History" From State Schools

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Op dinsdag 23 juli 2013 11:19 schreef Klopkoek het volgende:

Net zoals door allerlei krachten jarenlang is ontkend dat speculanten doelbewust de voedselprijzen opdrijven. Nee, nee, dat komt door overbevolking. Niet door boze speculanten.

Maar nu heeft een uitgelekt intern memo van Goldman Sachs duidelijk laten zien dat de prijzen van allerlei grondstoffen en voedsel wel zo'n 30-40% hoger ligt dankzij de speculanten. De man die dit heeft laten lekken is een held.

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This hour long documentary follows the award-winning reporter Greg Palast on the trail of the Bush family: Bush Family Fortunes: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

Bush Family Fortunes (2003)

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Austerity was named "Word of the Year" for 2010.

This documentary explains the nature of capitalist crisis, visits the protests against austerity measures, and recommends revolutionary paths for the future.

Capitalism Is The Crisis (Full Movie)

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Op woensdag 7 augustus 2013 10:21 schreef robin007bond het volgende:

[..]

http://www.independent.co(...)-starve-8459207.html

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Are some big players about to leave the commodities market?

The subject being debated in Washington is whether or not deposit-taking U.S. banks should be permitted to trade in physical commodities like oil, minerals, and agricultural products. At issue is how regulators can effectively assess the safety of citizens’ bank deposits in the incredibly complex and volatile world of commodity trading. Such a ruling to take deposit banks out of commodities would eliminate players like JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs from the commodity trading business. In fact, the 10 biggest banks on Wall Street earned about $6 billion in commodity trading revenue last year, proving that American banks are more than just sideline players in the commodity markets.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were both historically permitted to trade in commodities because they were investment banks, but during the American financial meltdown of 2008, they became bank holding companies which had retail banking subsidiaries. At the time, the U.S. Federal Reserve gave them a five-year grace period to exit physical commodity trading, and that grace period expires in September 2013. With $7.7 billion in commodity holdings in their March 31 financial statement, it certainly does not appear that Goldman Sachs has been exiting the commodity business approaching the September deadline. To be clear, most of the invested capital is in energy and minerals, but agriculture still holds a portion of this portfolio.

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Senate looks into the role of banks in commodities

Significant risks to the nation’s financial system and to taxpayers are the potential consequences of continuing to allow the country’s largest financial institutions to own commodities units that store and ship vast quantities of metals, oil and the other basic building blocks of the economy, several witnesses warned a Senate panel on Tuesday.

The ability of those bank subsidiaries to gather nonpublic information on commodities stores and shipping also could give the banks an unfair advantage in the markets and cost consumers billions of dollars, the witnesses said.

The Senate Financial Institutions and Consumer Protection subcommittee convened the hearing to explore whether financial companies should control power plants, warehouses and oil refineries.

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JPMorgan Chase subsidiary to pay $410 million penalty in electricity pricing scheme

On March 14, 2011, Blythe Masters, head of JPMorgan Chase’s global commodities group, asked one of her top deputies why California power officials were making ominous inquiries into the bank’s arcane and lucrative business of selling electricity. Five months earlier, Masters had been given a spreadsheet predicting that this line of business would generate profits of $1.5 billion to $2 billion by 2018.

Francis Dunleavy, the Houston-based executive in charge, replied in an e-mail that he would handle the matter, but added that “it may not be pretty.”

On Tuesday, JPMorgan Chase agreed to a record $410 million settlement of accusations by government regulators of manipulating electricity prices in California and the Midwest.

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'Taking Responsibility': German Banking Giant Quits Food Speculation

The DZ Bank decision highlights the deep differences among German financial institutions when it comes to the controversial practice of speculating on foodstuffs. Commerzbank and several Landesbanken (state-owned savings banks) had previously announced their intention to back out of food commodities speculation. But neither Deutsche Bank nor Allianz has followed them. Both say that it has not been proven that speculation on foodstuffs results in hunger and shortages.

Organizations such as Foodwatch disagree, pointing to studies showing that speculation leads to price bubbles. For DZ Bank, the risk was simply too great. The bank quietly announced in January that it was suspending such trading indefinitely, but few took notice. In its letter to Foodwatch, board member Lille was much clearer. He said the bank welcomes the fact that the effects of speculation on food prices are being intensively studied.

The letter says that DZ Bank will allow securities based on agricultural commodities to expire in 2013 and has ceased purchasing agricultural derivatives from other banks. The same holds true for funds managed by Union Investment.

Hille also made clear in the letter that his bank supports the creation of stricter financial market regulations. DZ Bank would like to see "controls on transaction volumes, particularly the introduction of effective position limits for exchanges and central clearing platforms." In other words, DZ Bank would like to limit the degree to which hedge funds and other speculators participate in so-called over-the-counter, or off-exchange, trading. Such limits existed until the beginning of the 2000s, but were then eliminated as deregulation progressed. Since then, the share of speculators on agricultural commodities markets has risen from 30 percent to 80 percent.

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Robert Waterman McChesneys work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic and capitalist societies. He is among the most widely read and honored communication scholars in the world today. His work has been professionally translated into 30 languages.

R. McChesney: Media and Politics in the United States Today