Power to the people

I've never been over the moon about cameras on cellphones. The quality whiffs, mainly. If you really need a picture, there are better, real cameras that will fix you up nicely. The things, I thought, were mostly a tool for vanity. Until today.

The pictures coming from Burma/Myanmar are heartbreaking. People standing up to a brutal regime are being violently broken up. And with foreign media mostly banned from the country, getting news about the protests would normally be difficult. But those cellphones, with those cameras, are getting the word out. And so are the blogs. Despots want control. Control of movement, thought and information. Depriving the people of those currencies would slow movements for democracies like the "Saffron Revolution." But not for long. They never did.