News: Water As Fuel

Here is an interesting YouTube upload of a local news story about a man who has put together a hydrogen fuel cell that breaks down water. There is a bit of controversy in the YouTube comments, as to the authenticity of this technology but I think it is, at very least, worth seeing the kinds of concepts that are out there.

Hat Tip to Color Miracles for the video

Journalism: The Real News: - Iraqi parlement demands timetable for withdrawal

This is a pretty significant story. The Iraqi parliament has voted for a timetable for the US withdrawal but Maliki the prime minister of Iraq has ignored it and pretends that it is a non binding resolution. This effectively ignores the Iraqi constitution which says that the Parliament's resolution is law without a veto. Imagine that. . . what kind of country has a president that ignores the will of his congress. . . . oh wait. . . nevermind. . . moving on. .

Everybody is all excited now that Musharraf, Pakistan's dictator in chief, has suspended their constitution. Unfortunately, America has helped provide an excellent role model in Iraq. Bush stands at a podium and says if the government wants us out we will leave but all the while they have their inside man keeping that from happening. Isn't this whole spreading democracy to the middle east thing grand?

Journalism: The Real News Network

Why did President Bush go to Iraq:




Does Bush Want Saddam Without The Mustache?:



Senior Editor for The Real News Network, Paul Jay, talks with Pepe Escobar, an Asia Times reporter who has been in the middle east. First they discuss Bush's visit to Iraq and then they move on to the problems with the Iraq government.

Journalism: The Real News Network - Margolis says TV news is hiding the truth about Iraq civil war

The Real News Network has released a new video where their Senior Editor Paul Jay sits down with Eric Margolis, a conservative journalist, to discuss the mainstream news coverage of this weeks events in Iraq.

Journalism: The Real News Network: Jeff Cohen On TheREALnews

The Real News Network is a project begun by and organization by the name of Independent World Television. Their goal is to create a non profit, independent, cable news network that will first launch on the internet this fall and then move to TV a year or so after that. An introductory video which they call The Promise can be found on the front page of their website and as the featured video on their YouTube account. They are hiring professional journalists from all over the world to contribute and they will have no financial ties to corporations or government and no commercials. The reasoning is that information should not be a for profit venture because that corrupts it. I happen to agree. Just think about the ratings mongers who run the news shows today and want sexy, novelty and celebrity content for ratings. Think about how they define their success on those ratings rather than the quality of the content or the service they provide. Consider that corporations have been known to pull advertising for their products if a news story on that channel paints them in a bad light. When you consider how one parent corporation could represent hundreds of products to be advertised that represents a whole lot of influence.

Jeff Cohen (not to be confused with the child actor) is a former cable news host and producer and today he is a respected media critic. He is also the founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting a watchdog group that collects information on the news media for analysis. They check things like how many liberal viewpoints are featured on cable news shows vs. conservative viewpoints (as many as 5 to 1 I believe). They also noticed that PBS has lots of investor shows and business shows that feature owners and business leaders but not one show that represents the labor movement. He is appearing on The Real News Network here to talk about the corruption that exists in todays mainstream media and to explain how important a project like this is.

Journalism: Kevin Epps & Njeri Sims - US Vs Josh Wolf

Josh Wolf was a freelance videographer who often posted his work on blogs. In July of 2005 he captured footage of a protest in San Fransisco. There was some disorder at the protest and the federal government tried to subpoena his equipment and his footage as part of the investigation. Josh believed that his footage didn't show anything significant and that the disorder did not warrant a federal investigation. He believed that the government simply wanted his tape so that they could use it to identify the people at the protest for their homeland security database. He offered to let the judge see the footage but refused to give over the tapes to the government, citing the first amendment and freedom of the press. They said, among other things, that he didn't count as the press and threw him in federal prison on April 1, 2006. He has since been released after posting his footage on the internet.

In all honesty, when I watch his footage, I have a hard time not concluding that some of the anarchy demonstrators were indeed out of line but I think this story still says something important about the state of our country today with it's hysterical fear of terrorists and "subversives". They put a guy in jail to get his camera footage of a protest.

Regardless of which side of this issue people fall on, I think this really opens up some important legal questions: who exactly counts as the press these days now that pretty much anyone can publish on the internet? How far does the first amendment go? Should journalists be able to refuse grand jury subpoenas? Does raw footage of a public event, with no participation from the observer, constitute the creation of some property that can then be protected by the first amendment?

This video was created by two allies of Josh as part of the movement to get him out of jail.

Journalism: Greg Palast - Talking about elections

Greg Palast is one of those investigative reporters that really seems to get into the scary stuff. He is an American but he works for the BBC because none of the American media will run his stories, even when they have sharing agreements with the BBC and they could do it for free. Greg is the first person that I heard use the term "Electronic Berlin Wall" to describe the American Media's control over the information that gets to the people. I couldn't agree more. He recently placed his latest book Armed Madhouse into a creative commons copyright status which basically means public domain.


This is part 1 and 2 of a series on YouTube where he is at a speaking engagement with Robert Kennedy Jr. Greg does a lot of independent internet video outside the BBC. He also writes a lot of text articles. It's worth scanning around to see what Greg has to say about things.

Part 1



Part 2



See the rest here