Hear here
: The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has a nice piece today about Iranian bloggers and their mullah butt-biting.
That Westerners know about [arrested Iranian blogger Sina] Motallebi is largely the result of another blogging phenomenon: Iranians who run English-language blogs outside of Iran. Pedram Moallemian, born in Iran but now living in California, runs a blog (www.eyeranian.net) and started an online petition to protest Mr. Motallebi’s arrest. Hossein Derakhshan, who runs a Iran-focused blog (www.hoder.com) in Canada, helped bring the story to the attention of well-known blogs like InstaPundit and Buzz Machine, which means a lot of Americans now know the story. Mr. Derakhshan has also provided Iranians back home with the technical information to set up blogs.
The Internet won’t bring down Iran’s dictators. But the blogging phenomenon shows that human freedom and expression will not be denied, and that technology will only continue to make the job of dictators that much harder.
[via reader Mary Campbell]
