"Blogging toward Freedom"

That's the title of Luke Thomas' excellent Salon piece on the growing political importance of the Net in Iran. Here's how it begins:

The landslide victory of fundamentalists in Iran's recent "free" elections disheartened Western observers. The CIA declared that the lopsided outcome signifies a new era of repression by the country's clerical regime. But the real story is that by blocking free and fair elections, clerical hard-liners have driven dissent online -- lighting up thousands of alternate channels of communication for the Iranian people.

In Iran, the Internet is becoming the most successful route around oppression. It

We can only hope that Luke's long-term optimism is right.