WILLblog

Apparently today was not the best day to travel by air. I always carry lots of water on the plane, but on the bright side I guess I'll be traveling lighter. In case you missed the U.S. official word, or simply want the access to the public record, here are audio archives of this morning's news conference on the terrorism alert for commercial flights, presented by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, FBI Director Robert Mueller, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Streaming RealAudio | MP3 download

Lebanese perspectives on the war in Lebanon? Might be helpful for us to get them, and there are many different Lebanese perspectives. Here's a starting point on the community site kuri5hin.org. Please add suggestions about other resources for information, knowledge, and perspective.

OK, so all the Big Media have fully deployed their Crisis in the Middle East logos. We could of course wisecrack about how this is a bigger news-theme opportunity than the Michael Jackson trial, bigger even than Runaway Bride, but of course it's bigger than a news-theme and it's not funny. We had better understand it the best we can, and try to sincerely and fully address it. The implications and complications of the war in Lebanon and Israel, connected in so many ways with wars, conflicts, and contests pretty much everywhere else, must be covered as comprehensively as possible by our news media. Too bad in most cases that's not really happening. One case where it is happening is at the BBC, which too often makes up for the lack of coverage throughout the other English-speaking news media. Perspective, what's that? Aren't there just two sides to every story? You might find more here at the BBC News In Depth website, which also has a Middle East Crisis logo. Sometimes, logos actually mean something.