i've been watching (and reading) the online coverage of the iranian elections and aftermath. of course, i don't watch main stream media news anyway, but i hear they've been doing a downright horrible job of covering it.

the iranian government is trying to choke off contact with the outside world. one bit of "social networking" they can't stop is twitter. and there are two sites who have live blogging and are posting twitter feeds from iranians. i'm sure the inventors of twitter had no idea how important their service would become.

iranians have enlisted the aid of hackers to hack Ahmadinejad's website which has since disappeared from the net. proxy's are being set up from outsiders so iranians can get their message out and seek out info on how the rest of the world is reacting.

my understanding is the police and the military aren't picking sides, yet. instead, the militias (basiji) are the ones responsible for the violence against protesters. they've stormed several the the universities, and at last report, 100's of students and several professors are missing. At least 7 students have been killed.

they are importing lebansese, many of them hezbbolah, to help with the crack-down.

the photos and videos coming out of iran are inspiring and heartbreaking all at the same time. while gun fire goes off around them, the people are chanting, "don't be scared, we're all together"

it's not a revolution yet, but those few who have some power over this are deciding if it needs to be amped up to revolution status.

iran is after all a theocracy basically run by mullahs. we don't know that the opposition leader Mousavi would be a whole lot better than Ahmadinejad, although he seems to be slightly more liberal. the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei realizes his power might be slipping away and has ordered at least a partial probe into the election results.

while is difficult to say what will come of this, we very well could be witnessing history in the making.

so, for those interested, here's some links...

HuffPo's live blogging

HuffPo's full coverage

Al Jazeera's coverage

Andrew Sullivan's comprehensive coverage

it should be noted that years ago, when we dealt with our own election fraud, andrew sullivan was the first in line to call our own protesters "un American" Somewhere along the line, he changed his tune about Bush. But he's never been one of my favorites. However, maybe he's feeling some remorse for his own scathing comments against his countrymen and has taken to supporting the iranians.