Not to play the party card (for those who don’t know, I have a strong and fairly equal dislike for both sides of the aisle), but only under the Bush administration does one have to outlaw something that is already illegal.

Synop: Bill outlaws domestic wiretapping (again); passed in the House today.

Found these videos on You Tube two weeks ago, at the height of the Israeli offensive into Lebanon. I think this is a stunning example of the way new media (or democratized media, as some are calling it) has the potential to change the way we learn about war, it’s causes and it’s atrocities. With media tools such as YouTube (and it’s hundreds of clones), one no longer needs to make an appeal to the juggernaut of traditional media to get their message heard.

As far as I remember the Israeli attack on civilians linked below wasn’t covered by CNN or any of the other major US TV news outlets (please correct me below if I’m wrong), except for maybe a passing mention of ‘reports of civilian deaths.’ There was, however, plenty of coverage of the Hezbollah missile attacks, including video. I speculate that in other parts of the world, the situation was reversed. There’s hope with democratized media, I think, that when no single point controls the message societies can see their own aggressions for what they really are. Or, at the very least, see them as their enemy sees them.

The first is a video of a Hezbollah rocket attack targeting civilians in Haifa, Israel.

The second, an Israeli missle attack on a civilian crowd in Lebanon.