The revolution may not be televised

but it sure as hell is being tweeted. I am ashamed to admit that my initial kneejerk reaction to seeing the first messages on Twitter about the rioting following the election results announcements in Iran was that it would be really easy for the CIA to put a half a dozen people in a room full of computer gear and convince people that a revolution was starting halfway around the world, simply by having them work the social media sites and blocking media transmissions from the country in question and blaming the local government. Clearly, I have see "Wag the Dog" far too many times.
I am most emphatically not saying this is what happened in Iran. I think these pictures pretty much prove that this is no CIA smoke and mirrors show. I'm not sure what anyone outside Iran can do, in fact I think any outside interference at this point is going to allow the government to frame the whole thing as the work of Western-funded agitators, so I guess we are stuck cheering from the sidelines for the time being.
I don't think the challenger, former President Mir Hossain Mousavi, is any kind of combination of Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus, Elvis and Abe Lincoln - in fact I suspect he's probably a fundamentalist bastard. However, I think he is a bit less of a fundamentalist bastard and definitely less of an authoritarian whackjob than the incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Even small change is better than no change, so viva la revolution!