You knew it all along...

http://www.poetv.com/video.php?vid=48798

You, Me & the SPP: Trading Democracy for Corporate Rule- trailer

http://manlymedia.com/you-me-and-the-spp-dvd-release

Tour launch on Parliament Hill, October 1st, 2009 (tomorrow)
http://rabble.ca/whatsup/you-me-and-spp-tour-launch-parl

SPP police provocateur video by same filmmaker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow&feature=channel_page

You can say one thing for You tube.

It is a way of showing just how misguided and indeed ignorant some people really are. That is if you have patience to sift through the loads of garbage on the site. It is a reality check that rational dialogue is not always possible and we have a long way to go before some people should even be entitled to such a precious commodity as free speech. I am amazed that Canadians would so closely ally themselves with the U.S. interests. It makes me wonder how intelligent Harper is when he promotes a closer alliance with the U.S.

It is educational and prudent to know just how far the morons like Glenn Beck, Rush LImbaugh et al. will go and how they violate anything one might call common sense. It could happen in Canada and the same divisions could be created here and we would turn the favored country into just another corporate jungle like the U.S. A.

Rousseau was right--more or less

Jean Jacques Rousseau, writing in the 18th century, made a name for himself by answering an essay question posed the Academy of Dijon: "Has the establishment of the sciences and the arts served to purify or corrupt manners and morals?"

He argued it had. Art, and in particular theatre, as he later expounded in a letter responding to a call for a public theatre to be built in Geneva, weakened the morals of the public,by serving as a surrogate for any kind of meaningful public engagement. One went to the theatre, saw a tragedy, cried, and went home satisfied, without being moved to take action.

In our age, television and its bastard child YouTube and other streaming video sites, performs much the same function. It is an anaesthetic. It dulls the mind. It doesn't give rise to action, but rather suckles us into a complacent zombie state of inactivity. Perversely, we feel as if we are involved, by watching documentaries and news programs, but in fact most of us do nothing, preferring entertainment over involvement.

Except for BC Rail memories

I don't see many YouTube videos ...

but I do recall with great pleasure the impassioned speech given by Corky Evans in the Legislature and captured on YouTube ... I'd watch that once a week, except that I son't know how to find the darn thing again.

Then there's the highly intelligent use of video by Sean Holman to add to his reporting ... very informative.

Best use, for me, though, is to watch old videos of BC Rail as it wends its way down the steep valleys, alongside rushing rivers, its horn echoing off the mountainsides. Back in the days when BC owned its own railway and its own rivers.

I saw this link on several

I saw this link on several friends' facebook pages, but watched (only half of it) for the first time here. What I find interesting is that, cute as it certainly is, why are we so intrigued with a baby doing what babies have simply done since the beginning of time? Mimic and react to music and sound.

After a few seconds it's boring. Though I didn't watch all of it- does something else happen? Does the father hyperventilate? :)

Good Website - The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood: Reclaiming Childhood from Corporate Marketers
www.commercialfreechildhood.org

Have a look at this article - Six, Going on Sixteen: Fighting 'age compression' and the commercialization of childhood.
http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_03/six233.shtml

Yes, cute baby in the YouTube video, but look at the website above and the article on 'age compression'. Scary stuff, this social experiment in the USA in fostering a consumer culture.

Corporations don't give a fig about our well-being unless it inhibits our ability to buy their products or services.

To mjscox

At what point does this video content become something out of Huxley's 'Brave New World'? Recall the drug 'soma' and the 'feelies', images coupled with sensation. We may not have exactly those technologies, but the results are very similar.

Watching this stuff takes up our time, dulls our brains, and diverts us from real world issues, like our pathetic political leadership and a planet being pushed to the brink.

Same old...

Oh my, I remember what my mother used to say...."The whole world is crazy except thee amd me - and sometime I have my doubts about thee !!"

Could be worse, we could...

be subjected to videos about spiders on drugs or rap music from Guantanamo. :)

Just Say No to Big Tobacco Co - made in Victoria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIKfEXh51XY

The false promise of the Internet

The author's tone of frustration throughout the article boils over in his conclusion:

"We have the power now to use online video for exposing truths that would otherwise go unseen. So, let's use it."

The premise here is a false one. Access (ability) to new medium, alone, does not necessarily equal greater political power or greater communication abilities. The important ingredients have always been substantive content and critical analysis skills, which the Internet medium, in its vast vanity press wasteland of instant, self-defined celebrities and anonymous trolls, seems to discourage rather than encourage. The promise we are assured of by technological 'progressives' and optimists is that it does indeed offer these elements, yet therein may lie the Internet's most disarming, disabling trait as a medium for meaningful, radical communication.

This is refined, high-tech 'bread and circus' with the occasional smatterings of authentic anarchy and rebellion.

All the access and media portals in the universe are rendered useless if the message and culture therein is rendered useless by that very medium.

Twitter Nation has been pruned of its critical thinking skills, as it ventures into the bold, uncharted waters of 140-character banalities about today's lunch menu and YouTube clips of babies dancing to MTV.

Moreover, nowadays, why would anyone want to get off their ass and attend an actual rally or protest, when they can simply go sign their name to a Facebook petition or protest virtually from the comfort of their Internet terminal, thereby absolving themselves from any perceived duty in the fight for social justice?

youtube and useful stuff

I do real solar cooking research and give people real new information and youtube allows it to reach an audience across the world. (I have friends in india, africa and thailand and usa based on the videos)
MY video figures should pass the quarter million mark this month but that are dwarfed by videos of perpetual motion devices. Keeps it in perspective!
and people can pay for "ratings" and higher places in the search engines too!
I did a video recently on the failings of the scientific method and peer review and it is getting nowhere because some give it a 5 rating and some a 1 rating. Some see the current version of the scientific method as an article of faith. I see it as imperfect and in need of improvement.
Anyway, youtube is working to get information out but not as well as it could work.
Brian (My youtube name is gaiatechnician)