No matter what the outcome of the next few days in Iran, the Genie is out of the bottle in Iran and the people of the country will continue to press for changes. 20 years ago - as with the Chinese in Tiananmen Square - the government could have hidden this and gotten away with it. Today, the citizen journalist will not be kept down (Time Magazine please note: My vote for person of the Year 2009 is the citizen journalist) for all of the drawbacks to having our reporting coming from people who are in the middle of the news stories, we can't avoid the truth that without the tools of web 2.0 and the young people who are using those tools to bring the uprising to us, we would all be in the dark. The fact that the state department asked Twitter to delay maintenance work on the website speaks volumes for its value.
President Obama has handled the crisis brilliantly. Stand up for democracy and human rights - stand down on the personalities and the specifics of the uprising, lest they be tarred as puppets of the west. It's really political science 101 though some pretty high ranking US political leaders seem to have been out drinking during that class (take note Sen McCain and Rep Pence).
About Rachel Maddow
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