OneBigTorrent.org

King Corn 2007 PBS Independent Lens

Category: Documentary
Description:
King Corn 2007 PBS Independent Lens 703 mb/ 90 mins/ Behind America’s dollar hamburgers and 72-ounce sodas is a key ingredient that quietly fuels our fast-food nation: corn. In KING CORN , recent college graduates Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis leave the east coast for rural Iowa, where they decide to grow an acre of the nation’s most powerful crop. Alarmed by signs of America’s bulging waistlines, the filmmakers arrive in the Midwest enthusiastic about their new endeavor. For their farm-to-be, they choose a tiny town in Floyd, County, Iowa—a place that, coincidentally, both Ian and Curt’s great-grandfathers called home three generations ago. They lease an acre of land from a skeptical landlord, fill out a pile of paperwork to sign up for subsidies and discover the U.S. government will pay them 28 dollars for their acre. Ian and Curt start the spring by injecting ammonia fertilizer, which promises to increase crop production four-fold. Then it’s planting time. With a rented high-tech tractor, they set 31,000 seeds in the ground in just 18 minutes. Their corn has also been genetically modified for another yield-increasing characteristic: herbicide resistance. When the seedlings sprout from Iowa’s black dirt, Ian and Curt apply a powerful herbicide to ensure that only their corn will thrive on their acre. "The apple juices and the grape juices that are canned and they say 'sweetened,' that’s going to be a high-fructose corn syrup. And then you look down the meats—beefs, porks, chickens. You feed them corn and that gets turned into their biomass that we consume." By summer, their modern farm is thriving, and the Corn Belt is moving toward a record harvest of 11 billion bushels of corn. But where will all that corn go? With their crop growing head-high, Ian and Curt leave the farm to see where America’s abundance of corn ends up. As they enter America’s industrial kitchen, they are forced to confront the realities of their crop’s future. In Brooklyn, it sweetens the sodas of a diabetes-plagued neighborhood. In Colorado, it fattens the feed trough of a 100,000-head cattle feedlot. Ian and Curt are increasingly troubled by how the abundance of corn is helping to make fast food cheap and consumers sick, driving animals into confinement and farmers off the land. Animal nutritionists confirm that corn feeding can make cows sick and beef fatty, but it also lets consumers have fast food at low prices. As feedlot operator Bob Bledsoe says in KING CORN, “America wants and demands cheap food.” But that ignores the billions in subsidies that agri-corporations receive. As Ian and Curt discover, almost everything Americans eat contains corn. High-fructose corn syrup, corn-fed meat, and corn-based processed foods are the staples of the modern diet. America’s record harvests of corn are supported by a government subsidy system that promotes corn production beyond all market demand. As Ian and Curt return to Iowa to watch their 10,000-pound harvest fill the combine’s hopper and make its way into America’s food, they realize their acre of land shouldn’t be planted in corn again—if they can help it. .edit http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/film.ht Watch preview:http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/film.html : Other shunster posts at:http://www.bt-chat.com/browse.php?category=11
Seeders: 19
Leeches: 3

Workingmans Death (2005) (DVDRip) (QiX)

Category: Documentary
Description:
Synopsis: The toil of the workingman is the fascinating subject for this documentary from Austrian director Michael Glawogger. Taking five groups of workers from five different countries, Glawogger looks at the perils of being a coal miner in the Ukraine, a slaughterhouse worker in Nigeria, a sulfur miner in Indonesia, a ship-breaker in Pakistan, and a steel worker in China. Some of the conditions these men work in will come as a shock to the average office worker, and provides viewers with an important perspective on the harsh treatment meted out to certain factions of the workforce. Austrian director Michael Glawogger divides his documentary into a number of extended vignettes. In Heroes, college graduates can't find work in the desolate post-Soviet period in the Ukraine. So they descend upon abandoned, frigid coal mines. There they imperil their lives squeezing into crumbling tiny crawl spaces, in order to extract bits of coal to sell and eke out a subsistence. The free lance miners are embittered and demoralized, and Glawogger contrasts them with images from the past of optimistic, radiant Soviet coal miner collectives. In the chapter Ghosts, Glawogger moves on to Indonesia, where workers wind their way up and down the surreal, treacherous basin of a volcano under a punishing sun, gathering sulfur in overloaded, creaky bamboo baskets. The plumes of sulfur gas are visually captivating, yet unimaginably disturbing in the unspoken poisonous toll they are simultaneously inflicting on these impoverished workers' lives. Other episodes include the casual carnage of an unsanitary open air livestock slaughterhouse in Nigeria, with blood and entrails flowing unheeded through the city streets. Then in Pakistan, despairing migrant workers engage in the dangerous labor of dismantling gigantic oil carriers, while praying to Allah that they'll survive the task. The documentary concludes at a vast, defunct German steel mill that has been unbelievably transformed into an amusement park, complete with a light show. Meanwhile, young couples seek out remote corners among the rusty former smelting furnaces, to engage in a little sex. While the experience of Workingman's Death is rich in visual material for contemplation or just plain wonder, there is at the same time a gnawing feeling of voyeuristic objectification of these workers. It's as if the leisure class were sitting back and whimsically beholding their house servants sweating away at domestic tasks.
Seeders: 0
Leeches: 0

PBS Wide Angle - Victory Is Your Duty August 12 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
PBS Wide Angle - Victory Is Your Duty August 12 2009 About the Issue In the past seven Olympic Games, Cuba, an island nation with a population of 11 million people, has dominated the sport of boxing: 63 medals, 32 of them gold. Boxing has held a special place of honor in Cuban society since the revolution, not least because Castro has deployed the nation’s athletes as an unconventional tool of foreign and domestic policy. Sport propels the nation onto the world stage - allowing it to break out of economic and political isolation into a very public and superficially apolitical arena. While the country has never had the military might to challenge the U.S., it has found a way to compete inside the ropes of the boxing ring. Now, as Castro’s faltering health has thrown the future into question, Cuba’s athletes, as well as the rest its citizens will face a crucial time of transition. While the shift of power from Fidel to his brother Raul seems to have gone smoothly, there are some indications that changes in economic policy may lie on the horizon. About the Film WIDE ANGLE gains intimate access to the Havana Boxing Academy on the outskirts of Cuba’s capital. There, from the tender age of nine, boys hand-picked as future Olympians are molded into soldiers of the ring. They live and train at the academy with a single purpose: to bring home Olympic gold. Victory Is Your Duty follows the boys’ dramatic path over eight months of training, schooling and boarding as they build up to the biggest event of their lives — the annual National Boxing Championships. For the summer 2009 re-broadcast, WIDE ANGLE host Aaron Brown travels to Miami, Florida, to tell the story of what happens when graduates of Havana’s boxing academies grow up – and defect to the United States. The boxers tell of the triumphs and obstacles they faced in Cuba and continue to face as they pursue a professional career in the rough-and-tumble world of American boxing. This episode of Wide Angle is the precursor to the theatrical film Sons of Cuba.
Seeders: 0
Leeches: 0

Dissecting the Talking Heads - Bill Moyer's Journal-July 24, 2009

Category: News & Current Affairs
Description:
sdtv xvid 700kbps DEBATING HEALTH CARE REFORM Bill Moyers sits down with Trudy Lieberman, director of the health and medical reporting program at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and Marcia Angell, senior lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor in chief of the NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE. >> MOYERS ON HEALTH CARE Explore highlights on the debate over health care reform and get tools to track industry lobbying and campaign dollars. RAGE ON THE AIRWAVES What happens when America's airwaves fill with hate? BILL MOYERS JOURNAL revisits a tough look at the hostile industry of "Shock Jock" media with a hard-hitting examination of its effects on our nation's political discourse. >> MOYERS ON JOURNALISM AND THE MEDIA Check out the JOURNAL's investigation into the state of the media. Watch the Emmy-award winning "Buying the War," hear THE WIRE'S David Simon on the death of the daily paper and explore the effect of new media on the 2008 election. Plus, online tools to fact-check the media. http://www.shoppbs.org/family/index.jsp?categoryId=2408224
Seeders: 5
Leeches: 3

City boy

Category: Documentary
Description:
Croatian sub/English TV Rip The author of 'Beer and Loathing in the City' is captured on film in his former life as a successful investment banker, living the city life to the full. Geraint Anderson is an engaging personality who as the former secret Cityboy blogger for The London Paper became desperate to be revealed to save himself from a life he had come to hate. An investment banker who broke the City's "code of silence" as a newspaper columnist has blown his cover to publish a full-scale account of life in the Square Mile. For 22 months, since shortly after its launch, Cityboy has been thelondonpaper's most popular columnist, exposing the foibles, abuses and monstrous egos that drive the world's most dynamic money markets. Geraint Anderson, a 35-year-old Cambridge history graduate who spent almost 12 years in the City and rose to become a joint team leader and star stock analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4165716.ece
Seeders: 5
Leeches: 0

Media Matters May 31st - Noam Chomsky

Category: Chomsky
Description:
Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The media are central to all our lives," he says. "Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society."
Seeders: 2
Leeches: 0

PBS Frontline - The Tank Man (2006)

Category: Documentary
Description:
PBS Frontline - The Tank Man (2006) 763.52 MB/86mn On June 5, 1989, one day after the Chinese army's deadly crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, a single, unarmed young man stood his ground before a column of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Captured on film and video by Western journalists, this extraordinary confrontation became an icon of the struggle for freedom around the world. Seventeen years later, veteran filmmaker Antony Thomas goes to China in search of "The Tank Man." Who was he? What was his fate? And what does he mean for a China that today has become a global economic powerhouse? Drawing on interviews with Chinese and Western eyewitnesses, Thomas recounts the amazing events of the spring of 1989, when a student protest that began in Tiananmen Square, the symbolic central space of the nation, spread throughout much of the rest of China. Several weeks later, when the government sent in the army to end the demonstrations, the citizens of Beijing poured into the streets in support of the students. The demonstrations ended in a massacre on the night of June 3-4, when the government sent the troops into the city with orders to clear Tiananmen Square. Eyewitnesses recount what happened -- from the first shots fired in the city's outskirts, to the students' withdrawal from the square in the early hours of June 4, to the Tank Man's courageous stand the following day. From there, Thomas looks at what the Tank Man's life might be like in today's China. China observers and scholars, including Orville Schell, talk about the turning point the nationwide unrest of 1989 represented. Almost two decades later, the educated elite who led the protests of 1989 have benefited handsomely from China's rapid economic growth, but many Chinese workers still face brutal working conditions and low wages. In fact, some experts see the emergence of two Chinas: one modern, wealthy and urban; the other rural, poor and disenfranchised. There is evidence that unrest among workers and peasants is growing; in 2005, there were more than 87,000 "civil disturbances" in the country. The Chinese government has responded to this threat by cracking down on dissent, and on the media. The regime has managed to erase the Tank Man's image, famous throughout the world, from Chinese memory. Thomas shows the iconic picture to undergraduates at Beijing University, the nerve center of the 1989 protests; none of them recognize it. Central to the regime's struggle to control information is its filtering of the Internet, a complex undertaking that raises serious issues about the role of Western IT companies in China's censorship strategy." http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tankman/ Support your local PBS Station by making a contribution or by purchasing their DVDs. Source: http://tracker.conspiracycentral.net/torrents-details.php?id=7143 Cap: anon Other shunster posts at:http://www.bt-chat.com/browse.php?category=11
Seeders: 11
Leeches: 31

CBC - India Reborn, Episode 3 of 4: India on the Move

Category: Documentary
Description:
CBC - India Reborn, Episode 3 of 4: India on the Move The documentary is called "INDIA ON THE MOVE" for good reason. “The elephant is thundering,” says Vineet Agarwal whose family owns India’s largest freight company – the one growing at 25 per cent a year. And from his leather armchair, in the living room of his private jet, an Airbus A319 that would normally carry 130 passengers, billionaire Vijay Mallya leans forward, chuckles and declares that: “before, America and Europe held centre stage. I guess centre stage is going to move east.” Such is the confidence that now abounds in an economy that boasts a middle-class of 300 million, and more young people than anywhere else on earth — 500 million under 25. See the call center come of age, and Arjun and Sunita’s good life unfold. They are American-trained doctors, married with two kids, running two businesses and clearing email in the car on the way to work. In one business they do radiology over the Internet: a room full of Indian radiologists analyze cat-scans and x-rays of patients sitting in emergency rooms in America. They turn the results round in half an hour. “This is almost space age medicine,” says Arjun, a Yale graduate. But “India on the Move” also reveals that India still has a long way to go. It is all “space age” and “consumer age” in the cities, but medieval in the countryside, where farmers live in dire debt, and an alarming number commit suicide. Corruption is improving, but remains endemic; public education is woeful; and crucially, despite all progress, there remains a desperate need for jobs. The Indian growth of recent times has largely been driven by the service sector and software, but the documentary makes clear that India will have to make widgets and not just digits, if it wants to ever provide enough jobs. "INDIA ON THE MOVE" captures all this through the lives of people at a moment in history when this ancient civilization has decided to take on the future — and transform the world. Episode webpage: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/indiareborn/about-onthemove.shtml ;; ----- Specs Format : AVI Length : 349 MiB for 44mn 10s 550ms Codec : XviD Source : HDTV Video #0 : MPEG-4 Visual at 980 Kbps Aspect : 496 x 288 (1.722) at 29.970 fps Audio #0 : MPEG Audio at 112 Kbps Infos : 2 channels, 48.0 KHz Enjoy! Ekolb ======================================== CBC - India Reborn About the series: In 4 vibrant hours of HD television, INDIA REBORN charts the kaleidoscopic rise of one of the world’s newest and most unlikely superpowers. Epic and cinematic in scope, each episode unfolds with fascinating intimacy and insight revealing characters who reflect India’s dramatic transformation. INDIA REBORN is a potent mixture of dreams and despair, an entertaining and informative window into a land that could soon shape the future of the world. Home to charismatic gurus, prowling tigers and shimmering temples, India today boasts 28 billionaires, 100,000 millionaires and a middle class that is now bigger than the total population of the United States. A sprawling, chaotic democracy with 850 languages in daily use, 28 federated states and a stubborn caste system, India has a population of more than a billion people, half of them under 25. Almost in spite of herself, she is poised to become the world’s third largest economy, and a powerful voice in world affairs. Propelled by an IT sector boasting some of the best engineers on the planet, India is taking over the world’s cyber business. Multi-nationals around the world are rushing to her doorstep and superpowers both east and west aggressively court her affections. Thousands of “medical tourists” flock to India’s luxury hospitals for cut-price, first-rate treatments while sumptuous new hotels draw in growing crowds of vacationers seeking Indian secrets to rejuvenate mind and body. Movie-goers around the world worship the stars of the world’s largest dream-factory, Bollywood. In India, actors are the new gods and goddesses, or, at the very least, some of the country’s more successful politicians. INDIA REBORN shows how the Indian miracle is among the strangest stories in economic history. It is a “jobless” boom, with the IT sector employing just 1.6 million lucky people. Outside the formal job economy, five hundred million workers wait impatiently for their turn at fortune in the Indian renaissance. The starker reality is an impoverished village life that is the norm for over 70% of Indians. Every night, half of India’s children go to bed hungry. Rampant corruption, patronage politics, cities that are choking on their own growth, staggering pollution and severe water shortages – all conspire against the Indian dream. Hanging over it all is another cloud; nuclear war with neighbouring Pakistan and the constant threat of communal violence from religious tension at home. But just like a Bollywood movie, hope and an enduring belief in happiness are a part of the soul of India. The series will take full advantage of India's breathtaking land and seascapes, its colourful festivals and religious ceremonies and most of all, its diverse and articulate people, to bring this portrait of a nation to a broad, prime time audience. ;; SERIES AIRDATES Myth and Might, 8:00 pm, March 15, 2009 on CBC-TV Manufacturing Dreams, 9:00 pm, March 15, 2009 on CBC-TV India on the Move, 8:00 pm, March 22, 2009 on CBC-TV Mother India, 9:00 pm March 22, 2009 on CBC-TV CBC's India Reborn website: http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/indiareborn/about.shtml (Please note that all above screenshots are NOT actual screenshots from the rip but are taken from the documentary website)
Seeders: 16
Leeches: 15

Ian R Crane - Peak Oil: Myth or Reality

Category: Documentary
Description:
Peak Oil: Myth or Reality? The phrase ‘Peak Oil’ has been coined to bring attention to the belief that the world is at, or very close to, the point where reserves of global hydro-carbon resources commence the downward path, which will ultimately lead to the complete exhaustion of global oil & gas resources. Whilst the theory of ‘Peak Oil’ is popularized by a sympathetic media, the oil industry, continues to produce in excess of 90 million barrels each day whilst enjoying record levels of profitability, yet remains remarkably silent on the issue. The mainstream media is also strangely silent on the existence of alternative theories to ‘Peak Oil’. Why is this? Does everyone in the Oil & Gas industry agree with the forecasts that the world is entering the last days of an oil-based economy? If not, what is the alternative viewpoint and why is it not given coverage by the mainstream media? In addition, the proponents of ‘Peak Oil’ conveniently ignore rapidly advancing well construction, reservoir management and stimulation techniques, which enable more than twice as much oil to be extracted than when oil was first discovered in the late 19th Century. Not to mention the development of production from unconventional sources, such as the massive Shale Oil deposits beneath Colorado, Utah & Wyoming. Harvard PhD graduate Jerome Corsi wrote, “Oil companies are making record $100 billion annual profits not because oil is scarce … but because we believe it is.” Ian R. Crane, a veteran of a twenty-year career in international oilfield services, which provided him with the opportunity to live & work in the UK, Mainland Europe, Middle East and the USA, believes that counter theories to Peak Oil should be given equal consideration and people should be given the opportunity to see the truth behind ‘Peak Oil’. Is it real decline in availability of resources or ‘perceived shortage’, which has resulted in the price of oil escalating from $9.81 per barrel in 1999, to in excess of $140 per barrel today? What cannot be denied is that over the past five years, the major oil companies have achieved the greatest levels of profitability in corporate history. Over the same period, oilfield related stocks have increased in value by as much as a 500%, reaping enormous rewards for oilfield executives and industry investors. Ian does not suggest that we should continue to burn in excess of 90million barrels of hydro-carbons each day but he is concerned that the proponents of ‘Peak Oil’ are inadvertently playing into the hands of Big Oil. With the price of petrol now firmly set above the Ј1 per litre mark in the UK, it’s time to hear the other side of the story. Ian Crane - Codex Alimentarius link: http://www.demonoid.com/files/details/1906638/
Seeders: 20
Leeches: 0

Mao Zedong Biography

Category: eBooks, Magazines, Audio Books
Description:
A biography by Jonathan Spence205 pp. Recognized as one of the foremost Western scholars of Chinese civilization from the 16th century to the present, Spence has written extensively on the role of history in shaping modern China. His recent works include a biography of Mao Zedong and Treason by the Book, exploring an intriguing episode of 18th-century history. Spence teaches one of the most popular undergraduate classes at Yale on the history of Modern China 1600-2007
Seeders: 5
Leeches: 0