UPDATE: Dan Henninger again:

Not that long ago, in 1989, the world watched demonstrators sit passively in Tiananmen Square and fight the authorities with little more than a papier-m�ch� Statue of Liberty. Poland's Solidarity movement had to print protest material with homemade ink made from oil because the Communist government confiscated all the printers' ink.

In 2004, in Ukraine's Independence Square, they had cell phones. Using the phones' SMS messaging technology, demonstrators sent messages to meet to 10 or so friends, who'd each SMS the message to 10 more friends, and so on. It's called "smart-mobbing." Meanwhile, community Web sites in Ukraine would post the numbers of tents on the square where medical help was needed, or the sites would recruit people with specific TV skills needed at Channel 5, the lone independent TV station. The Ukrainian Supreme Court's historic Dec. 3 decision, declaring the election a fraud, was streamed on the Internet live from a Kiev courtroom and watched real time in London, New York, Washington and Toronto, sent out on e-mail distribution lists so the next steps could be discussed by the reform network and put in motion within an hour.

Until recently, one-party or no-party governments had a standing list of answers for people with a different notion: a) we don't care what you think; b) shut up; c) we kill you. There's no sure cure for c, but Plans a and b are becoming obsolete. Once impervious political authorities must now face the possibility of having their information monopoly hammered by an array of mostly American-engineered technology--smart cell phones, communication satellites, e-mail, Web logs (or "blogs") and a seemingly endless stream of information-sharing programs whose arcane names (RSS, Atom) hide their great power. The mass-market power of the older media--radio, TV, print--is also being integrated with the precision targeting of new technologies.

This past weekend, a few hundred of the people creating and driving these things gathered at a conference organized by the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. It included individuals who are proselytizing the new communications technologies to Iran, China, Iraq, South Korea, Malaysia, India, Western Africa and even the U.S. military (individual GIs are running an estimated 100 Web logs).

However, there is a dark cloud on the horizon. Everyone's favorite international killjoy, the UN, is doing its best to get control over the internet. For only the most altruistic reasons of course. Fellow blogospherians, this one needs to stay on the radar screen.

UPDATE: Hmmmm.

UPDATE: A few Johnny-come-lately columnists interview the Fadhil brothers: Howard Kurtz and Spencer Ackerman. But that's good, it gets the news out to more people.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, given the kind of conspiracy-theorizing rampant in today's global society, disclaimers like this are necessary.